Shell will not invest in replenish-able technologies like wind, solar and hydro power because they aren’t business, the Anglo-Dutch oil company claimed today. The company intends to invest in biofuels, which many environmentalists believe drive up the cost of food and result in deforestation. The company asserted it would concentrate on developing other cleaner strategies of using normal fuels, eg carbon capture and sequestration ( CCS ) technology. It intended to utilize CCS to lower emissions from Shell’s shady and energy-intensive oil sands projects in northern Canada.

It was declared by the company that no attractive investment opportunities were offered by alternative technologies, such as the RV solar panel. “If there exist no comparable investment opportunities, we cannot inject cash into it,” declared Linda Cook, Shell’s executive director of power and gas.

Shell expounded biofuels fitted its core business of providing fuels, logistics, trading and branding.

Cook also said, “It now seems as if biofuels are closest to what we offer at Shell. Wind and solar power are promising, but we may go on considering other investment potentials in the portfolio even with big help in a lot of markets. The company also confirmed that it would increase its dividend payments this year by about five percent to $10bn. Friends of the Earth condemned Shell for halting support in alternatives like wind for biofuels.

“Shell is supporting the wrong party in terms of renewable energy biofuels that lead to more emissions than the gas and diesel they displace,” the campaign group clarified. “Shell is at least being a bit more truthful about the fact they seem to be a fossil fuel company. It saw the constraints of the green wash it was putting out some years ago.”. Shell possesses some 550MW of wind farm capacity around the globe, ample energy to supply power to a town the size of Sheffield when the wind is blowing. Last annum, it quit the 1000MW London array project, which was to supposed to be the cooperative effort to construct the world’s largest offshore wind farm in the Thames Estuary. Former project partner E.ON has yet to choose to resume with the 3bn investment required.

Exiting CEO Jeroen wagon der Curve confirmed that the corporation had borne some “technology baths” in the past when it supported unprofitable technologies. Energy in the 80% range will be from normal fuels and 20 P.C. by the year 2025, as envisioned by the firm, from other power sources such as the RV solar panel. Yet it is spending just over 1 percent of its budget on alternative technologies.

Over the last 5 years, only $1.7bn of the $150bn it has invested has gone towards alternative energies like the RV solar panel. There was a minimum of only 1% of the budget invested by the company at one time, as Cook indicated, on natural gas in a liquefied state, that has now become a large portion of its business.

The company assured that it would elevate debt levels to keep dividend payments steady and to stick to its spending agenda. Wagon der Curve maintained that energy demand in the long run was robust and oil costs would recover.