13 ms·

Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions

291 points by jatorre 3y ago

hkt 3y ago
Remember folks, you can strike back: ditch your car, ditch your gas cooker, get solar panels, get batteries, use less energy, get a heat pump. Change your life to be healthier and deprive these animals of profit.
- throwaway894345 3y ago
  You don't even have to ditch your car (an absurd proposition for most people), you could just get an EV.
  - MaxHoppersGhost 3y ago
    Do you realize how they get batteries for an EV? And where the electricity comes from? And what every part of the EV are made out of?
    - bitcharmer 3y ago
      Please enlighten us as to where the electricity comes from
      - MaxHoppersGhost 3y ago
        A large part comes from coal and natural gas
        throwaway894345 3y ago
        A diminishing part. In my state only 1/3 of electricity generated is from fossil fuels and that number is falling quickly.
        anti-communist 3y ago
        [dead]
    - throwaway894345 3y ago
      If you have a cogent point, I invite you to make it explicitly.
- kjkjadksj 3y ago
  Too bad theres 8 billion other potential consumers
rayiner 3y ago
> important was what he omitted: any mention of the company’s prior commitment to spend up to $100 million a year to build a pipeline of carbon credits, part of the firm’s promise to zero out its emissions by 2050. Not counting the CO2 output of its product obviously.
archo 3y ago
https://archive.is/G0ULZ https://archive.is/G0ULZ
- Ladyady 3y ago
  Appropriate shortlink there...
cagenut 3y ago
[flagged]
- Aachen 3y ago
  Insert "buying from" before the last word This is entirely within people's own hands. Not all of those people are you and me, it also includes our boss who decides to buy combustion vehicles for employees still (what year is it?), but in the end it's individual humans that decide for themselves whether to continue paying for oil products when there are alternatives available such as with personal vehicles. Maybe a majority overrules you if you're in some committee or board, but every vote was again an individual's choice. I don't see Shell or any oil company as being fully and solely responsible here
  - rlili 3y ago
    Naive. As long as they can deliver competitive prices, most people with poor buying power will have no choice but to buy from them, or buy some product derived from their products.
  - svachalek 3y ago
    If you leave it to that, most people don't care. They'll take whatever's cheapest, and what damage it does to the environment or other people is not a consideration. All of that stuff is happening far away, over long periods of time, but the nickel saved is right here and right now. If you want to leave it up to all 8 billion people in the world to take individual responsibility to end climate change, extinction, slavery, etc. then the approximate change accomplished is something approaching zero.
    - Aachen 3y ago
      How did we ever get anything done then, if not by each of us deciding a certain way is best? We sure didn't wait for an overlord to force democracy upon us and abolish slavery as far as I know. The version of history I heard includes needing uprisings (made up of people that each believe in the cause) to get here.
  - 3y ago
threesevenths 3y ago
Shareholders will be shareholders and demand value. CEO performs to increase shareholder value regardless of any negative outcomes that won’t directly impact shareholders Entirely predictable result of the narrow view of the CEO shareholder relationship.
- voisin 3y ago
  It doesn’t sound like it is about shareholder value here. They can’t find enough carbon credit programs that meet their internal quality requirements and they are trying to actually not greenwash, so rather than go with a quantity of low quality carbon credits, they scrapped the program altogether. I view this as more of an indictment of carbon credits than anything.
  - tw04 3y ago
    >It doesn’t sound like it is about shareholder value here. They can’t find enough carbon credit programs that meet their internal quality requirements and they are trying to actually not greenwash That's just not accurate. This is the CEO who basically cut all of their plans around renewables. https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/shells-renewables-boss-leave-after-ceo-strategy-shift-2023-06-30/ https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/shells-renewables-boss-leav...
    - Spivak 3y ago
      I don't think it's particularly surprising that a company would try, fail, and move on from a market segment where they don't have first mover advantage and are playing catch up in an already fast moving industry. The only thing they would really have to contribute is a financial play and I can't say, "all these renewable energy companies are actually owned by oil companies" is an incentive structure I like.
- Cockbrand 3y ago
  See also "Yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time, we created a lot of value for shareholders." [0] [0] https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995 https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995
throwaway103xx 3y ago
Large organizations have a lot of inertia. They don't want to change what has been working, even if the signs it'll stop working are clear. They have the brains. They should branch out and create a moonshot division that starts to make money and shows stakeholders they can bet on them.
tw04 3y ago
It makes a ton of sense if your focus is only short-term profit. It makes absolutely 0 sense if your goal is to try to decrease the legal liability of knowingly causing global warming and actively suppressing those internal studies to increase profits. Feels like the oil companies are going to face a big tobacco moment in the next 20 years and the previous CEO was preparing their defense of "don't punish us for the sins of our fathers". Whereas Sawan is doubling down on "maximize this quarter, who cares about the future, not my problem". That's all ignoring the: do you actually care at all if your great grandchildren have a habitable planet? (or maybe grandchildren at the rate we're going)
- wredue 3y ago
  Some 40% of the population is actively pro big oil and actively denies the carbon footprint causal links with climate change and warming. You think 20 years is enough for this reckoning? Honestly, I think they’re all going to get away with it with zero repercussion. If humanity is still around in a couple hundred years, there might be retroactive virtue signalling. But that doesn’t matter cause everyone responsible will be long since dead.
  - throwaway103xx 3y ago
    I doubt we wil all be dead. It'll be awful but we will accept as the new terrible reality.
    - WJW 3y ago
      I think GP meant that in a hundred years WE will all be dead, not that our descendants won't be there.
  - tw04 3y ago
    I think 60% of the population is enough to pass laws such that it doesn't actually matter if the other 40% is willfully ignorant. I also think as the climate becomes more and more inhospitable, that 40% number will continue to decrease.
jnsaff2 3y ago
Correct me if I'm wrong but even the original plan only covered carbon footprint of Shell's operations? Which I presume are pretty much a minor fraction of the carbon footprint of their products and kinda makes the whole exercise a PR campaign. Even when it would cover pipeline leaks and the like it's still nowhere near their total impact.
- konschubert 3y ago
  It’s ridiculous.
- fluoridation 3y ago
  Were you expecting Shell to increase the efficiency of every existing internal combustion engine?
  - Aachen 3y ago
    It's what I wondered at the headline as well. Sounded ambitious, but with how much profit they make it's not immediately obvious whether it's infeasible, especially if you can convince a government to then be exempt from a part of the fuel taxes because you don't have to pay for the pollution aspect
    - fluoridation 3y ago
      It sounds not just infeasible, but comically infeasible. For the sake of argument, let's assume that it's easy to improve ICEs in general by 5%. You still have to apply that upgrade to all the existing engine designs, ideally as drop-in replacements, and then swap all those engines in the wild.
      - kjkjadksj 3y ago
