Oil giant Royal Dutch Shell is to increase its spending on renewable energy to $1bn (£800m) a year, its chief executive announced as he warned the public’s faith in the industry was “just disappearing”.
Ben van Beurden suggested the public backlash against fossil fuel firms could threaten the industry’s future.
He also said it was essential that countries imposed a price on carbon emissions to help phase out the use of coal and oil, sources of large amounts of greenhouse gases that are driving climate change.
This perhaps surprising message – a request from a business for governments to make their costs higher – was delivered at an energy conference in Texas, Reuters reported.
Well we knew this had to be coming around at some point. After all just about the whole world is now focusing on renewable energy now.
I just can't help but wish Shell and all of their other big oil buddies would have done this twenty five years ago when it would have actually made a big difference.
Did the angry Texans pull out their guns? I'm sure this was not met with applause from the US oil barons, who still want pipelines and Russian drilling for more useless oil. But bravo to Shell.
ReplyDelete+++++++++
DeletePersonally, I think the only reason this is happening is because clearly Exxon runs the US Govt now. Shell is just positioning itself to ride out the shockwave when Exxon's schemes implode.
DeleteWe have just one "gas" credit card...Shell...so I am very glad to read this.
ReplyDeleteStop fracking screwing up this planet with fracken greed.
ReplyDeleteIf the oil companies had as much sense as they had money years ago, they could have thrown huge amounts of R&D funding into alternative renewable energy sources and locked up the market for any money to be made from solar, wind, etc.
ReplyDeleteSure, they could have and did squash small startups as if they were bugs, but it would have been nice to have a well-established infrastructure for green energy also.
It's because they are Dutch. The Dutch are way ahead of us in good sense. Good science/engineering sense.
ReplyDeleteI remember an interview re Katrina and the flooding. With a Dutch hydrologist and an American hydrologist, who were asked how strong their dyke systems were built to be. The American replied "It was built to withstand a 100-year storm." The Dutchman replied that they built their system to withstand 10,000-year storms.
It was laughable, if our lack of foresight hadn't caused so much disaster and misery.
The Dutch will be under fucking water if climate change results in increased sea levels....
DeleteYep. And the Dutch have dykes. Sea levels matter and they are logical enough to see that. Plus, a smaller company, nowhere to retreat to. And they're not exactly new to wind power.
DeleteSo much for drill baby drill
ReplyDelete25 years ago?? If we had just listened to Jimmy Carter 40 years ago, the U.S. would be miles and miles along the renewable energy road right now.
ReplyDeleteAmen to that! My father was of the same opinion as many of these people - the Bible says that a new heaven and earth are coming, so why not tap it until there is no more? I never got that way of thinking.
DeleteWith dismantling the EPA, we're headed the way of Bejing. A deep intake of fresh air will soon be a thing of the past.
They are probably pouring even more money into seeking out new and more dangerous ways to get at fossil fuels.
ReplyDeleteBeaglemom
Royal Shell has embraced the fact they are an ENERGY company not an OIL company.
ReplyDeleteOil is not the future. They've known that oil peaked years ago. There is no future in spending more and more to pump less and less oil and of inferior quality.
Strides are being made with replacing natural gas so that peak isn't as important.
The U.S. is behind in geotherman, wind and solar. We could have been number ONE in all three. But we have lost ground by allowing Big Oil to call the shots. Under Trump we won't even be playing catch up.
So kudos to Shell. They will have a future in Energy while the Oil Companies will slowly die off.
After their debacle here in AK with the Kulluk and its companion ships I lack trust in anything Shell says or does. They committed so many criminal acts and risked so much by taking shortcuts based solely on greed.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/magazine/the-wreck-of-the-kulluk.html?_r=0