The greater loss is that the new CEO had already scaled down Shell's investment in renewables, setting a target of 4.5% of the total investments in renewables by 2025[0].
Some other Oil&Gas companies seem to be a bit more inclined to actually invest in renewables, or at least pay lip service to it, e.g. ENI aims at 30% by 2025[1].
Remains to be seen how much will actually be invested.
[0] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/shell-boost-dividend... [1] https://www.eni.com/en-IT/media/press-release/2022/03/pr-cap...
Honestly, this upsets people?
If demand were x+100, and theoretically some company wouldn't be able to afford to buy the offsets, it wouldn't somehow have ended up with the blame of Shell, they would just have found no one to solve their problem for them and would have to fix it themselves.
Of course this is assuming that whoever is selling the offsets is actually performing the task of carbon offsetting effectively, something that many believe is not actually happening so that puts things into even more murky waters.
Feels like the oil companies are going to face a big tobacco moment in the next 20 years and the previous CEO was preparing their defense of "don't punish us for the sins of our fathers". Whereas Sawan is doubling down on "maximize this quarter, who cares about the future, not my problem".
That's all ignoring the: do you actually care at all if your great grandchildren have a habitable planet? (or maybe grandchildren at the rate we're going)
I can not locate the long piece article now but I read a piece from someone that effectively got invited into a Shell (UK) think tank and heard exactly that from some vp/executive at a dinner table.
That they aimed to diversify (think corn/algae based fuels, hydrogen infrastructure, charging networks), but that they ultimately still believed that the public opinion would still make it palatable to continue hydrocarbon fuels extraction for another 2 to 3 decades.
You think 20 years is enough for this reckoning?
Honestly, I think they’re all going to get away with it with zero repercussion. If humanity is still around in a couple hundred years, there might be retroactive virtue signalling. But that doesn’t matter cause everyone responsible will be long since dead.
Suppose for a moment that I completely agree with you on all points of substance. Even then, I would have to tell you that corporations are designed (not metaphorically, but literally designed) to deflect and shield liability. There never is anyone to be held accountable, because everyone who acts is an employee, and the ownership is divided among millions of people, through many layers of misdirection. None of whom make any decisions.
Unless you were careful, and if you have a 401K, you yourself may in fact be part owner. Or owner of an owner of an owner of an owner. Should you be held accountable?
You can't arrest a corporation. You can't put it in a holding cell overnight. You can't sentence it to prison for 10 years. You definitely can't give it the death penalty and execute it. And it's no accident this is the case. The major (and perhaps only real) difference between a corporation and simpler business customs is that the corporation is this magical wall between the owner and the business that can't usually be breached. If the business goes bankrupt, no one can seize the businessman's home as collateral. That's what a corporation is for. You live in a society that, however upset it might be over climate change, isn't upset at all over this "design". They like it. They revel in it. And it's not going away.
> If humanity is still around in a couple hundred years, there might be retroactive virtue signalling. But that doesn’t matter cause everyone responsible will be long since dead.
But that's already true from a pragmatic standpoint. Even the CEO now, he was hired in a few years ago, He's just some schlub taking the jobs he knows how to do, without any real power to change what you want. If he tried, they'd fire him and get another. The people who set the ball rolling made sure of that. And even they aren't guilty in any real way, either, unless you want to pretend that someone in the early 1900s should have known better.
75% of new electricity production is renewable. 10% of new car sales are EV's. A large fraction of new home heating installations are heat pumps. The three largest hydrocarbon demands are transitioning. That's going to have a meaningful effect on demand. It'll take decades to get anywhere close to zeroing demand, but it's going to have an effect on the margin quite quickly.
Can the companies & countries addicted to massive oil profits cut production quickly enough to stabilize prices? OPEC is trying but they're only a small and shrinking fraction of production and the gains from defection are so large...
I also think as the climate becomes more and more inhospitable, that 40% number will continue to decrease.
Maybe 40 percent is still pro big oil but they don't deny the causal link.
I'm pro big oil because I still drive a gas car. In that sense if you use big oil products you are a supporter. I would put supporters at over waaaaay over 40 percent. 95% is a better estimate.
