Resilience of Shell’s strategy, taking into consideration different climate-related scenarios, including a two degrees celsius or lower scenario

Shell’s financial strength and access to capital give us the ability to reshape our portfolio as the energy system transforms and demand changes. They also allow us to withstand volatility in oil and gas markets.

We are shifting capital from our Upstream business to our Transition and Growth businesses as the energy transition accelerates and we sell more low-carbon energy products. We aim to find the right balance between managing our Upstream assets – which will produce the returns needed to help us fund the transition – and investing in our Transition and Growth businesses. These businesses are essential to identify, build and scale up profitable projects that offer low-carbon energy solutions for our customers.

Key aspects of Shell’s financial resilience in the context of climate related impacts is assessed and described in more detail in Note 4 to the “Consolidated Financial Statements”. This provides an overarching summary of the key areas where climate change and the energy transition impact Shell’s financial statements.

Shell’s financial statements are based on reasonable and supportable assumptions that represent management’s current best estimate of the range of economic conditions that may exist in the foreseeable future. As referred to above, the medium pricing outlook informed by Shell’s scenario planning represents management’s best estimate.

Sensitivity analysis using external climate scenarios has been performed for the period covering asset life cycles. If these different price outlooks from external and often normative climate change scenarios were used, this would impact the recoverability of certain assets recognised in the Consolidated Balance Sheet as at December 31, 2021.

Price outlooks have been used as the basis for sensitivity analysis because oil and gas prices are one of the key assumptions that underpin Shell’s financial statements. Price outlooks reflect a broad range of factors, including but not limited to future supply and demand and the pace of growth of low-carbon solutions. Sensitivity of asset-carrying amounts to prices are under the assumption that all other factors in the models used to calculate impacts remain unchanged. Changes to prices are applied due to the significant impact on Shell’s business.

Sensitivity analysis has been performed using price outlooks from:

1. Average prices from four 1.5-2 degrees Celsius external climate change scenarios. In view of the broad range of price outlooks across the various scenarios, the average of four external price outlooks was taken from IHS Markit/ACCS 2021; Woodmac WM AET 2 degree; IEA NZE50; and IEA SDS.
   Applying these prices to Integrated Gas assets of $65 billion and Upstream assets of $89 billion as at December 31, 2021, shows recoverable amounts that are $13-16 billion and $14-17 billion lower, respectively, than the carrying amounts as at December 31, 2021.
2. Hybrid Shell Plan and IEA NZE50: for this Shell’s mid-price outlook is applied for the next 10 years. Because of the greater uncertainty, the International Energy Agency (IEA) normative Net Zero Emissions scenario is applied for the period after 10 years. This weights less price-risk uncertainty to the first 10 years reflected in the operating plan period and applies more risk to the more uncertain subsequent periods.
   Applying this priceline to Integrated Gas assets of $65 billion and Upstream assets of $89 billion as at December 31, 2021, shows recoverable amounts that are 10-12 billion and $5-6 billion lower, respectively, than the carrying amounts as at December 31, 2021.

In addition, further sensitivities are provided of -10% or +10% to Shell’s medium pricing outlook, as an average percentage over the full period.

Applying -10% to Shell’s medium pricing outlook to Integrated Gas assets of $65 billion and Upstream assets of $89 billion as at December 31, 2021, shows recoverable amounts that are $8-10 billion and $4-5 billion lower, respectively, than the carrying amounts as at December 31, 2021.

Applying +10% to Shell’s medium pricing outlook to Integrated Gas assets of $65 billion and Upstream assets of $89 billion as at December 31, 2021, shows recoverable amounts that are $3-5 billion and $3-4 billion higher, respectively, than the carrying amounts as at December 31, 2021.

Note 4 to the “Consolidated Financial Statements” describes how Shell has considered climate-related impacts in key areas of the financial statements and how this translates into the valuation of assets and measurement of liabilities as Shell makes progress in the energy transition.

Items in Note 4 include: sensitivity analysis on asset-carrying values using price outlooks from external and often normative climate change scenarios; shifting trends in our portfolio, particularly exploration and evaluation, Upstream production and refineries; risks related to stranded assets; resilience of investments for transformation of the refining portfolio into five energy and chemical parks; forecasted taxable profits sufficient to recover deferred tax assets; dividend resilience; and limited risk on timing of decommissioning and restoration activities for Integrated Gas and Upstream.

To ensure the resilience of our Powering Progress strategy, our responses to the risks and opportunities identified are:

• delivering through three strategic pillars – Upstream, Transition and Growth;
• our sectoral decarbonisation approach – recognising that we need to work with our customers to identify low-carbon energy solutions for their energy demand; and
• decarbonising our energy value chains and operations.

