China Oil French Total has emerged as perhaps the smartest member of the Big Oil club, wasting no time waiting for oil prices to return to early 2014 levels, instead, venturing into the brave new world of renewables and power storage systems . This move by the French giant was recently lauded by Lux Research in a paper titled Superpower Darwinism: What Big Oil Can and Cannot Do About Total’s Billion-Dollar Battery Move. Total is preparing for a world that will be dominated by renewable energy, and betting on it to ensure its long-term success. Meanwhile, other supermajors are finding it hard to acknowledge climate change—the single most important factor that is spurring the renewables boom. Until relatively recently, this acknowledgement could go unnoticed. Renewable energy was more hype than anything else: it couldn’t be stored for any practical length of time, it was – and still is – […]