CEO Ben Van Beurden
Shell Europe CEO Ben Van Beurden will switch from a diesel car to a plug-in Mercedes-Benz S500e in September, a company spokesman says. Shell CFO Jessica Uhl already drives a BMW i3 electric car.
“The whole move to electrify the economy, electrify mobility in places like northwest Europe, in the US, even in China, is a good thing,” Van Beurden says.
“We need to be at a much higher degree of electric vehicle penetration if we want to stay within the 2-degrees Celsius outcome,” he told Bloomberg TV.
The UK said Monday it will ban sales of diesel- and petrol-fueled cars by 2040, two weeks after France announced a similar plan to reduce air pollution and meet targets to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius. Carmaker Volvo AB said earlier this month it will manufacture only electric or hybrid vehicles from 2019 onwards.
Royal Dutch Shell is bracing for a peak in oil demand by the end of the next decade by edging towards renewable power and the electric vehicle industry.
Van Beurden says the oil major had changed its company mindset to a “lower forever” oil price environment and is focusing on being “fit for the forties”, in reference to the faltering oil price, which has struggled to remain above the $50 a barrel mark, reports the Telegraph.
In its clearest statement of intent to date Van Beurden says that within the next year Shell will reveal early plans for a deeper presence in renewable energy and the electrical chain to tap into the boom in electric vehicles.
“If policies and innovation really work well, I can see liquids peaking in demand in the early 2030s and maybe oil will peak a little bit earlier if there’s a lot of biofuels coming into the mix as well,” says Van Beurden.
Shell says it plans to spend as much as $1 billion a year on its New Energies division as the transition toward renewable power and electric cars accelerates.
