The head of global energy giant Shell says it would be “irresponsible” to cut oil and gas production at a time when the world economy is still dependent on fossil fuels.
I mean, he sucks, but I also don’t disagree that having a bridge solution during OPEC fuckaround times is a good idea. Supply cuts aren’t fun, period, especially when we can’t influence them whatsoever (since it seems dollar hegemony is going bye-bye at some point):
There’s probably a decent solution to temporarily boost and maintain domestic oil production while also feeding green R&D, whether that’s in the form of a tax, credit, government package, or full-blown turn-Shell-into-an-SOE; all of its years vs. months, I think. Bottom line, I think it’s a more complex solution than “fuck this guy”.
My idea was a mandatory investment in green energy. Like, if you want to extract X barrels of oil, fine but you have to put up Y new windmills. You want to burn X tons of coal? OK that’ll be Y new solar panels please. It’s different from a carbon tax since the energy company can still own the windmills and whatever and of course sell the electricity from them. One day they’ll look around and realize most of their profits now come from green energy, might as well spend some lobbying money on that.
This is actually a proven idea in net new real estate development involving wetlands and protected acreage; you can build on wetlands, but for every acre you displace, you have to create two acres, and both the plan and results are audited.
To your point, the end result of this - in many cases - is to simply build elsewhere due to the considerably higher costs. I think a model similar in energy would pay dividends rather quickly - most likely, we’d see Shell, EM, CP, etc. rapidly transition to renewables from an imposed cost perspective.
You bring up lobbying - definitely the major hurdle. Fortunately, if you go read these guys 10k’s, I think the shift is inevitable, they’re just artificially pumping the brakes to adhere to some kind of amortisation timeline of investments they’ve already made… which unfortunately, is super frustrating.
I mean, he sucks, but I also don’t disagree that having a bridge solution during OPEC fuckaround times is a good idea. Supply cuts aren’t fun, period, especially when we can’t influence them whatsoever (since it seems dollar hegemony is going bye-bye at some point):
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidblackmon/2023/04/02/a-spate-of-recent-deals-raises-chatter-of-a-fading-petrodollar/?sh=216df4c65964
There’s probably a decent solution to temporarily boost and maintain domestic oil production while also feeding green R&D, whether that’s in the form of a tax, credit, government package, or full-blown turn-Shell-into-an-SOE; all of its years vs. months, I think. Bottom line, I think it’s a more complex solution than “fuck this guy”.
My idea was a mandatory investment in green energy. Like, if you want to extract X barrels of oil, fine but you have to put up Y new windmills. You want to burn X tons of coal? OK that’ll be Y new solar panels please. It’s different from a carbon tax since the energy company can still own the windmills and whatever and of course sell the electricity from them. One day they’ll look around and realize most of their profits now come from green energy, might as well spend some lobbying money on that.
This is actually a proven idea in net new real estate development involving wetlands and protected acreage; you can build on wetlands, but for every acre you displace, you have to create two acres, and both the plan and results are audited.
To your point, the end result of this - in many cases - is to simply build elsewhere due to the considerably higher costs. I think a model similar in energy would pay dividends rather quickly - most likely, we’d see Shell, EM, CP, etc. rapidly transition to renewables from an imposed cost perspective.
You bring up lobbying - definitely the major hurdle. Fortunately, if you go read these guys 10k’s, I think the shift is inevitable, they’re just artificially pumping the brakes to adhere to some kind of amortisation timeline of investments they’ve already made… which unfortunately, is super frustrating.