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Level:                           Master thesis in Business administration with concentration towards Ecological economics

Title:             Combating climate change – a case study of Statoil’s climate strategy

Problem:       The world is facing an environmental situation where we no longer can ignore problems like climate change, losses of species and an overall environmental degradation. Many actors have to take their responsibility and do as much as they can for a sustainable development. One crucial actor is the business world. Often, they both have the knowledge and financial power to make a difference. Higher environmental regulations and pressure from stakeholders, such as the Swedish government or the EU, forces companies to consider the environment while doing business. This requires a strategy.

Purpose:       The purpose with the essay is to identify and study Statoil’s climate strategy.  We also want to identify the most important internal and external factors that are affecting the strategy.

Method:       The thesis is based on a qualitative method made up by two parts, interviews and literature studies. We made one informant interview and two respondent interviews with two environmental executives from Statoil AB.

Results:        Statoil has a mainly pro-active strategy and are very ambiguous in the climate question, although their strategy is highly affected by the surrounding. Developing new technologies, cooperation and profiling are the main parts of their strategy. They are affected by the dominating discourse ecological modernization, as well as by the organizational field. They are in turn affecting the field by their offensive strategy. The customers and the legal framework are the most important external factors of impact. Whereas the corporate group StatoilHydro and financial resources are the most important internal factors.

Keywords:    Climate strategy, environmental strategy, responsible company, greening, ecological modernization