*SHELL SO SHINES : 2050 - PART 1*

GLOBAL WARMING- :

SHELL AIMS TO HALVE NET CARBON FOOTPRINT BY 2050.

Oil giant to support development of new forests, wetlands to suck carbon dioxide from atmosphere, among others.

The World has a puzzle to solve, a jigsaw with a spectacular number of pieces to place. If it can succeed it will win a priceless prize : It will achieve the Paris goal of  Paris Agreement, to limit  global warming to under 2 degrees C. It is the puzzle of the energy transition.

Piecing together a solution is going to be tricky and we at Shell have been trying to make progress as a company.

We have a way forward now and I am going to share it with you....but first, the Jigsaw

Part of the challenge was that the world had to stop adding to the stock of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, probably by 2070, according to credible scenarios.

That is hard enough to achieve, but there is more to it than that, large part of the world's population still live without access to safe, reliable, affordable energy.

The world's population is growing and, as living standards rise, energy demand could double over the course of the century. All of this must be part of the solution, part of the picture, too.

Fitting the pieces together means working with a large arrays energy sources : coal, oil, gas, nuclear, hydro, solar, wind, geothermal among them.

It also means understanding the almost  infinite uses for that energy : heating and cooling, domestic and industrial , transporting people and goods.

Energy is all around us, critical to every aspect of our lives, it is no wonder  that many people are looking for a simple answer. No more oil, gas or coal, just renewable energy, But that is no more possible than instantly solving a jigsaw.

Perhaps, as Shell chief executive officer, I might be expected to argue this. But, deep down, I suspect most people distrust the simple answer just as much as I do

The real answer is multi-faceted, working across the whole energy system and involves all of society :  governments and consumers, businesses and non-governmental organisations and academia. And, of course, it involves companies like Shell, too.

I HEAR so many suggestions for what Shell should do.  There is a multitude of proposals, expectations and policy suggestions.

We should abandon this or that project or business, reduce emissions, increase efficiency, sell less, produce more biofuel, stop drilling for oil, produce more natural gas..for some, we should simply cease to exist.

ADMITTEDLY,  Shell has not always done a good job of explaining what our role is in this global challenge and what we can contribute.

BUT we have been working hard on it and have come to the conclusion, there is in fact one way that truly matters : to set ourselves to the same task as the rest of the society  -is to have the same aim.

IF SOCIETY is to stop adding to the stock of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere by 2070, it must have the amount of such gasses produced for each unit of energy used by 2050.

SHELL must follow the same aim and it should deliver a mix of energy products that will help society -through our customers -achieve it.

[Mr. Ben Van Beurden is a CEO and a member of the executive committee of Royal Dutch Shell].