        I assume the biggest polluters are not cars but big industrial operations or shipping. That seems like a smaller perhaps even realistic number of sites to target for some amount of efficiency gains. Especially if margins are too low in these industries for them to invest in their own efficiency.
gwbas1c 3y ago
It's worth understanding how disruption works in business. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator's_Dilemma) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator's_Dilemma) Generally, established companies have a lot of trouble, and often fail, adopting when the rules of business change. In this case, Shell is having a lot of trouble adopting to carbon-free (or neurtral) energy. IMO: I think the best approach is to seek out carbon-free (or neutral) energy business models and disrupt Shell out of business. From Shell's POV, the best thing they can do is invest in the disrupters and have them organically displace their existing fossil-fuel based businesses.
- kmeisthax 3y ago
  Xerox's copierheads. Except the copiers are also Dutch oven-ing the planet, a good chunk of our copiers are made in regressive absolute monarchies operated in league with far-right religious conservatives, and the most powerful country in the world is politically captured by the need to provide cheap copiers to businesses.
- TheAtomic 3y ago
  Agreed, Shell is f'd. Increasingly I wonder if Apple is in the same boat. An AI-based phone from SpaceX with Starlink connectivity, or from Nvidia, would disrupt their entire business model. And they don't really seem to get AI.
  - Spivak 3y ago
    Huh? Apple already partnered with Globalstar for satellite connectivity which I think will come to fruition for more general connectivity long long before any of Elmocorp figures how to make phones at the quality of iPhones or even $Galaxy_Flagship. And no one has figured how to make AI work for the kinds of tasks people ask phones to do. It might be possible but no one's yet made it work so it's hard to argue that anyone is "behind" on this front when no one has brought even a commercial AI-based voice assistant to market which is has the lowest barrier to entry and the highest user tolerance for failure. So I think you're right that a lot of old-guard tech is becoming too big to be agile but I'm less sure about the thing that will actually disrupt them.
jacquesm 3y ago
For those interested in how a Dutch non-profit sued Shell for climate goal compliance and won (they've appealed): https://en.milieudefensie.nl/climate-case-shell https://en.milieudefensie.nl/climate-case-shell
riffraff 3y ago
The plan that was shelved was about carbon offsets, these have not proven to be particularly effective so maybe not too big a deal. The greater loss is that the new CEO had already scaled down Shell's investment in renewables, setting a target of 4.5% of the total investments in renewables by 2025[0]. Some other Oil&Gas companies seem to be a bit more inclined to actually invest in renewables, or at least pay lip service to it, e.g. ENI aims at 30% by 2025[1]. Remains to be seen how much will actually be invested. [0] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/shell-boost-dividend-cut-spending-new-ceo-plan-2023-06-14/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/shell-boost-dividend... [1] https://www.eni.com/en-IT/media/press-release/2022/03/pr-capital-markets-day-2022.html https://www.eni.com/en-IT/media/press-release/2022/03/pr-cap...
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
  If there are x offsets available, and demand is x + 100, then when Shell buys offsets, they're not really fixing the problem at all, they're just shifting blame right? They're saying "since we spent this money on the offsets, our carbon emissions were good (or at least 'less bad'), but the other company that couldn't afford or wouldn't bother with the offsets is bad even though there were only enough offsets for one of us". Honestly, this upsets people?
  - unlikelymordant 3y ago
    The increase in demand drives up the price of offsets, which increases supply and investment in better carbon capture techniques and scaling. Im lumping in things like direct air capture, bioenergy carbon capture and storage, and enhanced weathering as offset generating technologies that are currently too expensive to be widespread, but with higher carbon prices would become practical.
    - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
      > The increase in demand drives up the price of offsets, Except there are limits which the demand, for the most part, can't overcome. > Im lumping in things like direct air capture, bioenergy carbon capture and storage, All of these things are energy intensive, aren't they? So as energy becomes more expensive, so do they. Demand never gets quite so high that it's worth it to pay for this, because the price is always rising. There's another alternative in such situations... "just don't buy carbon offsets". The PR hit's cheaper after all.
NotYourLawyer 3y ago
The “radical plan” was bullshit carbon offsets, and it only applies to Shell’s own emissions, not the emissions from burning the oil/gas Shell produces. This plan doesn’t even deserve being shelved. It deserves being shitcanned.
Biologist123 3y ago
TL;DR: this article is mainly about Shell rowing back on its offset development targets, not for the oil it produces, but for its operational emissions. Having worked in the sector, albeit not with Shell, my guess is that the board were advised that offsets increasingly carry massive legal jeopardy, including director’s liability. This is an interesting summary of the problem: https://www.clientearth.org/media/nq4jnyww/ce-offsets-legal-briefing.pdf https://www.clientearth.org/media/nq4jnyww/ce-offsets-legal-...
iamflimflam1 3y ago
I try to remain positive, but climate change is the one area where I have pretty much lost hope. People (and I include myself) are simply unwilling to accept that their lives have to change. Barring some of unforeseen technical miracle the next 20-30 years are going to get increasingly grim.
- steve_adams_86 3y ago
  The main thing I struggle to downsize or make sustainable is my work. As a programmer, I depend on an immense infrastructure of earth-harming systems to get my equipment (both in my possession or leased in the cloud). My employers use a lot of energy. In the scheme of things we aren’t the worst polluters, but it’s undeniably bad. I’ve dramatically reduced my personal energy usage, I don’t eat animal products, my family has found ways to generate remarkably little garbage, and other “nice” things, but it’s pretty much meaningless. It’s all theatre compared to the damage we do with our car, jobs, community and provincial infrastructure we depend on, etc. I feel like I’m willing to change my life, and I have already I guess. I’m just not willing to give up my livelihood when it means so little in the bigger picture. I’m no different from someone working on an oil rig or forestry or whatever. What I do looks nicer, but my rationale is no different.
  - Aachen 3y ago
    Anyone who drives a heavy vehicle alone is using immense amounts of power (hundreds of horses' at once, by approximation), it takes some infrastructure but with wind, sun, and water we can power that. What makes you say that your livelihood depends on an amount of energy so large that it's really bad? Why couldn't that be generated sustainably? Why not talk to your employer about a step in that direction, given that solar panels are typically profitable within a handful of years for an average household, let alone if you can 100% offset the kWh generated because all the energy can be used in-house?
    - steve_adams_86 3y ago
      > Why couldn't that be generated sustainably? It very likely could, and I'd happily pay for it. Like, my Mac Studio with an M2 Max in it probably took, all said, and absurd about of resources to create... But it only cost me $3k or something. Well, if it works as long as it should, it'll easily help me earn over half a million dollars. I'd rather pay far more for the computer and cover the expenses of the externalities of its production, but I don't have the choice. Otherwise, a lot of the energy used in the production could be sustainably produced, but it's not incentivized enough in the countries (or any countries, I suppose) in order for that to occur. Perhaps I could make improvements by switching to different computers. I know the framework offers opportunities to reuse the same chassis such you can use mostly-the-same hardware for a very long time, and that could be the right path forward. I love the philosophy. As for the driving issue, that's very hard to overcome. I personally ride an electric bike just about all the time, but at the moment I'm on vacation in Whistler, BC, having driven through 2 full tanks of gas so far on my way from Victoria, to Squamish, now Whistler, and all the little stops in between. My Toyota Highlander produces more pollution than any other single thing in my life. My wife drives it for work and we both regret the purchase quite a bit. Yet, something electric would take a very long time to "break even" on the footprint before improving on our situation, even with how clean our electricity is here in BC. I need to do more research to understand how I could purchase my way out of this problem.
