As Dutch journalist Jelmer Mommers revealed last year, Shell has known about the climate crisis for nearly four decades and its own considerable role in causing it.

THE FIRST THREE SLIDES of climate scientist Peter Kalmus’s plenary speech to Shell’s Powering Progress Together conference were intended to gauge audience reactions. First, he would have asked attendees if they are “concerned about climate breakdown.” Then, to raise their hands if they are “EXTREMELY CONCERNED” about it. In the third slide, Kalmus would have asked panel-goers to raise their hands if they agreed with a simple statement: “Fossil fuel causes harm.”

He never got the chance. Last Wednesday, the day before he was scheduled to appear, Kalmus was disinvited from what the oil giant billed as “an action-oriented day of dialogue focused on accelerating the energy transition.” For those curious about what spooked them, The Intercept is publishing Kalmus’s contraband slideshow. read more

The world needs to get to the point at which it will no longer add to the stock of greenhouse gases, and reducing emissions to net zero “is the only way to go,” Shell’s chief executive Ben van Beurden said in a speech at The Energy Summit near London, calling on businesses to work together to move faster in addressing climate change.

While admitting that the world still needs oil, and will need it still for decades to come, van Beurden said that the supply and the demand side of the energy use should work together to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement to restrict the rise in global temperatures to well below 2 degrees Celsius. read more

George Monbiot: Wed 26 Jun 2019

Don’t buy the greenwash. Shell’s initiatives, which have won over many conservation groups, are dwarfed by its investment in oil and gas

It is hard to believe it needs stating, but it does. The oil industry is not your friend. Whatever it might say about its ethical credentials, while it continues to invest in fossil fuels, it accelerates climate breakdown and the death of the habitable planet. You would think this point was obvious to everyone. But over the past few weeks, I have spoken to dozens of environmentalists who appear to believe that Shell is on their side. read more

Fossil fuel industry giants such as ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell are maintaining an outsized presence at global climate discussions, working to undermine scientific consensus and slow policy progress, according to findings released Wednesday…

Delegates from major oil companies have influenced international accords for decades.

By Luke McGrath: 24 June 2019, 10:00 BST

Fossil fuel industry giants such as ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell are maintaining an outsized presence at global climate discussions, working to undermine scientific consensus and slow policy progress, according to findings released Wednesday by an environmental monitoring organization.

The Climate Investigations Center (CIC) report claims that fossil fuel trade associations have sent more than 6,400 delegates to climate talks since 1995, including delegates from Shell, BP and ExxonMobil. read more

By David Fickling | Bloomberg: June 5 at 7:03 AM

Greenwashed rhetoric is such a staple of the oil industry that it’s easy to assume every energy executive talking about climate and the transition to a zero-carbon economy is just mouthing words.

Barely a year after BP Plc Chief Executive Officer John Browne promised “action and solutions” on climate change in a 1997 speech, he led the then-biggest oil takeover in history with the acquisition of Amoco Corp. On his retirement a decade later, after years of rebranding about moving “beyond petroleum,” he left a base of oil and gas reserves more than twice the size of the one he inherited. read more

David Sheppard, Energy Editor: 23 MAY 2019

The annual general meetings of BP and Royal Dutch Shell this week confirmed Europe’s two largest oil and gas majors are on diverging tracks in the battle against climate change. Both companies now accept the need to overhaul their businesses in a manner that would have been unthinkable even five years ago, as the clamour from investors and activists has become too loud to ignore. But their approaches differ…

FULL FT ARTICLE

New technology to cut emissions needs funding: oil major

The FTSE 100 oil giant Shell has called for taxpayer subsidies to help it cut pollution by trapping carbon dioxide emissions underground.

Carbon capture and storage is seen by many as vital to meeting global pollution reduction targets. It involves “scrubbing” pollutants from factory and power station emissions, transporting the gas to special locations and storing it to avoid damage to the atmosphere.

The government is ploughing millions of pounds into getting the technology up and running by the mid-2020s, but the question of who pays to help combat climate change has proved controversial, with complaints over increases to electricity bills to subsidise renewable energy and pay for smart meters. read more

Printed below is an English translation of an article published today by the Dutch Financial Times, Financieele Dagblad.

Shell is investing $300 million in planting trees

Bert van Dijk: 9 April 2019

Shell will invest $ 300 million in planting trees in the coming three years. As part of the global investment program, Shell is investing more than € 17 million in the outside fund of Staatsbosbeheer. Both organizations want to plant more than five million trees in the coming twelve years. It is about the largest planting in the past hundred years. Shell announced this on Monday.

The global program must help Shell to achieve its goals of reducing CO₂.

