Public advocacy and political activity

We are calling for change, sharing our expertise and co-operating with governments, companies and other partners. Our Business Principles encourage us to contribute to debates on policy issues that affect our business, our employees or the local communities where we operate.

Climate change is one of the biggest challenges we face. We will continue to work with governments to help them set the policy frameworks to create market-based incentives – such as an effective cap-and-trade market for CO₂ – that will contribute towards improving energy efficiency and developing CCS technologies.

We advise governments to use different policy instruments for different sectors. For heavy industry and the power sector we advocate an emissions trading systems combined, incentives for the rapid demonstration and deployment of CO₂ capture and storage, and stable targets for renewable energy. Transport needs stringent vehicle efficiency targets and incentives for fuels with lower total CO₂ emissions, as well as measures to manage congestion and road use. Buildings and appliances need tough energy efficiency standards.

Read more about our approach to climate change and the critical role governments play.

We share our knowledge, experience and understanding of the energy system with policymakers. We have, for example, presented the Shell Energy Scenarios to 2050 to governments and international institutions to help them understand the challenges, trade-offs and urgency involved in building a new energy future.

We are also working with companies, governments and NGOs to create support for effective policy. We are, for example, the only major oil company to remain a member of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership - opens in new window. This is a coalition of businesses, environmental groups and policymakers.

We sit on the Steering Board of the Gleneagles Dialogue on Climate Change  and participate in the UK’s Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership  - opens in new window and the Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change. Read more about our work with others.

Our Business Principles prohibit payments by Shell companies to political parties. This is to avoid Shell companies buying or being perceived to be buying favours. According to our internal annual questionnaire, we made no payments to political parties or campaigns in 2009.

In the United States, Shell Oil Company administers a political action committee (Shell Oil Company Employees’ Political Awareness Committee). It is a voluntary, employee-run and employee funded organisation, that contributes money to political parties or individual candidates for political office, or organisations that support them. While Shell Oil Company provides administrative support to the Committee, it does not fund the Committee’s donations nor does it make any political contributions itself.