cornfutes 3y ago
How much of the corporate virtue signaling was in response to a jobseeker-oriented market? Now, with all the layoffs, employers have their pick of white collar workers.
photochemsyn 3y ago
Carbon offsets credit programs and fossil fuel emissions capture schemes fall into one of two categories: technical failures or economic frauds. The technical issue for fossil fuel carbon capture schemes involves conservation of energy. Simply stated, a diesel truck that captures all its emissions as it drives down the road is an obviously implausible scheme, as anyone with even a vague appreciation of how engines work should realize. Clogging the exhaust is the first problem, separating the CO2 (and incomplete combustion products and particulate & inorganic contaminants) from the exhaust stream is the next, and storing the concentrated CO2 is the third. The only reason these carbon capture systems have been built in practice is to generate a stream of CO2 for enhanced oilfield recovery, a process in which CO2 is injected into aged oil wells because it facilitates recovery of oil from these wells. The CO2/oil mix that comes out is refined as usual and most of the injected CO2 just escapes back to the atmosphere. The economic fraud all revolves around the technical fact that 'carbon credit' schemes don't offset anything, and in a warming world so-called 'carbon stores' like British Columbian forests have been going up in smoke due to increased wildfires. Similarly cap-and-trade doesn't work; it was originally based on a scheme to clean up sulfur in diesel fuel but the sulfur just ended up in ship bunker fuel (although cities are somewhat cleaner due to the introduction of ultra-low-sulfur diesel fuel). What's particularly egregious about these schemes is the degree of dishonesty demonstrated by their political and industrial promoters - they know they don't work. For example, production of natural gas is booming to record levels at present while the very politicians and executives responsible for the boom are running around proclaiming how concerned they are about climate and running ads stating their dedication to net-zero. Similarly, even if some coal plants are retired in the US, exports of coal to Asia are rising and production is barely falling. The fact is there's not a single major fossil fuel producing country or corporation on the planet that has any intention of shutting down production in the forseeable future. This is why countries like China, that have to import most of their fossil fuel, are so far ahead in renewable energy production and technology.
BLanen 3y ago
Good. Any implementation of carbon offsetting is a sham anyway and Shell's plan didn't even offset its product's emmision but only its own business process(because offsetting the emissions of the products would be many times more costly than the product itself)
- Aachen 3y ago
  Even if it's mostly a sham, that's better than nothing
  - konschubert 3y ago
    No, it’s worse. It takes money and focus away from things that work.
    - Aachen 3y ago
      What "things that work" does Shell otherwise spend the money on if not half-assed offsets? Besides executives and peak oil I mean, since those aren't going to work against climate change either
      - konschubert 3y ago
        Shell is building wind parks and investing in renewables.
        Aachen 3y ago
        If that's where the money now goes instead, then of course I fully agree with you. They wouldn't need offsetting if they could just spend the money on that instead (which is a lot cheaper per ton CO2 because it's a sham indeed)
thelastgallon 3y ago
“We’re going to get as much out of [oil and gas] for as long as we can,” he said: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/shell-climate-change.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/shell-climate-change...
sobkas 3y ago
Then there should be consequences for destroying environment and making earth inhabitable for humans. Oil industry knew that burning fossil fuels will lead to global warming. Plastic industry knew that recycling is a total sham, and most of it will at best end up on a landfill at worts everywhere including our food. They knew but then they lied to us to make more profits. Maybe we should take that ill gotten profits from them and if it will bankrupt them so be it. Because we're slowly getting out of time to do anything.
- civilized 3y ago
  I think developed nations collectively bought into fossil fuel-driven civilization, so it seems like scapegoating to lay all the blame at the feet of the producers. But like you say, it is appropriate to blame the producers for hiding what they knew about the greenhouse effect and well-funded lobbying and propaganda campaigns to deny and minimize it.
  - mdgrech23 3y ago
    I think is the uncomfortable truth is we're all to blame for a certain extent. People def hide evidence and acted to their own benefit but to a certain extent so many of us were known accomplices.
  - UncleMeat 3y ago
    It is true that the people demanded the lifestyle provided by fossil fuel emissions. But corporations didn't just say "oh if you insist." When new policies and regulations are attempted that will not affect the lifestyle of the people but will eat into corporate profits, they fight tooth and nail. An honest corporation that was just acting to serve the needs of the people wouldn't do something like fight to reduce the exxon valdez spill fine by 100x or raise a fit when regulatory agencies mandate generation shifting.
    - coding123 3y ago
      I think we've KNOWN what this shit does to the air and water for at least, what 40 years? At what point do we blame ourselves to increasing fossil fuel usage, even in the what, past 5 years?
fwungy 3y ago
The rising BRICS dominate hydrocarbons and they aren't giving them up, selling or using. We should be focused on mitigation strategies and superior technology that wins conversion based on market forces and not government mandates and long term subsidies. The Green Suicide of the West isn't going to help climate change, and will probably make it worse.
- elzbardico 3y ago
  Give a couple of years for the professional managerial class to start to understand this. Meanwhile, consider the advantages of learning to speak Chinese.
- akamaka 3y ago
  > The rising BRICS dominate hydrocarbons and they aren't giving them up, selling or using. Surely you’re looking at the wrong statistics. Brazil is a leader in renewable energy, with fossil fuel use already on the decline for the last decade. China is the world’s largest producer of solar and wind power products, and their renewable energy ramp up has only been slowed down by the rest of the world buying up half their output. The risk to western economies is that they are too slow to transition away from fossil fuels and suffer from their dependence on ever more expensive oil and gas.
  - fwungy 3y ago
    Brazil is making ethanol from its vast sugar plantations. They are a special case, and ethanol isn't great on a full lifecycle basis. It doesn't make sense without agricultural surpluses or subsidies, as there are in the USA. China is the world's mass manufacturer. They will happily make whatever they can sell. If the West is demanding solar panels and windmills due to top down energy policy directives China will happily make and sell them. There is plenty of fossil fuel available and a huge installed base of ICE's around to use them, especially in the developing world and BRICS. If the West stops buying fossil fuels it only makes them cheaper for those who will happily consume them. The West needs to use its technological edge to develop market winning sustainable technologies and cheap, safe, electricity production. Crippling itself with unrealistic sustainable energy policies is going to be counter productive to climate change solutions.
