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Shell Boosts Renewable Energy Spending: Will Big Oil Really Go Green?

This is pretty confusing story. Shell spending 1Billion $ to reduce greenhouse gas emissions over 5 years should not be included here since all oil companies, including ExxonMobil have been investing heavily (much more heavily than Shell) to improve their efficiency and cost of doing business. None of the companies mentioned are really investing big bucks to advance new green technologies, BP is running a solar business that is based on "old" solar photovoltaic and is nor the technology of the future. When you are able to report that any of the oil majors are spending over 10% of their anual capital investment on green technologies and are planning to grow it to 25-30% then you are talking real stuff. I am not sure that would be a good thing since they know the oil business but not the alternate energy business and their past track record is lousy. Biofuels are at least similar to the oil business.

Can Big Oil Balance Shareholder Interest Against National Interest?

I really would not want "Big Oil" investing my money (through stock holdings) in alternate energy. They have a track record of poor performance (see Exxon's past investments in this area as well as lousy performance by BP and Shell, despite their advertisements to the countrary)) and I would much rather see new businesses emergy in which I will be investing. Transition to an alternate energy scenario first requires new and efficient technology. Investing in currently available and ready to commercialize technology is a lousy deal, they are simply not ready now, but will be with additional R&D&E in the next 5-10 years. Then they can start to grow and will require trillions of investment to be serious players. The transition period, some 20-30 years at least will require significant new fossil fuel energy sources and I would rather have oil companies focus on what they are good at, finding and producing and delivering those resources.