Our approach to climate change

As our Energy Scenarios make clear, fossil fuels will continue to provide the majority of the world’s growing need for energy for decades to come. They remain the most convenient and affordable source of energy we have and the only one currently available on the enormous scale needed. That makes managing CO₂ emissions from coal, oil and natural gas critical to addressing man-made climate change.

We have identified six main ways in which we are determined to make a difference.

In our own operations, we aim to:

• Work to use energy more efficiently. This includes making the operational changes and investments needed so that our refineries and oil and gas production facilities run more efficiently, including further reducing the amount of gas they flare.
• Build our capability in Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). Despite its costs, CCS is one of the critical technologies needed to buy time in the race to prevent emissions from rising too far, too fast. We are involved in a number of research-scale projects and met our aim of having at least one project storing CO₂ underground during 2008. We are also doing early preparatory work for larger scale demonstration projects, like the Quest project in Canada. If it were to go ahead, Quest would capture and store underground around one million tonnes of CO₂ a year from our oil sands upgrader. We are also working on a project in the Netherlands to store up to 400,000 tonnes of CO₂ a year from our Pernis refinery in depleted gas fields.
• Continue to invest in fundamental research and development to deliver new, breakthrough technologies that will further increase energy efficiency and reduce emissions from our operations.

To help our customers reduce their emissions, we aim to:

• Develop lower CO₂ sources of energy, including increasing supplies of natural gas and developing transport fuels, including biofuels, that have lower CO₂ emissions on a “well-to-wheel” basis.
• Help transport and industrial customers use less energy and emit less CO₂ for example by providing advanced Shell Fuel Economy formula and Shell FuelSave fuels and lower friction lubricants, and encouraging them to change their driving habits.

To influence the policy debate, we aim to:

• Continue to work with governments, industry, and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to build support for effective policies for CO₂ that will speed up the pace of change in the energy system.