frob 3y ago
In other news, the local union of serial killers scrapped their plan to fund an independent homicide unit.
egberts1 3y ago
As one of the thousands who planted one of the million trees within Sacramento, California during the 1970s, I did my part toward reducing CO2 and added cooling of urban areas. You should too. It's not that hard. I am doing it again, but in another city.
- throwaway894345 3y ago
  The average lifetime co2 emissions per person seems to be in the tens or hundreds of tons (probably on the higher end of the spectrum for Americans, especially those decades in the latter half of the 20th century). Most trees weigh a single digit number of tons when fully grown, and many trees don't survive to full growth and in any case they may release much of that carbon through decay or combustion. It seems pretty unlikely to me that planting a tree actually offset your carbon emissions.
  - egberts1 3y ago
    ah, yes, a throwaway account. At least, provide for some citation to be worthy. https://www.globe.gov/explore-science/scientists-blog/archived-posts/sciblog/2008/08/11/release-of-carbon-dioxide-by-individual-humans/comment-page-1/index.html https://www.globe.gov/explore-science/scientists-blog/archiv...
    - throwaway894345 3y ago
      1. My account is older than yours and has far more reputation. It's no more a throwaway than yours--it just contains the sequence of characters "throwaway". 2. Your link is about co2 exhaled which is a tiny fraction of a person's overall co2 emissions. 3. According to https://scied.ucar.edu/learning-zone/climate-solutions/carbon-footprint https://scied.ucar.edu/learning-zone/climate-solutions/carbo..., the average American's carbon footprint is about 16 tons of co2 per year multiplied by the average American's lifespan of 77 years equals 1,200 tons of co2. According to every source I could find, the overwhelming majority of trees in the United States weigh a single digit number of tons fully grown, and trees aren't pure-carbon either. Further, many trees don't reach maturity and of those that do many release their carbon via decay and combustion.
FrustratedMonky 3y ago
Meeting with C-suit. COO: "This is turning out to be hard" CEO: "F*it, let the planet burn". CFO: "I'm down with that, I'm retiring rich and have a good 10-20 years of cocaine and hookers before my house on the coast gets washed away"
jl2718 3y ago
Study the carbon cycle a bit and then come back and tell me I’m wrong about this: Offsets do not work. The best application of that funding would be to stop destruction of the ocean habitat. Short explanation: Almost all surface and atmospheric carbon ends up in the ocean by rivers or rainfall. Geological-timescale sequestration is performed by zooplankton et al in the form of CaCO3, but something has to eat them or they will block the light for their own food supply, and the rest of the ecosystem follows from there. And yes, surface habitats also matter, but their destruction is more localized.
alentred 3y ago
This reminds me of this part of the "Death to 2020": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yUW9iiU6R8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yUW9iiU6R8
pmarreck 3y ago
To clarify, this article is mainly a criticism of the lack of effectiveness of offsets. This is why Shell shelved it. They were spending a ton of money on this, and getting almost no actual carbon footprint reduction. That is a waste by almost any measure. Hopefully, they are investigating better ways to shrink their catastrophic carbon footprint contribution. Almost NONE of the comments in this forum so far reflect this observation, which I find concerning. If you are angry about the state of affairs here (which I would completely understand), at least read the article (and take a deep breath) before commenting
_ea1k 3y ago
In my area, their EV charging network has built several sites in the last few years. They are all terrible due to severe limits on peak amps (200A, IIRC). TBH, it is pretty surprising, considering that they should clearly be seeing the opportunity.
xenadu02 3y ago
The whole world suffers from an extremely deep lack of vision. Why does a utility like PG&E fight so hard to hurt solar installation? If I were CEO I'd buy or start a foundry to make solar panels. Then I'd start an installation and service org. People need energy, why should I care where they get it so long as they get it from me? The grid isn't going away so stop trying so desperately to protect that revenue stream. Why can't oil companies do the same sort of thing? If Shell were smart they'd be making and selling wind turbines, solar panels, inverters, batteries, etc. Use your stupid lobbing arm to get subsidies passed that make the electric utilities pay part of the cost of these products. Instead they're just giving those markets away because they don't know how to do anything beyond oil and jealously try to protect every scrap of oil revenue. Even ATT focused so much on long-distance revenue and milking people for tiny data pipes they let cable companies and new ISPs waltz in and takeover huge chunks of what had literally been their monopoly business. Bell labs invented VoIP and could have owned that space... but they didn't dare threaten long-distance revenues. Then a few years later competitors evicerated those revenue streams anyway. It all comes down to a lack of vision and a focus on protecting existing revenue streams. I guess my brain just doesn't work that way. I see change as inevitable so I'd rather try to own a piece of the new market than worry about protecting the old one.
- avery17 3y ago
  Hello, i am big oil exec. I make money when people buy oil, not solar panels. Id like to give you big money personally if you dont buy solar and only buy oil from me. Then you get money and i get money. We both get big money and you dont have to do any new hard work. You can just coast now. Big money. Sign here.
cannabis_sam 3y ago
The same way that you wouldn’t accept your elderly relatives trying to burn down the house you both happen to live in, every fossil fuel based company should be nationalized and shutdown as quickly as possible, while reducing the impact on society’s poorest who depend on that type of energy. No, wait, private ownership and corporate freedom have actually been proven to be the pinnacle of human economic organizing, so please hand back the lighter and petrol to your demented grandparents and their delusions ideas. Unfortunately, the people running and investing in these companies will be long dead when their decisions come back to bite us all in the ass.
time4tea 3y ago
Carbon offsets are total bullshit, so really this changes nothing. Perhaps now they will report their true carbon emissions. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/24/carbon-credit-speculators-could-lose-billions-as-offsets-deemed-worthless-aoe https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/24/carbon-c...
aedalat 3y ago
As both a Python developer and Energy (oil and gas) engineer, I am a regular reader of Hacker News and enjoy the quality of discussions in the comments on the HN Top articles. This thread however disappoints me. The news of any producers potentially reducing their CO2 targets in any form is upsetting. However, painting them as bad guys vs good guys or using the tobacco industry analogy is too simplistic in my opinion. Doomberg is a great newsletter to start with to have a more educated discussion around these topics. The articles below, give great background to mature this discussion and moving it passed Oil company boss wants to be rich, they shut down all the other alternative rubbish. 1. https://doomberg.substack.com/p/where-stuff-comes-from https://doomberg.substack.com/p/where-stuff-comes-from (if you time to read only one of these, make it this one) 2. https://doomberg.substack.com/p/got-milk https://doomberg.substack.com/p/got-milk 3. https://doomberg.substack.com/p/tour-de-farce https://doomberg.substack.com/p/tour-de-farce Article below is an example of challenges facing rolling out renewables. They are not all Oil and Gas related as generally perceived: https://archive.md/udhVH https://archive.md/udhVH There are also couple of really good books on the topic, which I am happy to share if the interest is there.
anti-communist 3y ago
[dead]

