The only constant is change, which is certainly true of innovation in the oil and gas industry. Thinking back five years, it would be very difficult to predict the state of innovation today. Policies like the Inflation Reduction act and the European Green Deal catalyzed activity in low-carbon technologies as a fear of missing out drove most companies to pull technologies from the lab and explore developing projects around them. In 2024, that landscape continues to change; for example, a frenzied interest in hydrogen last year has subsided as the realities of a lack of offtake for the hydrogen produced has caused most projects to press pause.
In this environment, an ability to look through the noise and foresee which technologies are going to be the next hydrogen or carbon capture are critical. At Lux, we take a data-driven approach to answering this question with the Lux Tech Signal — a composite score, combining data in patents, papers, and funding, plus our own proprietary data. It quantifies the progress of each technology against a maximum innovation interest score of 100. Changes over time indicate growing (or shrinking) innovation interest, while inflection points may point to commercial opportunities or challenges ahead.
We analyzed tech signals across technologies relevant to the oil and gas industry and have highlighted our biggest movers of 2024 below.
Low-Carbon Steel
Tech signal score: 71.9 (↑17.4)
While oil and gas companies won’t become steel producers themselves, understanding the technology roadmap for the steel industry to lower emissions is critical. Steel makers could deploy carbon capture to manage emissions, for which oil and gas companies could provide the solutions. Alternatively, a shift to hydrogen direct reduced iron could present an opportunity to provide a large supply of hydrogen, providing a critical source of hydrogen offtake the industry is desperately seeking.
Point Source Carbon Capture
Tech signal score: 75.6 (↑10.3)
Within the energy transition, many oil and gas companies are focused on ways they can repurpose their core expertise. Carbon capture is one of the most obvious solutions as it is mostly a combination of technologies familiar to the oil and gas industry, which is accustomed to building large capital projects. The increase in the tech signal is largely due to a jump in patenting activity; granted and pending patents jumped from 311 in 2020 to 1,448 in 2024, as the technology is now approaching commercialization.
Sodium-Ion Batteries
Tech signal score: 64.3 (↑9.8)
Na-ion batteries operate in the same way Li-ion batteries operate but replace lithium with sodium as the charge carrier. They are essentially worse versions of Li-ion batteries, as they come with lower efficiency, energy density, and specific energy. However, they also avoid the use of lithium, and in some applications — like grid storage — those performance metrics may be just good enough. Oil and gas companies may be consumers of these batteries or help shore up a critical missing link in the supply chain by providing materials like carbon black to battery manufacturers
Critical Minerals Extraction
Tech signal score: 61.6 (↑9.37)
The energy transition is just as much a materials transition. New supply chains will be needed to provide critical minerals to technologies powering the energy transition. Oil and gas companies have leveraged their expertise in this area; for example, ExxonMobil acquired land to develop a project to extract lithium from geothermal brines in the U.S. While opportunities in lithium extraction are most promising today, other prospects will emerge like iridium and platinum required for catalysts in the hydrogen economy.
Novel Nuclear Power Generation
Tech signal score: 42.7 (↑7.94)
The outlook on nuclear power has historically swung like a pendulum between pro- and antinuclear stances. Today, that pendulum is slowly swinging from a lingering antinuclear stance triggered by the Fukushima disaster, and governments have supported R&D for nuclear fusion as well as small modular reactors. For oil and gas companies, small modular reactors could be a compact source of electricity and heat, enabling emissions reductions at their facilities.
