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Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions

bloomberg.com

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Re: Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions

#6
Large organizations have a lot of inertia. They don't want to change what has been working, even if the signs it'll stop working are clear.

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.

Re: Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions

#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 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)

Re: Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions

#8
> important was what he omitted: any mention of the company’s prior commitment to spend up to $100 million a year to build a pipeline of carbon credits, part of the firm’s promise to zero out its emissions by 2050.

Not counting the CO2 output of its product obviously.

Re: Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions

#9

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.

Re: Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions

#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.

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