291 points by jatorre 3y ago

hkt 3y ago

Remember folks, you can strike back: ditch your car, ditch your gas cooker, get solar panels, get batteries, use less energy, get a heat pump. Change your life to be healthier and deprive these animals of profit.

throwaway894345 3y ago
You don't even have to ditch your car (an absurd proposition for most people), you could just get an EV.
- MaxHoppersGhost 3y ago
  Do you realize how they get batteries for an EV? And where the electricity comes from? And what every part of the EV are made out of?
  - bitcharmer 3y ago
    Please enlighten us as to where the electricity comes from
    - MaxHoppersGhost 3y ago
      A large part comes from coal and natural gas
      - throwaway894345 3y ago
        A diminishing part. In my state only 1/3 of electricity generated is from fossil fuels and that number is falling quickly.
        anti-communist 3y ago
        [dead]
  - throwaway894345 3y ago
    If you have a cogent point, I invite you to make it explicitly.
kjkjadksj 3y ago
Too bad theres 8 billion other potential consumers

rayiner 3y ago

> important was what he omitted: any mention of the company’s prior commitment to spend up to $100 million a year to build a pipeline of carbon credits, part of the firm’s promise to zero out its emissions by 2050. Not counting the CO2 output of its product obviously.

archo 3y ago

https://archive.is/G0ULZ https://archive.is/G0ULZ

Ladyady 3y ago
Appropriate shortlink there...

cagenut 3y ago

[flagged]

Aachen 3y ago
Insert "buying from" before the last word This is entirely within people's own hands. Not all of those people are you and me, it also includes our boss who decides to buy combustion vehicles for employees still (what year is it?), but in the end it's individual humans that decide for themselves whether to continue paying for oil products when there are alternatives available such as with personal vehicles. Maybe a majority overrules you if you're in some committee or board, but every vote was again an individual's choice. I don't see Shell or any oil company as being fully and solely responsible here
- rlili 3y ago
  Naive. As long as they can deliver competitive prices, most people with poor buying power will have no choice but to buy from them, or buy some product derived from their products.
- svachalek 3y ago
  If you leave it to that, most people don't care. They'll take whatever's cheapest, and what damage it does to the environment or other people is not a consideration. All of that stuff is happening far away, over long periods of time, but the nickel saved is right here and right now. If you want to leave it up to all 8 billion people in the world to take individual responsibility to end climate change, extinction, slavery, etc. then the approximate change accomplished is something approaching zero.
  - Aachen 3y ago
    How did we ever get anything done then, if not by each of us deciding a certain way is best? We sure didn't wait for an overlord to force democracy upon us and abolish slavery as far as I know. The version of history I heard includes needing uprisings (made up of people that each believe in the cause) to get here.
- 3y ago

threesevenths 3y ago

Shareholders will be shareholders and demand value. CEO performs to increase shareholder value regardless of any negative outcomes that won’t directly impact shareholders Entirely predictable result of the narrow view of the CEO shareholder relationship.

voisin 3y ago
It doesn’t sound like it is about shareholder value here. They can’t find enough carbon credit programs that meet their internal quality requirements and they are trying to actually not greenwash, so rather than go with a quantity of low quality carbon credits, they scrapped the program altogether. I view this as more of an indictment of carbon credits than anything.
- tw04 3y ago
  >It doesn’t sound like it is about shareholder value here. They can’t find enough carbon credit programs that meet their internal quality requirements and they are trying to actually not greenwash That's just not accurate. This is the CEO who basically cut all of their plans around renewables. https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/shells-renewables-boss-leave-after-ceo-strategy-shift-2023-06-30/ https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/shells-renewables-boss-leav...
  - Spivak 3y ago
    I don't think it's particularly surprising that a company would try, fail, and move on from a market segment where they don't have first mover advantage and are playing catch up in an already fast moving industry. The only thing they would really have to contribute is a financial play and I can't say, "all these renewable energy companies are actually owned by oil companies" is an incentive structure I like.
Cockbrand 3y ago
See also "Yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time, we created a lot of value for shareholders." [0] [0] https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995 https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995

throwaway103xx 3y ago

Large organizations have a lot of inertia. They don't want to change what has been working, even if the signs it'll stop working are clear. They have the brains. They should branch out and create a moonshot division that starts to make money and shows stakeholders they can bet on them.

tw04 3y ago

It makes a ton of sense if your focus is only short-term profit. It makes absolutely 0 sense if your goal is to try to decrease the legal liability of knowingly causing global warming and actively suppressing those internal studies to increase profits. Feels like the oil companies are going to face a big tobacco moment in the next 20 years and the previous CEO was preparing their defense of "don't punish us for the sins of our fathers". Whereas Sawan is doubling down on "maximize this quarter, who cares about the future, not my problem". That's all ignoring the: do you actually care at all if your great grandchildren have a habitable planet? (or maybe grandchildren at the rate we're going)

wredue 3y ago
Some 40% of the population is actively pro big oil and actively denies the carbon footprint causal links with climate change and warming. You think 20 years is enough for this reckoning? Honestly, I think they’re all going to get away with it with zero repercussion. If humanity is still around in a couple hundred years, there might be retroactive virtue signalling. But that doesn’t matter cause everyone responsible will be long since dead.
- throwaway103xx 3y ago
  I doubt we wil all be dead. It'll be awful but we will accept as the new terrible reality.
  - WJW 3y ago
    I think GP meant that in a hundred years WE will all be dead, not that our descendants won't be there.
- tw04 3y ago
  I think 60% of the population is enough to pass laws such that it doesn't actually matter if the other 40% is willfully ignorant. I also think as the climate becomes more and more inhospitable, that 40% number will continue to decrease.

jnsaff2 3y ago

Correct me if I'm wrong but even the original plan only covered carbon footprint of Shell's operations? Which I presume are pretty much a minor fraction of the carbon footprint of their products and kinda makes the whole exercise a PR campaign. Even when it would cover pipeline leaks and the like it's still nowhere near their total impact.

konschubert 3y ago
It’s ridiculous.
fluoridation 3y ago
Were you expecting Shell to increase the efficiency of every existing internal combustion engine?
- Aachen 3y ago
  It's what I wondered at the headline as well. Sounded ambitious, but with how much profit they make it's not immediately obvious whether it's infeasible, especially if you can convince a government to then be exempt from a part of the fuel taxes because you don't have to pay for the pollution aspect
  - fluoridation 3y ago
    It sounds not just infeasible, but comically infeasible. For the sake of argument, let's assume that it's easy to improve ICEs in general by 5%. You still have to apply that upgrade to all the existing engine designs, ideally as drop-in replacements, and then swap all those engines in the wild.
    - kjkjadksj 3y ago
      I assume the biggest polluters are not cars but big industrial operations or shipping. That seems like a smaller perhaps even realistic number of sites to target for some amount of efficiency gains. Especially if margins are too low in these industries for them to invest in their own efficiency.

