Shell is going to invest more in sustainable energy projects, with activities managed from a new campus in The Hague. Shell Research & Development in Amsterdam is also being expanded.

Even though the company expects that peak consumption of oil and gas has not yet been reached, it is aware of the transition to more sustainable forms of energy.

As a result, the company has set itself the goal of halving its CO2 footprint between now and 2050.This goal concerns both the CO2 released by the company’s own operations and the CO2 emissions resulting from the use of Shell products by its customers.

Shell has also been diversifying its activities for some time now, such as its investment in a large wind farm. It is also putting money into the development of biofuels, which have low CO2 emissions, and developing hydrogen for transport.


Campus

The Shell head office in The Hague.
Photo: Google Streetview

Today, the oil and gas giant announced that it is going to invest more in sustainable energy (press release in Dutch). Shell is going to invest $200 million (€175 million) in the New Energies Campus at the existing head office in The Hague (see photo). The existing buildings here will be refurbished, and some new ones may also be built. There are no plans to build laboratories in The Hague.

About 250 people currently work in Shell’s New Energies division, which the company started in 2016, with 150 of these jobs in the Netherlands. They plan to increase the number of employees to about 500 to 700 by 2023. This workforce will be engaged in 'increasing low-carbon activities', as it’s called in Shell jargon, which could include developing wind and solar parks, producing biofuels, and working on hydrogen solutions.

According to Dutch newspaper Het Financieele Dagblad (in Dutch) Shell is investing between €1 billion and €2 billion in the New Energies division, out of a total investment budget of €25 billion a year.


NATURAL GAS

'At the same time, Shell continues to work on improving the energy efficiency of its own processes,' according to the press release, in a reference to oil and gas. Shell has plenty of expertise in gas-to-liquid technology, for example, which involves making liquid fuels and high-quality lubricants from natural gas.

Research in this area is carried out at the Shell Technology Centre Amsterdam, where a new wing has recently been opened, with space for new technological equipment. In the coming years, a few hundred additional experts will set to work here using big data to optimise the processes around biofuels and hydrogen.

If you found this article interesting, subscribe for free to our weekly newsletter!