Oil and gas giant Royal Dutch Shell is setting its sights on becoming the world’s largest electricity company by the 2030s, New Energy Update reported in a March 20 posting, citing a statement by Maarten Wetselaar, Shell’s director of gas and new energies, speaking at a conference in Houston.
Shell believes it has an advantage in the decentralized power market over established power utilities saddled with conventional coal and nuclear power plants, increasingly challenged by ever-cheaper wind and solar. Shell believes it is well-placed to deploy advanced technologies and trading services in decentralized networks.
Shell recently entered the U.S. offshore wind market and is developing floating wind technologies. By 2020, Shell plans to invest $1 to $2 billion a year in new energy technologies including electricity.
“We will do that for a number of years,” Wetselaar said. “And then we will scale it up, because otherwise we will never get there,” he said.