Since the adoption of the 2015 Paris accord, in which most of the countries in the world agreed to set goals to reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions, international oil companies have begun to make more public pledges to reduce their carbon releases.

Several European oil companies have acknowledged that they would have to leave some carbon resources in the ground. Statoil, the Norwegian oil company, has begun a major shift toward investing in wind power. This month, Shell and seven other oil companies pledged to reduce emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from leaky pipes and wells.

Shell is working with BMW, Daimler, Ford and Volkswagen to install fast-charging stations on Europe’s highways to make electric cars capable of longer trips. Shell has projected that the expansion of the global electric-car fleet over the next decade will significantly slash gasoline demand.

Perhaps Shell’s most ambitious project is its Quest carbon capture and storage project in Canada, which recovers carbon dioxide emissions from a major oil-sands project and then compresses it into a liquid for storage underground. The project is one of only a few in the world.

While some energy experts say carbon capture could be a useful tool to control climate change, skeptics say the technology is too expensive to be deployed broadly enough to make a real difference.

Generally, European oil companies have moved faster on climate efforts than their American counterparts, partly because there is a broader political consensus on the problem on the Continent. Norway, though a major oil producer, is considering removing oil investments from the holdings of its sovereign wealth fund.