The EU has plans for an EU Innovation Fund to demonstrate innovative low carbon technologies. This includes carbon capture and storage – or CCS. If introduced effectively, and at today’s prices, this EU scheme could be worth some €6 billion in the 2020s. This could mean a big boost for Europe’s ability to deliver CCS. According to the International Energy Agency, CCS is a vital technology if the world is to meet the Paris climate goals.

What can companies do?

So, governments are of crucial importance to reach the goals in the Paris Climate Agreement. But governments cannot do it alone. That brings me to companies like Shell.

How can we help in the transition to a lower-carbon future?

Shell is already active, and we are planning to do a whole lot more. Shell will aim to bring down the net carbon footprint of our energy products by around half by 2050. In other words, about 50% fewer greenhouse gases per unit of energy when used by our customers, and around 20% less by 2035.

This covers not just emissions from our own plants and sites but also those produced by our customers when they use the energy products we sell. No other company in our sector has pledged to do this.

We will achieve this in a number of ways.

By continuing to grow the role of natural gas as a partner to renewables. Because natural gas emits between 45% and 55% lower greenhouse gas emissions than coal when used to generate electricity… and less than one-tenth of the air pollutants.

Our New Energies business is also important to lower emissions of the energy products we sell. It focuses on new fuels and the power market. That includes producing solar and wind power, and trading and selling electricity to business and homes. We expect our investment in New Energies to be between $1 and $2 billion on average a year until the end of the decade. Take hydrogen, for example. As a transport fuel it produces no emissions, other than water vapor. In Germany, we are one of the partners in a joint venture aiming to set up a network of 400 hydrogen filling stations by 2023. Shell is also co-founder of the Hydrogen Council. This is a group of energy and car companies that wants to invest 10 billion euros in hydrogen over the next five years.

And, even outside New Energies, Shell is seeking to develop other new technologies. In Austria, for example, it is participating in a project with the Technical University of Vienna and others to implement a low-cost carbon-capture process at a biomass power plant. And looking further into the future, Shell is supporting scientific research into new modes of chemical production with academic institutes in China and the Netherlands. The starting point for this research is the view that CO₂ is not a waste product at the end of a chemical process, but a necessary input at the beginning. It could take years, perhaps decades, before these chemical-production techniques are perfected…but they offer tantalising opportunities.

The last way companies like Shell can help in the transition to a lower-carbon future, is by continuing to promote effective climate policies. Like our support here in the European Union for a well-functioning Emissions Trading System… innovation support for low carbon technologies…and sustainable and renewable transport solutions.

To conclude… As the Sky scenario shows, the world can meet the goals of the Paris climate agreement, but an awful lot still needs to be accomplished. It is encouraging that China and the EU have already shown leadership to meet these goals. The time to build on those efforts, with negotiations on the Paris rulebook just around the corner, is right now. We…all of us… Shell included… have to work together. And if governments can work together… to create the landscape the world needs to succeed… a clear, defined, well-signposted landscape which both consumers and businesses find easy to read and navigate…then we have a chance of getting to where we all want to be.

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