As the world pushes to cap carbon emissions through policy and avoid the “two-degree” global warming benchmark set forth by the Paris Agreement in December 2015, so too is Royal Dutch Shell looking to do their part while maintaining a stronghold in the energy sector, reports Fortune.
Royal Dutch Shell is creating a new unit specially for renewables and alternative energy, but it continues to insist that its current business of burning hydrocarbons is under no threat from global policies to mitigate climate change.
The company told investors last week that it will combine its modest operations in green energy—biofuels, wind and solar technologies—into a business unit called “new energies” under its natural gas business. It will go public with the idea in June, according to The Guardian.
It’s unlikely to attach much fanfare to the event, conscious of the risks of making exaggerated claims about saving the planet. The operations will account for only $1.7 billion in invested capital and have an annual investment budget of only $200 million out of a capital expenditure budget of $33 billion this year.
But climate campaigners say it’s the thinking behind the move that’s more important; thinking that’s outlined in a new supplement to the company’s long-term energy outlook, entitled A Better Life with a Healthy Planet.
In most of its previous long-term research, Shell had refused to consider the possibility that there would be effective policy action to keep global temperatures from rising by more than 2 degrees Celsius. It has leaned on MIT research suggesting that average temperatures will rise between 2.4 and 2.7 degrees by the end of the century. But the new report suggests that keeping the rise in temperatures to the 2 degrees pledged in the Paris climate agreement in December may be possible—albeit only in a scenario that “will require the combination of all the most optimistic outcomes described in (the MIT’s research) and more.”
More about the “MIT research” referenced above in Joint Program Report 291.