Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions • Hacker News Board

Re: Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions

#11

Post by gwbas1c » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 1:03 PM UTC

It's worth understanding how disruption works in business. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator's_Dilemma)

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.

Re: Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions

#12

Post by tw04 » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 1:12 PM UTC

voisin wrote: post #9

threesevenths wrote: post #5

Shareholders will be shareholders and demand value. CEO performs to increase shareholder value regardless of any negative outcomes that won’t directly impact shareholders Entirely predictable result of the narrow view of the CEO shareholder relationship.

It doesn’t sound like it is about shareholder value here. They can’t find enough carbon credit programs that meet their internal quality requirements and they are trying to actually not greenwash, so rather than go with a quantity of low quality carbon credits, they scrapped the program altogether. I view this as more of an indictment of carbon credits than anything.

>It doesn’t sound like it is about shareholder value here. They can’t find enough carbon credit programs that meet their internal quality requirements and they are trying to actually not greenwash

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...

Re: Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions

#13

Post by jacquesm » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 1:15 PM UTC

For those interested in how a Dutch non-profit sued Shell for climate goal compliance and won (they've appealed):

https://en.milieudefensie.nl/climate-case-shell

Re: Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions

#14

Post by wredue » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 1:19 PM UTC

tw04 wrote: post #7

It makes a ton of sense if your focus is only short-term profit. It makes absolutely 0 sense if your goal is to try to decrease the legal liability of knowingly causing global warming and actively suppressing those internal studies to increase profits. 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 s…

Some 40% of the population is actively pro big oil and actively denies the carbon footprint causal links with climate change and warming.

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.

Re: Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions

#15

Post by kmeisthax » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 1:24 PM UTC

gwbas1c wrote: post #11

It's worth understanding how disruption works in business. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator's_Dilemma) 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 model…

Xerox's copierheads. Except the copiers are also Dutch oven-ing the planet, a good chunk of our copiers are made in regressive absolute monarchies operated in league with far-right religious conservatives, and the most powerful country in the world is politically captured by the need to provide cheap copiers to businesses.

Re: Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions

#16

Post by fluoridation » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 1:25 PM UTC

jnsaff2 wrote: post #10

Correct me if I'm wrong but even the original plan only covered carbon footprint of Shell's operations? 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.

Were you expecting Shell to increase the efficiency of every existing internal combustion engine?

Re: Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions

#17

Post by matthewdgreen » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 1:27 PM UTC

tw04 wrote: post #7

It makes a ton of sense if your focus is only short-term profit. It makes absolutely 0 sense if your goal is to try to decrease the legal liability of knowingly causing global warming and actively suppressing those internal studies to increase profits. 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 s…

If your view is that these companies are multi-decade sustainable businesses, then you want to invest in shoring up the firms' reputation and drilling new wells. If your view is that all fossil fuel assets are headed towards zero over the next 3-4 decades, then you want to extract every last penny from the existing assets and move them into the pockets of shareholders.

Re: Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions

#18

Post by throwaway103xx » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 1:29 PM UTC

wredue wrote: post #14

tw04 wrote: post #7

It makes a ton of sense if your focus is only short-term profit. It makes absolutely 0 sense if your goal is to try to decrease the legal liability of knowingly causing global warming and actively suppressing those internal studies to increase profits. 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 s…

Some 40% of the population is actively pro big oil and actively denies the carbon footprint causal links with climate change and warming. 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 w…

I doubt we wil all be dead. It'll be awful but we will accept as the new terrible reality.

Re: Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions

#19

Post by riffraff » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 1:30 PM UTC

The plan that was shelved was about carbon offsets, these have not proven to be particularly effective so maybe not too big a deal.

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...

Re: Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions

#20

Post by DoingIsLearning » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 1:34 PM UTC

matthewdgreen wrote: post #17

tw04 wrote: post #7

It makes a ton of sense if your focus is only short-term profit. It makes absolutely 0 sense if your goal is to try to decrease the legal liability of knowingly causing global warming and actively suppressing those internal studies to increase profits. 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 s…

If your view is that these companies are multi-decade sustainable businesses, then you want to invest in shoring up the firms' reputation and drilling new wells. If your view is that all fossil fuel assets are headed towards zero over the next 3-4 decades, then you want to extract every last penny from the existing assets and move them into the pockets of shareholders.

> If your view is that all fossil fuel assets are headed towards zero over the next 3-4 decades, then you want to extract every last penny from the existing assets and move them into the pockets of shareholders.

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.