From The Daily Caller
Shell Announces Major Pivot To Green Energy
11:29 AM 12/26/2018 | Energy
Jason Hopkins | Energy Investigator
Royal Dutch Shell revealed an ambitious plan to double its investments in green energy in what appears to be the next phase in the oil giant’s efforts to decarbonize.
Shell will boost its expenditures on low-carbon energy to $4 billion a year — a staggering increase from its commitment to spend $1-$2 billion annually on green energy within the next two years. The Netherlands-based company has a total budget of $25 billion, the rest of which will still be spent on hydrocarbons.
“I would like my current business to be financially credible enough for not only the company, but shareholders, to want to double it and look at more,” Maarten Wetselaar, the integrated gas and new energies director for Shell, stated to the Guardian in a Tuesday report. Wetselaar indicated that if Shell sees enough return on its investments, the company will likely spend more on green energy development from 2020 and beyond.
Shell, under pressure from climate change activists, has made a number of environmentally-friendly commitments in recent years.
The oil and gas giant announced plans earlier in December to establish strict carbon emissions targets, and will incentivize senior executives to follow through on these targets by linking it to their pay.
A Shell logo is seen at a gas station in Buenos Aires, Argentina, March 12, 2018. REUTERS/Marcos Brindicci
“We will be systematically driving down our carbon footprint over time,” Shell’s chief executive Ben van Beurden stated to the media. “We all know the benefits of energy but there are associated effects that we have to manage.” (RELATED: Oil Companies Opposing Washington State’s Tax, But Promoting A Federal One)
Shell is a pledged supporter of the Climate Leadership Council, a group that supports the implementation of a carbon tax to fight global warming and establish a new welfare system to offset higher energy costs. The Dutch oil company has increasingly involved itself in carbon pricing battles in the U.S., where the company has praised carbon tax bills introduced in Congress and has quietly held talks with environmental groups regarding a carbon tax.
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I am old enough to remember when the Esso Corporation changed its name to Exxon and became a self proclaimed energy company, not oil company. They did this because all the experts were saying that the world’s supply of oil would be depleted in the next couple of decades.
If people weren’t so damn stupid and ignorant, an awful lot of nonsense just wouldn’t happen.
Climate activists are quite close now to forcing more expensive energy down our throats. Final phase is to politically and socially treat carbon users as social outcasts. But climate will still be the subject of the State of Fear
Most green energy, especially grid-connected wind and solar power, never made economic sense because of intermittency and the lack of viable grid-scale storage (aka a “super-battery”).
Intermittent green energy requires essentially 100% conventional back-up generation, and it is far more economical to simply run the back-up generators 24/7 and never build the green nonsense in the first place. This reality has been obvious to energy experts since forever.
So how did many trillions of dollars get wasted on green energy nonsense, when these fatal flaws were well-known decades ago? There are two possibilities – politicians who supported green energy schemes were ignorant fools, or they were taking bribes to support this nonsense. Both possibilities are true.
Heavily-subsidized intermittent green energy schemes are the biggest scams, in dollar terms, in the history of the planet. Told you so, years ago.
Regards, Allan
Bye, Shell!