Delivering through three strategic pillars

One of the ways to address the resilience of our portfolio is to continue delivering through our three strategic business pillars: Upstream, Transition and Growth. Shell’s financial strength and access to capital give us the ability to reshape our portfolio as the energy system transforms and demand changes. It also allows us to withstand volatility in oil and gas markets. Our financial framework is based on sector-leading cash flow, continued capital discipline, capital flexibility and a strong balance sheet.

• Our Upstream pillar delivers the cash and returns needed to fund our shareholder distributions and the transformation of our portfolio, and provides vital supplies of oil and natural gas which the world needs today.
• Our Transition pillar comprises Integrated Gas, and our Chemicals and Oil Products businesses and it makes the products needed to enable the energy transition. It produces sustainable cash flow and gives us the asset infrastructure to support our investments in our Growth business.
• Our Growth pillar includes our service stations, sales of gasoline and diesel, fuels for business customers, power, hydrogen, biofuels, charging for electric vehicles, nature-based solutions, and carbon capture and storage. It focuses on working with our customers to accelerate the transition to net zero and is the foundation for the future businesses in Shell.

See “Outlook for 2022 and beyond” for more information.

Our sectoral decarbonisation approach

Changes to the supply of energy products and decarbonising the energy system require structural changes in the end-use of energy. This requires energy users to improve, update or replace equipment so that they can use carbon-based energy more efficiently, or switch to low- and zero-carbon energy.

For example, in the transport sector, decarbonisation includes replacing internal combustion engine vehicles with electric and hydrogen vehicles. In the industrial sector, replacing oil- and coal-fired furnaces with electrical furnaces would be one solution, carbon capture and storage is another. And in the buildings sector, replacing gas heating systems with electric heating systems would also contribute to decarbonisation.

Such structural changes will help to trigger transitions along the supply chain of individual sectors and across sectors, including the production of energy and emissions over time. The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that these changes in the end-use of energy will require substantial investment. Under the IEA’s Paris-aligned Sustainable Development Scenario, of the more than $1.5 trillion extra annual spending required on energy-sector investment, 55% will need to be spent on end-use or what is more commonly known as demand-side investment.

Transforming energy demand is the focus of our decarbonisation strategy. To transform demand, we are working with customers sector-by-sector across the energy system. We will change the mix of energy products we sell to our customers as their needs for energy change.

Because emissions resulting from customer use of our energy products make up the greatest percentage of Shell’s carbon emissions, this is where we can make the greatest contribution to the energy transition, by increasing sales of low-carbon energy products and services. Today, we sell around 4.6% of final energy consumed in the world and produce around 1.4% of total primary energy. Our share of energy production may decline over the coming decades, but we intend to increase our share of low-carbon energy sales.

We have restructured our company so that we can better identify opportunities and the role that we can play in each sector to help transform demand. We are moving from an approach focused on types of products to one where our customer and account management is focused on sectors.

We have introduced a sector-based approach, so our businesses can help drive the decarbonisation of the sectors they cover such as aviation, commercial road transport, passenger transport, shipping, technology and industry. We will build on our existing relationships across each sector, with consumers, infrastructure owners, other suppliers and policymakers to help to accelerate change.

A key theme running through the whole of our strategic approach to climate change is to work collaboratively. We aim to make strategic alliances with customers, other companies and entire sectors so we and they can make profitable progress towards net zero.

For example, we are working with Swiss food and drinks group Nestlé to reduce emissions across the full cycle of their products, from increasing agricultural yields with high performance fertilisers, to providing renewable energy for the manufacturing process and providing low-carbon fuels for transport.

We continue to engage with the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), and we are a member of its Technical Working Group that is currently working to define its methodology to set science-based targets for the oil, gas and integrated energy sector.

As a founding member of the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI) we are part of a group of 12 national and international energy companies. OGCI supports the climate goals of the UN Paris Agreement and recognises that collective actions, such as the reduction in methane emissions and accelerating the deployment of carbon capture and storage, will help drive the energy transition.

Decarbonising our energy value chains and operations

We plan to keep customers at the centre of our strategy as we decarbonise our energy value chains and operations. We will seek to base our actions on a deep understanding of the decarbonisation strategies and plans of the users of our energy products. In accordance with our energy transition strategy, the 10 ways below support our net-zero emissions ambition, including changing our product mix to lower-carbon intensity energy products:

• developing our low-carbon Power business through wind and solar;
• transforming refineries into energy and chemicals parks;
• providing low-carbon fuels;
• producing and selling hydrogen;
• providing electric vehicle charging;
• shifting to natural gas;
• using nature-based solutions;
• developing carbon capture and storage (CCS);
• research and development contributing to decarbonisation; and
• pursuing operational efficiency in our assets.