20 years minus the latency inherent to the system. If I recall correctly the latency from "stopping to emit CO2" to "starting to see effects" is estimated to be 13 years.
It is the most long term outlook you can get. What's more important?a future where my children are billionaires or a future with slightly less global warming? Shell is not the only source of global warming on this earth.
You need to think in terms of human scale choices. Not just simplistic right or wrong choices. If we were that ceo... You, I and all of us maximize our benefits and make the most rational and most logical choice by destroying the environment.
It's the tragedy of the commons pushed to the maximum extreme. I make a shit load of money participating in the destruction of the commons. We'd all be lying to ourselves if we didn't make that choice.
If you think about it from the corporate perspective it also makes sense. The company is heading towards a wall. Not just environment pressures, but a future where oil is dry. We are running out. In the face of an inevitable end what is the best most rational choice? It's obvious.
Elinor Ostrom has written an excellent book called "Governing the Commons," and she was awarded a Nobel Prize in Economics for her work. I recommend it.
Big oil and big tobacco share a strategy of promoting false skepticism, shifting blame to consumers, using the legal system to harass and intimidate scientists, and lobbying to get support from elected representatives. Big oil is of course bigger, and the entanglement with politics, jobs and other companies in the private sector is much stronger.
These issues are widely documented, and the books that climate scientist Michael Mann wrote were eye opening to me.
The only sensible exit is to legislate at scale. These companies will not self regulate. The lag between cause and effect makes this extremely dangerous. A heavy carbon tax is an obvious way to do it.
1. Spin off green energy products into their own company. 2. Pour money from oil business into Green energy. 3. When reckoning comes for gas, they let the oil biz take the fall, but the fall won't be much as they will have nearly bankrupted it already.
Their great grandchildren will be able to comfortably inhabit it alright, that's all that matters to them, at the very best.
This also points to the problem with renewables from the capital viewpoint: they're just not as profitable, as you can't sell sunlight and wind or create artificial supply restrictions to jack up prices (which is the historical economic story of the oil & gas industry over most of the 20th century).
- Deny the existence of the problem.
- Pay for others to join the denialist movement.
- Pay others to say that individuals should fix the problem, not the company.
- If they cannot deny anymore, promise they will certainly do something in the future.
- When the future arrives, say they couldn't do anything for financial reasons.
- Finally, say that the harm is already done, and nothing else can be done about it (we already see this happening).
Its not so much they are doing this for profits; which of course they are, but society as a whole very much needs them to continue to do so in order to assure our continued existence in our current form.
- Convince weak minded but important influencers that there's no problem,
by forming "real" friendships (no bribes),
so they in turn sincerely honestly spread the manipulation themselves.
(Ive seen that & read that Putin uses this against the US and EU, and it apparently works great, but that's off topic)
I think a lot of people feel that.
Personally, I think we may more or less have forgotten about "Global Warming" in 20 years, just like we forgot about the "Ozone Layer" or "Acid Rain".
If AI continues at anything resembling the current pace for another decade or two , there may be so much disruption, that Global Warming seems quite insignificant to most people.
You are 50x less likely to die of a climate-related cause than in 1920.
8x as many people die from cold temperatures as warm ones.
The planet is more green today than a century ago. CO2 is plant food.
We need more energy, not less. Renewable, nuclear, and yes even fossil fuels.
It brings people out of poverty and increases standard of living. When humans move up Maslow's hierarchy they start to care about the environment. CO2 emissions have been decreasing in the US since 2007.
> Average life expectancy has increased because child mortality is down, do we stop medical research?
You are 50x less likely to die of a climate-related cause than in 1920.
> Great. Let's keep investing in mitigation AND prevention. It seems to work!
8x as many people die from cold temperatures as warm ones.
> Climate change is not just global WARMING.
The planet is more green today than a century ago. CO2 is plant food.
> At the cost of loss of biodiversity. We don't just need green, but diverse green.
We need more energy, not less. Renewable, nuclear, and yes even fossil fuels.
> Agreed. (Surprise!) But I'd prefer to see fossil used for industry and not energy. Renewable & nuclear should be sufficient.