gwbas1c 3y ago

It's worth understanding how disruption works in business. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator's_Dilemma) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator's_Dilemma) Generally, established companies have a lot of trouble, and often fail, adopting when the rules of business change. In this case, Shell is having a lot of trouble adopting to carbon-free (or neurtral) energy. IMO: I think the best approach is to seek out carbon-free (or neutral) energy business models and disrupt Shell out of business. From Shell's POV, the best thing they can do is invest in the disrupters and have them organically displace their existing fossil-fuel based businesses.

kmeisthax 3y ago
Xerox's copierheads. Except the copiers are also Dutch oven-ing the planet, a good chunk of our copiers are made in regressive absolute monarchies operated in league with far-right religious conservatives, and the most powerful country in the world is politically captured by the need to provide cheap copiers to businesses.
TheAtomic 3y ago
Agreed, Shell is f'd. Increasingly I wonder if Apple is in the same boat. An AI-based phone from SpaceX with Starlink connectivity, or from Nvidia, would disrupt their entire business model. And they don't really seem to get AI.
- Spivak 3y ago
  Huh? Apple already partnered with Globalstar for satellite connectivity which I think will come to fruition for more general connectivity long long before any of Elmocorp figures how to make phones at the quality of iPhones or even $Galaxy_Flagship. And no one has figured how to make AI work for the kinds of tasks people ask phones to do. It might be possible but no one's yet made it work so it's hard to argue that anyone is "behind" on this front when no one has brought even a commercial AI-based voice assistant to market which is has the lowest barrier to entry and the highest user tolerance for failure. So I think you're right that a lot of old-guard tech is becoming too big to be agile but I'm less sure about the thing that will actually disrupt them.

jacquesm 3y ago

For those interested in how a Dutch non-profit sued Shell for climate goal compliance and won (they've appealed): https://en.milieudefensie.nl/climate-case-shell https://en.milieudefensie.nl/climate-case-shell

riffraff 3y ago

The plan that was shelved was about carbon offsets, these have not proven to be particularly effective so maybe not too big a deal. The greater loss is that the new CEO had already scaled down Shell's investment in renewables, setting a target of 4.5% of the total investments in renewables by 2025[0]. Some other Oil&Gas companies seem to be a bit more inclined to actually invest in renewables, or at least pay lip service to it, e.g. ENI aims at 30% by 2025[1]. Remains to be seen how much will actually be invested. [0] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/shell-boost-dividend-cut-spending-new-ceo-plan-2023-06-14/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/shell-boost-dividend... [1] https://www.eni.com/en-IT/media/press-release/2022/03/pr-capital-markets-day-2022.html https://www.eni.com/en-IT/media/press-release/2022/03/pr-cap...

NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
If there are x offsets available, and demand is x + 100, then when Shell buys offsets, they're not really fixing the problem at all, they're just shifting blame right? They're saying "since we spent this money on the offsets, our carbon emissions were good (or at least 'less bad'), but the other company that couldn't afford or wouldn't bother with the offsets is bad even though there were only enough offsets for one of us". Honestly, this upsets people?
- unlikelymordant 3y ago
  The increase in demand drives up the price of offsets, which increases supply and investment in better carbon capture techniques and scaling. Im lumping in things like direct air capture, bioenergy carbon capture and storage, and enhanced weathering as offset generating technologies that are currently too expensive to be widespread, but with higher carbon prices would become practical.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
    > The increase in demand drives up the price of offsets, Except there are limits which the demand, for the most part, can't overcome. > Im lumping in things like direct air capture, bioenergy carbon capture and storage, All of these things are energy intensive, aren't they? So as energy becomes more expensive, so do they. Demand never gets quite so high that it's worth it to pay for this, because the price is always rising. There's another alternative in such situations... "just don't buy carbon offsets". The PR hit's cheaper after all.

NotYourLawyer 3y ago

The “radical plan” was bullshit carbon offsets, and it only applies to Shell’s own emissions, not the emissions from burning the oil/gas Shell produces. This plan doesn’t even deserve being shelved. It deserves being shitcanned.

Biologist123 3y ago

TL;DR: this article is mainly about Shell rowing back on its offset development targets, not for the oil it produces, but for its operational emissions. Having worked in the sector, albeit not with Shell, my guess is that the board were advised that offsets increasingly carry massive legal jeopardy, including director’s liability. This is an interesting summary of the problem: https://www.clientearth.org/media/nq4jnyww/ce-offsets-legal-briefing.pdf https://www.clientearth.org/media/nq4jnyww/ce-offsets-legal-...

iamflimflam1 3y ago

I try to remain positive, but climate change is the one area where I have pretty much lost hope. People (and I include myself) are simply unwilling to accept that their lives have to change. Barring some of unforeseen technical miracle the next 20-30 years are going to get increasingly grim.

steve_adams_86 3y ago
The main thing I struggle to downsize or make sustainable is my work. As a programmer, I depend on an immense infrastructure of earth-harming systems to get my equipment (both in my possession or leased in the cloud). My employers use a lot of energy. In the scheme of things we aren’t the worst polluters, but it’s undeniably bad. I’ve dramatically reduced my personal energy usage, I don’t eat animal products, my family has found ways to generate remarkably little garbage, and other “nice” things, but it’s pretty much meaningless. It’s all theatre compared to the damage we do with our car, jobs, community and provincial infrastructure we depend on, etc. I feel like I’m willing to change my life, and I have already I guess. I’m just not willing to give up my livelihood when it means so little in the bigger picture. I’m no different from someone working on an oil rig or forestry or whatever. What I do looks nicer, but my rationale is no different.
- Aachen 3y ago
  Anyone who drives a heavy vehicle alone is using immense amounts of power (hundreds of horses' at once, by approximation), it takes some infrastructure but with wind, sun, and water we can power that. What makes you say that your livelihood depends on an amount of energy so large that it's really bad? Why couldn't that be generated sustainably? Why not talk to your employer about a step in that direction, given that solar panels are typically profitable within a handful of years for an average household, let alone if you can 100% offset the kWh generated because all the energy can be used in-house?
  - steve_adams_86 3y ago
    > Why couldn't that be generated sustainably? It very likely could, and I'd happily pay for it. Like, my Mac Studio with an M2 Max in it probably took, all said, and absurd about of resources to create... But it only cost me $3k or something. Well, if it works as long as it should, it'll easily help me earn over half a million dollars. I'd rather pay far more for the computer and cover the expenses of the externalities of its production, but I don't have the choice. Otherwise, a lot of the energy used in the production could be sustainably produced, but it's not incentivized enough in the countries (or any countries, I suppose) in order for that to occur. Perhaps I could make improvements by switching to different computers. I know the framework offers opportunities to reuse the same chassis such you can use mostly-the-same hardware for a very long time, and that could be the right path forward. I love the philosophy. As for the driving issue, that's very hard to overcome. I personally ride an electric bike just about all the time, but at the moment I'm on vacation in Whistler, BC, having driven through 2 full tanks of gas so far on my way from Victoria, to Squamish, now Whistler, and all the little stops in between. My Toyota Highlander produces more pollution than any other single thing in my life. My wife drives it for work and we both regret the purchase quite a bit. Yet, something electric would take a very long time to "break even" on the footprint before improving on our situation, even with how clean our electricity is here in BC. I need to do more research to understand how I could purchase my way out of this problem.

