Sustainability at Shell means providing more and cleaner energy solutions in a responsible way.
Our core values of honesty, integrity and respect for people – first laid out in the Shell General Business Principles more than 40 years ago – underpin our approach to sustainability. A commitment to contribute to sustainable development was added in 1997.
These principles, together with our Code of Conduct, apply to the way we do business and to our conduct with the communities where we operate.
Since 1997, we have worked to embed this commitment in our strategy, our business processes and decision-making.
We welcome the United Nation's (UN) sustainable development goals, which seek to tackle the world's economic, social and environmental challenges by 2030. We aim to play our part in helping governments and society to achieve them.
We prioritise those SDGs that are most relevant to our core business and our contribution to society, as highlighted in our Sustainability Report.
We respect human rights as set out in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Labour Organization's core conventions. We also support a number of external voluntary codes that promote responsible business practices.
We support the UN Paris Agreement on climate change, which aims to limit the rise in global average temperatures this century to well below two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
Our comprehensive set of codes, policies and assurance processes define how we aim to operate in socially and environmentally responsible ways.
Shell works with environmental and developmental organisations all over the world. This helps us to reduce our environmental and societal impact, to improve the quality of land and water around our operations and to benefit local communities.
Shell is a big company that supplies around 3% of the energy the world uses. We want to play our part and contribute to the global effort to tackle climate change and meet the goal of the Paris Agreement. Working towards our Net Carbon Footprint ambition is how we plan to do this.
Around two billion people live without access to reliable electricity. Nearly a billion of them have no access to electricity at all. Shell’s energy access business is focused on helping to tackle energy poverty.
Our General Business Principles, Code of Conduct, and Code of Ethics help everyone at Shell to act in line with our values.
