The venture capital arm of oil and gas firm BP intends to invest more than 90% of its spending over the next four years in green tech startups.
BP Ventures, which has invested over $1bn to date, plans to deploy the majority of its funds across the company’s “transition growth engines” that include EVs, bioenergy, hydrogen and renewables, as reported by The Times.
The firm said it expected to invest around $200m (£165m) this year and that the total amount invested over the next four years would be comparable to its total investment expenditure since its foundation 17 years ago.
“We’ve refreshed our investment strategy this year and we’re looking to significantly step up our activity in support of delivering upon BP’s strategy,” said BP Ventures boss Gareth Burns.
“Investing in startups is a great way of giving us insight into what some of the future disruptive opportunities may be.”
Burns said the firm was targeting “startups that are developing new technologies that have the potential to scale reasonably quickly, that are looking for an energy company to participate and help them in that development and will help to deliver the energy transition”.
Recent investments into green tech from BP Ventures include a £4m investment into Southampton-based EV software company Dynamon, participation in a $25m investment round for Indian EV ride-hailing app BluSmart and an £5m investment into EV charging startup IoTecha.
In 2022, BP was responsible for around 340 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent emissions.