Going Net Zero With Shell

By Paul Homewood

h/t Ian Magness

Shell going zero- carbon, (but only if their customers offset their emissions!):

LONDON (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L) on Thursday laid out the oil and gas sector’s most extensive strategy yet to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050, stating its plans depended on its customers also mitigating emissions.

Oil and gas producers have announced deep spending cuts as oil prices LCOc1 have touched 18-year lows and drastic restrictions on movement to slow the spread of the new coronavirus have destroyed demand.

Chief Executive Ben van Beurden told investors the crisis would not distract it from the company’s shift to low-carbon energy as it braces for “a complete overhaul” over the next 30 years.

The raised ambitions put the Anglo-Dutch company – at least on paper – ahead of the most progressive of its rivals, including BP (BP.L) and Italy’s Eni (ENI.MI).

“We aim to be a net-zero emissions energy business by 2050 or sooner,” van Beurden said.

The Anglo-Dutch company previously had long-term intensity based targets, rather than goals based on absolute emissions reductions.

It said on Thursday it planned to fully offset carbon emissions from its own oil and gas production and the energy it uses by 2050, in what are known as Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions.

Those emissions do not include the much larger category of greenhouse gases emitted from fuels and products it sells to customers, such as jet fuel and gasoline, known as Scope 3.

The company however said it will “pivot towards serving businesses and sectors that by 2050 are also net-zero emissions,” which it said means its absolute emissions, including Scope 3, should be fully offset.

SCOPE 3

Energy companies’ carbon emission reduction targets vary greatly in scope and definition.

BP aims to bring net emissions from the barrels from its own operations throughout their life cycle to zero by 2050, including a 50% reduction of the carbon intensity of all the products it sells, which include products from oil made by other companies.

Shell also expanded its aim to cut the carbon emission footprint from the energy products its sells, an intensity-based measure, by around 65% by 2050, and by around 30% by 2035.

To get to overall net-zero emissions, including Scope 3, van Beurden told a conference call that “our customers can and will themselves take action on the emissions created by their use of our energy products.”

“As we get closer to 2050, we will work ever more intensely with customers who still have emissions that they have not fully mitigated…to find ways to help them do so. That might be through actions they take themselves or we may agree to mitigate those emissions on (their) behalf,” he added.

Mitigation would rely on offsetting emissions, for example by planting trees, or carbon capture technology, which is not currently used at commercial scale. …

“A credible Net Zero plan from Shell would start with a commitment to stop drilling for new oil and gas,” said Richard George, head of Greenpeace UK’s climate campaign.

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-shell-emissions/shell-sets-emission-ambition-of-net-zero-by-2050-with-customer-help-idUKKCN21Y0MN

Well, Greenpeace aren’t very impressed!

We have already seen with BP that plans to eliminate emissions from SCOPE 1 +2 are no more than green flannel – buying carbon offsets, renewable energy certificates and the like.

But it was always SCOPE 3 which posed the real challenge – eliminating emissions from burning the oil and gas produced. Something on the face of it which is a contradiction in terms.

And Shell’s answer? Customers who buy their stuff should either invest in carbon storage technology or arrange their own carbon offsetting, by for instance planting trees.

As we know, these offsetting schemes are virtually worthless, at best doing things which would have been done anyway. At worst matters end up being worse than before.

As for carbon storage, even assuming it can be made to work, the process does not remove all emissions. It is also extremely energy inefficient, meaning you need to buy more of Shell’s gas!

In any event, CCS is only really applicable for power production, which is only responsible for a fraction of emissions from fossil fuels. In the UK, for instance, the power sector only accounted for 12% of total emissions in 2018.

The last time I checked, there is no carbon storage technology for cars or central heating boilers.

But what about planting trees, which is often presented as a panacea?

According to the CDIAC’s Global Carbon Budget, land use change added 3.5 GtCO2 a year between 2006 and 2015, about a tenth of emissions from burning fossil fuels:

https://cdiac.ess-dive.lbl.gov/GCP/

However, the model on which this figure is based on assumes that where deforestation has occurred (the main component of the 3.5 Gt), all of the carbon in that forest is oxidised to the atmosphere in the same year, where either the forest is burnt or the wood used for burning.

This is obviously logical and reflects the real world. Even where the wood is used for paper/pulp, the assumption is that it is oxidised over a ten year period.

What does this mean? Quite simply, if we re-establish all of the forests previously lost between 2006-2015, it would take the full lifetime of the forest before that 35 GtCO2 was all removed from the atmosphere.

Assuming it takes 50 years for a forest to grow, that 35 Gt would only amount to 0.7 Gt a year. And that represents a full decade’s worth of reforestation. This is a tiny 2% of the world’s fossil fuel emissions.

And even achieving this much reforestation seems unlikely, given the massive amount of forest lost in recent years, and the geo-political implications. How do we persuade, for instance, Brazil or Kenya to abandon agricultural land and plant forests instead.

Shell’s strategy is nothing more then green virtue signalling, which it hopes will persuade the p0wers–that-be to allow them to carry on drilling.