cornfutes 3y ago

How much of the corporate virtue signaling was in response to a jobseeker-oriented market? Now, with all the layoffs, employers have their pick of white collar workers.

photochemsyn 3y ago

Carbon offsets credit programs and fossil fuel emissions capture schemes fall into one of two categories: technical failures or economic frauds. The technical issue for fossil fuel carbon capture schemes involves conservation of energy. Simply stated, a diesel truck that captures all its emissions as it drives down the road is an obviously implausible scheme, as anyone with even a vague appreciation of how engines work should realize. Clogging the exhaust is the first problem, separating the CO2 (and incomplete combustion products and particulate & inorganic contaminants) from the exhaust stream is the next, and storing the concentrated CO2 is the third. The only reason these carbon capture systems have been built in practice is to generate a stream of CO2 for enhanced oilfield recovery, a process in which CO2 is injected into aged oil wells because it facilitates recovery of oil from these wells. The CO2/oil mix that comes out is refined as usual and most of the injected CO2 just escapes back to the atmosphere. The economic fraud all revolves around the technical fact that 'carbon credit' schemes don't offset anything, and in a warming world so-called 'carbon stores' like British Columbian forests have been going up in smoke due to increased wildfires. Similarly cap-and-trade doesn't work; it was originally based on a scheme to clean up sulfur in diesel fuel but the sulfur just ended up in ship bunker fuel (although cities are somewhat cleaner due to the introduction of ultra-low-sulfur diesel fuel). What's particularly egregious about these schemes is the degree of dishonesty demonstrated by their political and industrial promoters - they know they don't work. For example, production of natural gas is booming to record levels at present while the very politicians and executives responsible for the boom are running around proclaiming how concerned they are about climate and running ads stating their dedication to net-zero. Similarly, even if some coal plants are retired in the US, exports of coal to Asia are rising and production is barely falling. The fact is there's not a single major fossil fuel producing country or corporation on the planet that has any intention of shutting down production in the forseeable future. This is why countries like China, that have to import most of their fossil fuel, are so far ahead in renewable energy production and technology.

BLanen 3y ago

Good. Any implementation of carbon offsetting is a sham anyway and Shell's plan didn't even offset its product's emmision but only its own business process(because offsetting the emissions of the products would be many times more costly than the product itself)

Aachen 3y ago
Even if it's mostly a sham, that's better than nothing
- konschubert 3y ago
  No, it’s worse. It takes money and focus away from things that work.
  - Aachen 3y ago
    What "things that work" does Shell otherwise spend the money on if not half-assed offsets? Besides executives and peak oil I mean, since those aren't going to work against climate change either
    - konschubert 3y ago
      Shell is building wind parks and investing in renewables.
      - Aachen 3y ago
        If that's where the money now goes instead, then of course I fully agree with you. They wouldn't need offsetting if they could just spend the money on that instead (which is a lot cheaper per ton CO2 because it's a sham indeed)

thelastgallon 3y ago

“We’re going to get as much out of [oil and gas] for as long as we can,” he said: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/shell-climate-change.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/shell-climate-change...

sobkas 3y ago

Then there should be consequences for destroying environment and making earth inhabitable for humans. Oil industry knew that burning fossil fuels will lead to global warming. Plastic industry knew that recycling is a total sham, and most of it will at best end up on a landfill at worts everywhere including our food. They knew but then they lied to us to make more profits. Maybe we should take that ill gotten profits from them and if it will bankrupt them so be it. Because we're slowly getting out of time to do anything.

civilized 3y ago
I think developed nations collectively bought into fossil fuel-driven civilization, so it seems like scapegoating to lay all the blame at the feet of the producers. But like you say, it is appropriate to blame the producers for hiding what they knew about the greenhouse effect and well-funded lobbying and propaganda campaigns to deny and minimize it.
- mdgrech23 3y ago
  I think is the uncomfortable truth is we're all to blame for a certain extent. People def hide evidence and acted to their own benefit but to a certain extent so many of us were known accomplices.
- UncleMeat 3y ago
  It is true that the people demanded the lifestyle provided by fossil fuel emissions. But corporations didn't just say "oh if you insist." When new policies and regulations are attempted that will not affect the lifestyle of the people but will eat into corporate profits, they fight tooth and nail. An honest corporation that was just acting to serve the needs of the people wouldn't do something like fight to reduce the exxon valdez spill fine by 100x or raise a fit when regulatory agencies mandate generation shifting.
  - coding123 3y ago
    I think we've KNOWN what this shit does to the air and water for at least, what 40 years? At what point do we blame ourselves to increasing fossil fuel usage, even in the what, past 5 years?

fwungy 3y ago

The rising BRICS dominate hydrocarbons and they aren't giving them up, selling or using. We should be focused on mitigation strategies and superior technology that wins conversion based on market forces and not government mandates and long term subsidies. The Green Suicide of the West isn't going to help climate change, and will probably make it worse.

elzbardico 3y ago
Give a couple of years for the professional managerial class to start to understand this. Meanwhile, consider the advantages of learning to speak Chinese.
akamaka 3y ago
> The rising BRICS dominate hydrocarbons and they aren't giving them up, selling or using. Surely you’re looking at the wrong statistics. Brazil is a leader in renewable energy, with fossil fuel use already on the decline for the last decade. China is the world’s largest producer of solar and wind power products, and their renewable energy ramp up has only been slowed down by the rest of the world buying up half their output. The risk to western economies is that they are too slow to transition away from fossil fuels and suffer from their dependence on ever more expensive oil and gas.
- fwungy 3y ago
  Brazil is making ethanol from its vast sugar plantations. They are a special case, and ethanol isn't great on a full lifecycle basis. It doesn't make sense without agricultural surpluses or subsidies, as there are in the USA. China is the world's mass manufacturer. They will happily make whatever they can sell. If the West is demanding solar panels and windmills due to top down energy policy directives China will happily make and sell them. There is plenty of fossil fuel available and a huge installed base of ICE's around to use them, especially in the developing world and BRICS. If the West stops buying fossil fuels it only makes them cheaper for those who will happily consume them. The West needs to use its technological edge to develop market winning sustainable technologies and cheap, safe, electricity production. Crippling itself with unrealistic sustainable energy policies is going to be counter productive to climate change solutions.