It brings people out of poverty and increases standard of living. When humans move up Maslow's hierarchy they start to care about the environment. CO2 emissions have been decreasing in the US since 2007.
> Agreed. Moving up people on Maslow's hierarchy also causes them to need to have less kids (in a sane environment with a good social safety net for old age) which should stabilise the population by 2060.
Wow, HVAC is an amazing technology.
The difference is that an existential climate crisis it just isn't treated by our leaders with the same importance as a good old fashioned war.
I’ve dramatically reduced my personal energy usage, I don’t eat animal products, my family has found ways to generate remarkably little garbage, and other “nice” things, but it’s pretty much meaningless. It’s all theatre compared to the damage we do with our car, jobs, community and provincial infrastructure we depend on, etc.
I feel like I’m willing to change my life, and I have already I guess. I’m just not willing to give up my livelihood when it means so little in the bigger picture. I’m no different from someone working on an oil rig or forestry or whatever. What I do looks nicer, but my rationale is no different.
It all takes work so you have to brace yourself to sacrifice your free time and balance everything. It's not easy, but there are countless people already trying to do it.
Why not talk to your employer about a step in that direction, given that solar panels are typically profitable within a handful of years for an average household, let alone if you can 100% offset the kWh generated because all the energy can be used in-house?
Evil triumphs when ‘good men’s’ efforts fail.
Climate change represents an inherent risk to humanity, but some climate change mitigation strategies represent a risk to short-term profit incentives.
We are starting to see economic agitation globally as institutions everywhere begin to question the logic of our systems.
This and other factors has led us to a multi-polar world, which is itself creating new problems that inhibit global synchronisation on this issue.
It is a planetary scale problem. It needs a planetary scale solution.
I moved to a location that is not going to see negatives from climate change. Even if your location isn't great, just work on what you can do. Stop consuming junk on Amazon and start freecycling in your neighborhood. Spend more money to buy goods that have a lower environmental impact. If you own a home, there's a lot you can do to improve the environment. Compost, install rain barrels, maybe solar panels, use native landscaping, plant more trees that will provide shade.
The real tragedy is that a fair amount of this change would make people's lives better.
For example, more walkable human scale communities, less combustion in vehicles and homes, more comfortable, healthier, and cheaper to operate homes, reduced air pollution for communities in the vicinity of power plants and industrial facilities.
But on the other hand, yes smaller houses and cars, less meat, etc are hard to adjust to.
> Barring some of unforeseen technical miracle the next 20-30 years are going to get increasingly grim.
Disagree on that. The technologies we need are all pretty ready or close. It's about bending cost curves and the rate of deployment.
I’m personally quite optimistic, because I’ve already made most of the necessary adjustments, and it wasn’t very hard at all.
Unfortunately this future is inline with the the pessimistic viewpoint.
It's not about pessimism or optimism in the end. It's about logic. He's right. It's done. Likely the worst case scenario for global warming will play out. We already crossed the permanent threshold.
The above is my mockery of how I expect we will in 40 years
If I change my own behavior but everyone doesn't then my actions are negligible.
Rationally my best course of action is to not change.
Remember it is each individual acting extremely rationally and logically that in the end contributes to global warming in aggregate. That is why it's so hard to reverse this. The tragedy of the commons.
So we don’t have to change we live, we just have to change the way we generate our energy.
Which I presume are pretty much a minor fraction of the carbon footprint of their products and kinda makes the whole exercise a PR campaign.
Even when it would cover pipeline leaks and the like it's still nowhere near their total impact.
That is not to say you are wrong, it was maybe just that when a fossil fuel company tells you it's reducing it's carbon impact then the whole premise is going to be cynical at best.
Not counting the CO2 output of its product obviously.
But like you say, it is appropriate to blame the producers for hiding what they knew about the greenhouse effect and well-funded lobbying and propaganda campaigns to deny and minimize it.
An honest corporation that was just acting to serve the needs of the people wouldn't do something like fight to reduce the exxon valdez spill fine by 100x or raise a fit when regulatory agencies mandate generation shifting.
