BP built its business on oil and gas. Now climate change is taking it apart.

What happens when a big oil and gas company decides it wants to radically cut back on the oil and gas business? That’s what BP says it will do over the next decade, by halting oil and gas investment in new countries, slashing oil and gas production by 40 percent, lowering carbon emissions by about a third, and boosting capital spending on low-carbon energy ten-fold to $5 billion a year. And while earlier this year BP vowed to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, “this makes the BP the first super-major to spell out, in detail, what the energy transition will actually entail, in practical terms,” said Pavel Molchanov, senior energy analyst for the investment firm Raymond James.