Shell, to Cut Carbon Output, Will Be Less of an Oil Company
“We will do this in step with society’s drive to align with the Paris goals,” Mr. Van Beurden added, “and we will do it by reducing
the net carbon footprint of the full range of Shell emissions, from our operations and from the consumption from our products.”
Shell, Europe’s largest oil company, said it aimed to reduce its greenhouse-gas emissions by 20 percent by 2035 and by half by 2050.
“They are ahead of their competitors in recognizing that the days of oil dependence are numbered.”
But he added, “We’ll have to make progress a lot more quickly than they are projecting in order to protect the climate.”
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.
Bowing to pressure from shareholders and the Paris international climate accord, Royal Dutch Shell pledged
on Tuesday to increase its investment in renewable fuels and to cut its carbon emissions in half by 2050.
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.
In comments to investors, Ben van Beurden, Shell’s chief executive, said
that from 2018 to 2020, the company’s new-energies division would spend up to $2 billion a year on renewable energy sources like wind, solar and hydrogen power and on electric-car charging stations.