Because 90% of the population would die.
Then why do journalists investifating recycling sham, oil spills, etc. frequently end up dead or in prison?
This has bothered me since I was a child and drove by a landfill and realized just how much trash we produce. I met someone that went a month without using one time use plastic and she couldn’t really avoid it. It’s everywhere.
Megacorps have a tremendous amount of power in our political system and that makes it very very very difficult to hold people to account for anything.
and a more green planet than a century ago
and far fewer people in poverty
all lead you to believe it's becoming uninhabitable?
Perhaps because of all the chemical-induced algae blooms turning previously blue water into murky green?
Do you think you can survive if the biosphere is gone?
Entirely predictable result of the narrow view of the CEO shareholder relationship.
I view this as more of an indictment of carbon credits than anything.
That's just not accurate. This is the CEO who basically cut all of their plans around renewables.
https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/shells-renewables-boss-leav...
This plan doesn’t even deserve being shelved. It deserves being shitcanned.
Article below is an example of challenges facing rolling out renewables. They are not all Oil and Gas related as generally perceived: https://archive.md/udhVH
There are also couple of really good books on the topic, which I am happy to share if the interest is there.
Generally, established companies have a lot of trouble, and often fail, adopting when the rules of business change.
In this case, Shell is having a lot of trouble adopting to carbon-free (or neurtral) energy.
IMO: I think the best approach is to seek out carbon-free (or neutral) energy business models and disrupt Shell out of business. From Shell's POV, the best thing they can do is invest in the disrupters and have them organically displace their existing fossil-fuel based businesses.
And no one has figured how to make AI work for the kinds of tasks people ask phones to do. It might be possible but no one's yet made it work so it's hard to argue that anyone is "behind" on this front when no one has brought even a commercial AI-based voice assistant to market which is has the lowest barrier to entry and the highest user tolerance for failure.
So I think you're right that a lot of old-guard tech is becoming too big to be agile but I'm less sure about the thing that will actually disrupt them.
To say this is to not know how Apple operates. They have been shipping local AI in phones for a decade now. Every phone has one of the best neural processors out there. Apple is better prepared than anyone. And that's before considering their remarkable restraint to not release something until they are happy with it. They are 100% working on LLMs and I'm sure they will do it their own way. This isnt some sort of fanboy post, it's their story. From OLED to the Mac transition to Apple silicon. Slowly, then all at once.
No, wait, private ownership and corporate freedom have actually been proven to be the pinnacle of human economic organizing, so please hand back the lighter and petrol to your demented grandparents and their delusions ideas.
Unfortunately, the people running and investing in these companies will be long dead when their decisions come back to bite us all in the ass.
Almost NONE of the comments in this forum so far reflect this observation, which I find concerning. If you are angry about the state of affairs here (which I would completely understand), at least read the article (and take a deep breath) before commenting
Offsets do not work. The best application of that funding would be to stop destruction of the ocean habitat. Short explanation: Almost all surface and atmospheric carbon ends up in the ocean by rivers or rainfall. Geological-timescale sequestration is performed by zooplankton et al in the form of CaCO3, but something has to eat them or they will block the light for their own food supply, and the rest of the ecosystem follows from there. And yes, surface habitats also matter, but their destruction is more localized.
Why does a utility like PG&E fight so hard to hurt solar installation? If I were CEO I'd buy or start a foundry to make solar panels. Then I'd start an installation and service org. People need energy, why should I care where they get it so long as they get it from me? The grid isn't going away so stop trying so desperately to protect that revenue stream.
Why can't oil companies do the same sort of thing? If Shell were smart they'd be making and selling wind turbines, solar panels, inverters, batteries, etc. Use your stupid lobbing arm to get subsidies passed that make the electric utilities pay part of the cost of these products. Instead they're just giving those markets away because they don't know how to do anything beyond oil and jealously try to protect every scrap of oil revenue.
Even ATT focused so much on long-distance revenue and milking people for tiny data pipes they let cable companies and new ISPs waltz in and takeover huge chunks of what had literally been their monopoly business. Bell labs invented VoIP and could have owned that space... but they didn't dare threaten long-distance revenues. Then a few years later competitors evicerated those revenue streams anyway.
