Royal Dutch Shell’s vice president for global commercial fuels technologies, Selda Gunsel, has given a webinar in which she outlined Shell’s broad strategy to become a carbon-neutral business by 2050.
She outlined a five-pronged strategy that includes i) developing alternative low-carbon fuels, such as biogas and natural gas; ii) expanding the availability of hydrogen as a fuel for haulage; iii) reducing its own fleet’s emissions, initially by 10% by 2025 and entirely by 2050; iv) enhancing the infrastructure, products, and services for electric charging; and v) working with other stakeholders to promote a framework for decarbonisation policy.
According to Gunsel, this diverse strategy is needed because there is no one magic solution to achieve its goal of being a zero-carbon business by 2050. When it does reach this goal, however, it will have prevented 700,000 tons of CO2 from being emitted each year.
Shell is also working on new lubricants, such as commercial vehicle oil, to help reduce fuel consumption in the short term. Gunsel said about this:
“We are doing some groundbreaking research developing a 0W grade lubricant for heavy-duty engines. We hope to lead the industry in this space.”
She indicated the significance of this by pointing out that there are about 217 million trucks and buses operating in the world. Together these produce about 9% of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, which is more than the aviation and shipping industries put together, and the companies operating them will no doubt welcome anything that improves fuel efficiency.
