Meanwhile, Another Oil Executive Calls for Carbon Pricing
March 5, 2015
The Oil Companies’ War on Coal heats up.
LONDON— Royal Dutch Shell PLC Chairman Jorma Ollila is joining Chief Executive Ben van Beurden in backing efforts to limit carbon emissions ahead of international climate talks in Paris later this year.
Mr. Ollila was set to tell employees Wednesday that society must find a “middle way” that “doesn’t threaten economic growth,” according to a transcript of a speech the company disseminated.
“Shell has been open and firm in its advocacy of cleaner-burning natural gas, carbon capture and storage,” which takes carbon from combustion and stores it in places like underground reservoirs “and carbon pricing. And we’re hopeful that policy makers will recognize the value of all three at the gathering in Paris later this year,” the transcript says.
Shell, which is heavily invested in big, long-lived natural gas projects, has been increasingly vocal in calling for energy companies to participate with policy makers in addressing climate change.
Mr. van Beurden told an oil-industry conference last month that oil companies should support a carbon-pricing system as well as “a shift from coal to natural gas.”
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“Society needs to find a middle way,” he said, according to the Shell transcript. “To support the transition from one energy system to another in a manner which doesn’t threaten economic growth or deny emerging economic access to much needed energy.”
Ok. Progress.
But, the “middle way” between 2° and 6° – is 4°.
March 5, 2015 at 3:31 pm
Of course, the shift from coal to natural gas will have an immediate HEATING effect, as pollution-seeded low cloudiness and sulfate haze decreases and insolation reaches the surface. Not that it shouldn’t be done, but we’re in a bigger fix than these hedged self-serving CEO statements acknowledge.
March 5, 2015 at 6:36 pm
[…] Meanwhile, Another Oil Executive Calls for Carbon Pricing […]
March 5, 2015 at 6:49 pm
Solar stocks continue to decouple from oil stocks. Big surges happening in solar, whilst MLP’s and biofuels continue to struggle….
And each time McCibben convinces a place to divest, where do you think part of that divested money is going to end up? I would bet (and I am betting, with real money) that part of that will end up in solar stocks. If oil hits $20, and there is still some correlation, buy, buy, buy…
November 23, 2015 at 7:38 am
[…] remarks on a revenue neutral carbon tax from October 2009.(he’s for it, along with most of the other leading oil major execs) Good ideas eventually get […]
November 27, 2015 at 3:14 pm
[…] remarks on a revenue neutral carbon tax from October 2009.(he’s for it, along with most of the other leading oil major execs) Good ideas eventually get […]