It all comes down to a lack of vision and a focus on protecting existing revenue streams. I guess my brain just doesn't work that way. I see change as inevitable so I'd rather try to own a piece of the new market than worry about protecting the old one.
Having worked in the sector, albeit not with Shell, my guess is that the board were advised that offsets increasingly carry massive legal jeopardy, including director’s liability.
This is an interesting summary of the problem:
https://www.clientearth.org/media/nq4jnyww/ce-offsets-legal-...
The technical issue for fossil fuel carbon capture schemes involves conservation of energy. Simply stated, a diesel truck that captures all its emissions as it drives down the road is an obviously implausible scheme, as anyone with even a vague appreciation of how engines work should realize. Clogging the exhaust is the first problem, separating the CO2 (and incomplete combustion products and particulate & inorganic contaminants) from the exhaust stream is the next, and storing the concentrated CO2 is the third.
The only reason these carbon capture systems have been built in practice is to generate a stream of CO2 for enhanced oilfield recovery, a process in which CO2 is injected into aged oil wells because it facilitates recovery of oil from these wells. The CO2/oil mix that comes out is refined as usual and most of the injected CO2 just escapes back to the atmosphere.
The economic fraud all revolves around the technical fact that 'carbon credit' schemes don't offset anything, and in a warming world so-called 'carbon stores' like British Columbian forests have been going up in smoke due to increased wildfires. Similarly cap-and-trade doesn't work; it was originally based on a scheme to clean up sulfur in diesel fuel but the sulfur just ended up in ship bunker fuel (although cities are somewhat cleaner due to the introduction of ultra-low-sulfur diesel fuel).
What's particularly egregious about these schemes is the degree of dishonesty demonstrated by their political and industrial promoters - they know they don't work. For example, production of natural gas is booming to record levels at present while the very politicians and executives responsible for the boom are running around proclaiming how concerned they are about climate and running ads stating their dedication to net-zero. Similarly, even if some coal plants are retired in the US, exports of coal to Asia are rising and production is barely falling.
The fact is there's not a single major fossil fuel producing country or corporation on the planet that has any intention of shutting down production in the forseeable future. This is why countries like China, that have to import most of their fossil fuel, are so far ahead in renewable energy production and technology.
Perhaps now they will report their true carbon emissions.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/24/carbon-c...
We should be focused on mitigation strategies and superior technology that wins conversion based on market forces and not government mandates and long term subsidies.
The Green Suicide of the West isn't going to help climate change, and will probably make it worse.
Surely you’re looking at the wrong statistics. Brazil is a leader in renewable energy, with fossil fuel use already on the decline for the last decade.
China is the world’s largest producer of solar and wind power products, and their renewable energy ramp up has only been slowed down by the rest of the world buying up half their output.
The risk to western economies is that they are too slow to transition away from fossil fuels and suffer from their dependence on ever more expensive oil and gas.
China is the world's mass manufacturer. They will happily make whatever they can sell. If the West is demanding solar panels and windmills due to top down energy policy directives China will happily make and sell them.
There is plenty of fossil fuel available and a huge installed base of ICE's around to use them, especially in the developing world and BRICS. If the West stops buying fossil fuels it only makes them cheaper for those who will happily consume them.
The West needs to use its technological edge to develop market winning sustainable technologies and cheap, safe, electricity production. Crippling itself with unrealistic sustainable energy policies is going to be counter productive to climate change solutions.
They have the brains. They should branch out and create a moonshot division that starts to make money and shows stakeholders they can bet on them.
TBH, it is pretty surprising, considering that they should clearly be seeing the opportunity.
COO: "This is turning out to be hard"
CEO: "F*it, let the planet burn".
CFO: "I'm down with that, I'm retiring rich and have a good 10-20 years of cocaine and hookers before my house on the coast gets washed away"
You should too. It's not that hard.
I am doing it again, but in another city.
At least, provide for some citation to be worthy.
https://www.globe.gov/explore-science/scientists-blog/archiv...
