Breaking with tradition – working for a blueprints world

We pioneered the use of scenarios over 30 years ago to help us understand, prepare for and succeed in a changing world. Scenarios are not predictions and do not start from specific goals for the future. Instead they describe plausible alternatives of how the world’s energy system could develop over a number of decades. We have always used scenarios to test our business strategy – making sure it could succeed in both situations. We have never before expressed a preference for one over another. But this time it is different. The need to help manage climate risk for our investors and our descendants, and to live by our commitment to contribute to sustainable development, means we strongly prefer the approach described in “Blueprints” to the one laid out in a “Scramble” world. With its far reaching policy response and global costs for emitting GHGs, “Blueprints” results in significantly lower GHG emissions than “Scramble” and shows the direction that efforts to meet the energy challenge need to take. We also believe that, in the long term, “Blueprints” offers a better world for Shell to do business in. We are advocating the policies the “Blueprints” scenario describes and working on a number of the technology improvements needed.

Our effort is evolving, though as the rest of this report discusses, a number of the parts are already clear. One is a wide-ranging effort to help create the right conditions for change, including building support within industry for an effective policy framework for CO₂. That’s because what policy makers do in the next five years will be critical to encouraging the innovation and massive investments needed (see Blueprints advocacy). Another is our push – as one of the world’s largest suppliers of transport fuels – to develop more sustainable, low-CO₂ second-generation biofuels, and to help drivers use less by offering advanced fuels and lubricants (see Sustainable transport). A third part is building our capability in CO₂ capture and storage (CCS), developing the expertise and coalitions needed to move this critical technology from a demonstration phase to large-scale deployment within a decade. A fourth is helping to provide lower emission electricity by continuing to invest in producing cleaner-burning natural gas and working to reduce the cost of energy from renewable sources so they can compete. And a fifth is finding environmentally and socially responsible ways to produce the oil and gas the world needs from remote locations like the Arctic, and unconventional sources like oil sands.