Cooperation with business

“We invest in the Netherlands in, among other things, offshore wind energy, solar energy, electric mobility, biofuels and energy efficiency, but CO₂ compensation is also an important part of achieving climate goals,” said Marjan van Loon, president Director of Shell Nederland in a statement. read more

From next week Wednesday, Shell will offer customers in the Netherlands the option to pay one cent extra per liter of fuel. The Dutch oil and gas giant will then use that extra money to compensate for CO2 emissions. “This offers customers in the Netherlands an interim solution as long as electric driving is not yet affordable for everyone”, Marjan van Loon, director of Shell Nederland, said to NOS.

According to Shell, that one extra cent per liter is enough to drive in a “CO2 neutral” way. The voluntary contribution from customers will be invested in CO2 compensation projects, such as planting trees in Peru and Indonesia. The company invests abroad in such projects because the Netherlands does not yet have a certified CO2 compensation system, Shell said. read more

Exxon Mobil Corp., Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron, Total and BP together have spent more than $1 billion on public relations since the Paris Agreement.

• By Alexander C. Kaufman
• Chris D’Angelo, HuffPost US
• 22 March 2019

The world’s five largest publicly traded oil companies are increasing their investments in oil and gas, putting a combined $110 billion in new fossil-fuel production.

Meanwhile, those firms are projected to spend just $3.6 billion on low-carbon investments, such as biofuels and renewables, according to a new analysis that Influence Map, a British nonprofit that analyzes corporate influence on climate policy, derived from industry data and numbers buried in company disclosures.

The reckless disparity comes just months after the United Nations warned that the world must rapidly phase out fossil fuel use over the next decade or face catastrophic global warming of at least 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit. read more

Spreadsheet-analysing investors in control of trillion-dollar funds are forcing polluters to change

Anjli Raval and Attracta Mooney in London: 27 December 2018

When an activist shareholder group last year launched a campaign to force Royal Dutch Shell to set hard targets for cutting carbon emissions, just 6 per cent of those eligible to vote backed the plan. Yet within months Shell had announced an “ambition” to halve its carbon footprint by 2050… This December it pledged to set firm short-term emissions targets from 2020 that will be tied to executive pay. “If we don’t meet them there will be consequences to my salary and others,” said Ben van Beurden, Shell’s chief executive. FULL FT ARTICLE read more

SOURCE

FULL ARTICLE

Shell thinks that the likelihood of Shell having the same fate as photo company Kodak is small. “We are thinking a lot about Kodak moments.” Kodak, a long-time powerhouse in photography, proved unable to adequately respond to the rapid development of digital photography and went bankrupt.

Printed below is an English translation of an article published today by the Dutch Financial Times, Financieele Dagblad. 

‘I have to make sure that Shell does not become a dodo’

‘We are also a marketing company that serves customers from 45,000 branches. These are more branches than McDonald’s. “Photo: Peter Boer

Bert van Dijk

Shell invests $ 1 billion a year to $ 2 billion in clean energy, but still more than ten times in oil and gas. Does not the mega-concern cope with the same fate as Kodak, the photo company that went bankrupt because it reacted too late to changes in the environment?

A conversation with Jeremy Bentham, head of Shells scenario department.

Bentham (60) is the proud owner of the Dodo. A drawing of the extinct bird is framed in the room of the Shell driver. The internal ‘award’ has been passed on to Shell drivers since 1976 as ‘a warning to us all’, as is shown in the drawing.

Bentham is the eighth ‘custodian’ of the Dodo. ‘It is my responsibility to ensure that Shell does not become a dodo that reacts too late to changes in its environment.’ read more

Shell boost for electric car owners: More petrol stations will be fitted with electric car charge points under a new nationwide plan.

Customers quit First Utility, the supplier Shell bought to take on the Big Six: The UK energy supplier acquired by Royal Dutch Shell as a vehicle for growth has lost tens of thousands of customers since agreeing the deal. read more

Printed below is an English translation of an article published today by the Dutch Financial Times, Financieele Dagblad. 

Maarten Wetselaar: ‘There has been a period of thirty years in which the industry and we also only talked about the largest oil platforms that were built and the deepest wells that were drilled.’ Photo: Michel de Groot

‘The energy transition gives power back to the customer’

Bert van Dijk: Energy: 12 Sept 2018

ShellRDSA € 27.85 + 1.05% is still an oil and gas multinational, but is sorting for a future in which it will become one of the largest electricity companies. ‘We are faced with a revolution’, says Maarten Wetselaar, member of the Executive Board of Shell in an interview with the FD. He is responsible, among other things, for the New Energies division that was established two years ago. read more

Emily Gosden: July 6, 2018

Royal Dutch Shell would be “foolhardy” to adopt firm targets for cutting its carbon emissions because it would open itself up to lawsuits, the company’s boss has said.

The energy group has set an “ambition” to halve the carbon footprint of its energy products by 2050, which it says would put it in line with the Paris climate goals, but has resisted calls for binding commitments.

Ben van Beurden, Shell chief executive, said that the group did not want to “put ourselves at the mercy of a legal challenge”. read more