Like its rival BP, Shell claims it is committed to reaching net zero by 2050 despite planning to increase its output this decade, but experts say this doesn’t add up.
Shell is the latest oil and gas company to row back on plans to cut its production of fossil fuels, abandoning a target to cut oil production each year for the rest of the decade.
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| Shell is planning to maintain its current level of oil production until 2030 Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images |
In an investor update on 14 June, Shell said it would maintain its current levels of oil production through to 2030, rather than cut output by 1 to 2 per cent a year over the period, as promised in 2021. It also told investors it would grow its natural gas business, as part of plans to boost financial returns for investors.
The announcement comes five months after rival BP scaled back plans to cut the carbon emissions associated with the use of its products. In 2019, BP said it would cut its so-called “scope 3” emissions by 35 to 40 per cent by 2030, but in an update in February, it announced it was now targeting a 20 to 30 per cent cut, with plans to invest in new fossil fuel production to meet continued demand for its products.
“We need to invest in today’s energy system – which is predominantly an oil and gas system,” BP CEO Bernard Looney said in a speech in London in Febraury.
Both firms say they remain committed to achieving net-zero emissions by 2050, the target adopted by many businesses and national governments aiming to give the world a chance of limiting the global average temperature rise to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, the goal agreed in the Paris Agreement.
But promising to increase fossil fuel production in the short term while targeting net-zero emissions by 2050 is “scientifically incoherent”, says James Dyke at the University of Exeter, UK, and threatens global climate targets.
It boils down to the “climate maths” that underpins the Paris Agreement, says Steve Smith at the University of Oxford. There is a finite amount of additional carbon we can pump into the atmosphere before the 1.5°C goal slips out of reach, he says. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), that remaining “carbon budget” was 500 gigatonnes in 2018. “Peak temperature is primarily the result of total cumulative carbon dioxide emissions over time,” says Smith.
To stay under this limit, the world must cut emissions by 45 per cent by 2030 and reach net-zero emissions by 2050, scientists have calculated. Delaying emissions cuts will blow through this remaining carbon budget well before 2050, extinguishing any chance of meeting the 1.5°C temperature goal without needing a dramatic scale-up of largely untested “carbon drawdown” technologies.
Already the world is behind schedule on the emissions cuts needed for 1.5°C to be achieved. If current rates continue, the 1.5°C carbon budget will be blown by 2032, the UN said in April. Adding new oil and gas production to the mix simply adds fuel to this fire, says Mark Maslin at University College London. “Any increase in production is completely counter to the science,” he says. “There is no justification for a country, or a company, increasing the production of fossil fuels.”
To demonstrate credibility on climate change, both Maslin and Smith said oil and gas firms should immediately halt all investment in new fossil fuel projects, and instead direct their huge profits into clean energy technologies. Both the IPCC and the International Energy Agency warn new oil, gas and coal development is incompatible with limiting warming to 1.5°C.
Shell told New Scientist it remains committed to becoming a net-zero business by 2050, although it says this needs to be in lockstep with a move to net zero across wider society. It denies it has abandoned its goal to reduce oil output this decade, arguing that it had in fact already met the goal with the sale of an oil project in Texas in 2021, which has reduced Shell’s annual output of oil by 21 per cent.
“Our target of a reduction in liquids production by 2030 has not changed. We’ve just met it eight years early,” a spokesperson said. They added that Shell will invest up to $15 billion by 2025 in low-carbon energy solutions, such as biofuels, hydrogen, electric vehicle charging and carbon capture, to support its net-zero goal.
BP told New Scientist it is acting to support an “orderly” transition to net-zero emissions, and is investing £8 billion by 2030 in green technologies, including renewables and electric vehicle charging.