frob 3y ago

In other news, the local union of serial killers scrapped their plan to fund an independent homicide unit.

egberts1 3y ago

As one of the thousands who planted one of the million trees within Sacramento, California during the 1970s, I did my part toward reducing CO2 and added cooling of urban areas. You should too. It's not that hard. I am doing it again, but in another city.

throwaway894345 3y ago
The average lifetime co2 emissions per person seems to be in the tens or hundreds of tons (probably on the higher end of the spectrum for Americans, especially those decades in the latter half of the 20th century). Most trees weigh a single digit number of tons when fully grown, and many trees don't survive to full growth and in any case they may release much of that carbon through decay or combustion. It seems pretty unlikely to me that planting a tree actually offset your carbon emissions.
- egberts1 3y ago
  ah, yes, a throwaway account. At least, provide for some citation to be worthy. https://www.globe.gov/explore-science/scientists-blog/archived-posts/sciblog/2008/08/11/release-of-carbon-dioxide-by-individual-humans/comment-page-1/index.html https://www.globe.gov/explore-science/scientists-blog/archiv...
  - throwaway894345 3y ago
    1. My account is older than yours and has far more reputation. It's no more a throwaway than yours--it just contains the sequence of characters "throwaway". 2. Your link is about co2 exhaled which is a tiny fraction of a person's overall co2 emissions. 3. According to https://scied.ucar.edu/learning-zone/climate-solutions/carbon-footprint https://scied.ucar.edu/learning-zone/climate-solutions/carbo..., the average American's carbon footprint is about 16 tons of co2 per year multiplied by the average American's lifespan of 77 years equals 1,200 tons of co2. According to every source I could find, the overwhelming majority of trees in the United States weigh a single digit number of tons fully grown, and trees aren't pure-carbon either. Further, many trees don't reach maturity and of those that do many release their carbon via decay and combustion.

FrustratedMonky 3y ago

Meeting with C-suit. COO: "This is turning out to be hard" CEO: "F*it, let the planet burn". CFO: "I'm down with that, I'm retiring rich and have a good 10-20 years of cocaine and hookers before my house on the coast gets washed away"

jl2718 3y ago

Study the carbon cycle a bit and then come back and tell me I’m wrong about this: Offsets do not work. The best application of that funding would be to stop destruction of the ocean habitat. Short explanation: Almost all surface and atmospheric carbon ends up in the ocean by rivers or rainfall. Geological-timescale sequestration is performed by zooplankton et al in the form of CaCO3, but something has to eat them or they will block the light for their own food supply, and the rest of the ecosystem follows from there. And yes, surface habitats also matter, but their destruction is more localized.

alentred 3y ago

This reminds me of this part of the "Death to 2020": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yUW9iiU6R8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yUW9iiU6R8

pmarreck 3y ago

To clarify, this article is mainly a criticism of the lack of effectiveness of offsets. This is why Shell shelved it. They were spending a ton of money on this, and getting almost no actual carbon footprint reduction. That is a waste by almost any measure. Hopefully, they are investigating better ways to shrink their catastrophic carbon footprint contribution. Almost NONE of the comments in this forum so far reflect this observation, which I find concerning. If you are angry about the state of affairs here (which I would completely understand), at least read the article (and take a deep breath) before commenting

_ea1k 3y ago

In my area, their EV charging network has built several sites in the last few years. They are all terrible due to severe limits on peak amps (200A, IIRC). TBH, it is pretty surprising, considering that they should clearly be seeing the opportunity.

xenadu02 3y ago

The whole world suffers from an extremely deep lack of vision. Why does a utility like PG&E fight so hard to hurt solar installation? If I were CEO I'd buy or start a foundry to make solar panels. Then I'd start an installation and service org. People need energy, why should I care where they get it so long as they get it from me? The grid isn't going away so stop trying so desperately to protect that revenue stream. Why can't oil companies do the same sort of thing? If Shell were smart they'd be making and selling wind turbines, solar panels, inverters, batteries, etc. Use your stupid lobbing arm to get subsidies passed that make the electric utilities pay part of the cost of these products. Instead they're just giving those markets away because they don't know how to do anything beyond oil and jealously try to protect every scrap of oil revenue. Even ATT focused so much on long-distance revenue and milking people for tiny data pipes they let cable companies and new ISPs waltz in and takeover huge chunks of what had literally been their monopoly business. Bell labs invented VoIP and could have owned that space... but they didn't dare threaten long-distance revenues. Then a few years later competitors evicerated those revenue streams anyway. It all comes down to a lack of vision and a focus on protecting existing revenue streams. I guess my brain just doesn't work that way. I see change as inevitable so I'd rather try to own a piece of the new market than worry about protecting the old one.

avery17 3y ago
Hello, i am big oil exec. I make money when people buy oil, not solar panels. Id like to give you big money personally if you dont buy solar and only buy oil from me. Then you get money and i get money. We both get big money and you dont have to do any new hard work. You can just coast now. Big money. Sign here.

cannabis_sam 3y ago

The same way that you wouldn’t accept your elderly relatives trying to burn down the house you both happen to live in, every fossil fuel based company should be nationalized and shutdown as quickly as possible, while reducing the impact on society’s poorest who depend on that type of energy. No, wait, private ownership and corporate freedom have actually been proven to be the pinnacle of human economic organizing, so please hand back the lighter and petrol to your demented grandparents and their delusions ideas. Unfortunately, the people running and investing in these companies will be long dead when their decisions come back to bite us all in the ass.

time4tea 3y ago

Carbon offsets are total bullshit, so really this changes nothing. Perhaps now they will report their true carbon emissions. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/24/carbon-credit-speculators-could-lose-billions-as-offsets-deemed-worthless-aoe https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/24/carbon-c...

aedalat 3y ago

As both a Python developer and Energy (oil and gas) engineer, I am a regular reader of Hacker News and enjoy the quality of discussions in the comments on the HN Top articles. This thread however disappoints me. The news of any producers potentially reducing their CO2 targets in any form is upsetting. However, painting them as bad guys vs good guys or using the tobacco industry analogy is too simplistic in my opinion. Doomberg is a great newsletter to start with to have a more educated discussion around these topics. The articles below, give great background to mature this discussion and moving it passed Oil company boss wants to be rich, they shut down all the other alternative rubbish. 1. https://doomberg.substack.com/p/where-stuff-comes-from https://doomberg.substack.com/p/where-stuff-comes-from (if you time to read only one of these, make it this one) 2. https://doomberg.substack.com/p/got-milk https://doomberg.substack.com/p/got-milk 3. https://doomberg.substack.com/p/tour-de-farce https://doomberg.substack.com/p/tour-de-farce Article below is an example of challenges facing rolling out renewables. They are not all Oil and Gas related as generally perceived: https://archive.md/udhVH https://archive.md/udhVH There are also couple of really good books on the topic, which I am happy to share if the interest is there.

anti-communist 3y ago

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