Industry association review methodology

We selected the 39 industry associations for review because:

• we consider them to be influential in climate and energy transition-related public policy;
• they operate in regions or countries where we have significant business activities; and
• either their climate and energy transition-related policy and advocacy positions have attracted the attention of Shell, investors or non-governmental organisations, or Shell could be considered influential in these associations.

The assessment process comprised the following steps:

• Third-party consultants undertook data gathering and analysis of publicly available policy and advocacy evidence relating to the industry associations. This included reviewing their websites, government consultation submissions and social media posts.
• We sent an optional questionnaire to industry associations to seek more information regarding their policy and advocacy. We reviewed this information to determine whether to include it in the review.
• We reviewed the publicly available evidence against our assessment criteria to determine the assessment outcomes.

Following publication of this report, our Chief Executive Officer will write to the 39 associations to provide a copy of this report and, for associations where misalignment has been identified, to set out our expectations and next steps.

Assessment criteria

We assessed the associations’ publicly stated policies, and their advocacy positions mainly for the period January to December 2022, against the criteria provided in Table 3. These criteria are based on Shell’s global climate and energy transition policy positions; we selected the positions that we considered most relevant to reviewing the associations and adapted some criteria to make them more appropriate for use in the assessments.

We examined whether meaningful policy and advocacy position differences existed on policy issues which we consider to be relevant to the association. We also considered whether the policy and advocacy positions taken by the associations appear intended to help advance the energy transition or to impede the technologies or markets that will be needed.

If an association publicly stated a position that was contrary to one of Shell’s climate-related policy or advocacy positions, we considered this to be misalignment.

If an association did not publicly state positions in support of the goal of the Paris Agreement and/or net-zero emissions by 2050, we considered this to be misalignment. If an association stated support for the goal of the Paris Agreement and/or net-zero emissions by 2050, but this was not evident in the positions it took on headline national policy frameworks, we also considered this to be misalignment.

We considered which of our policy positions were relevant to each association. If an association did not state a position, and we considered the issue not relevant to the association, we did not assess misalignment for this issue. However, if an association did not state a position, and we considered the issue relevant to the association, we considered finding misalignment on this issue. We weighed up whether an association not stating a position on the issue could undermine our support for the goal of the Paris Agreement and for policies to help society achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.

An example of this is our assessment of associations that focus on upstream oil and gas issues. If such an association did not take a position on road transport decarbonisation, we would not find misalignment since this is not an issue we would expect an upstream association to take positions on. However, if an upstream association did not take a position in support of the direct regulation of methane emissions, and the ending of routine flaring by 2030 or sooner, we would find misalignment because we would expect an upstream association to take positions on these important issues.