Shell Offering Businesses Cash to Tackle Climate Change

By Nick Aster | September 9th, 2005 View Comments

shelllogo.jpgRoyal Dutch Shell is offering UK businesses cash to cut their climate changing emissions. The program is called “Shell Springboard” and its offering from £20,000 to £40,000 for business plans that in some way address the reduction of greenhouse gasses and succeed as viable businesses. Its an unsually proactive program because even the cynic in me can’t see an obvious Shell profit motive here, aside from the PR benefit. Shell is literally handing out cash to a few companies that happen to demonstrate excellent work toward greenhouse gas reduction. Can anyone see more?

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  • Steve Kropfl
    Executives at Shell are people too and this offer shows they do care enough about the climate problem that they are seeking the pearl of wisdom - a business plan from the likes of "Uncle Bilbo and Frodo" that can make a world of difference. This is the oil industry redefining themselves as energy companies. This is good.
    Chevron is searching for innovation, collaboration and conservation, as well with their campaign WillYouJoinUs Dot Com.
    So be positive and write that business plan (I'll be thinking of one tonight). If Jesus can turn water into wine twenty centuries ago just imagine what GE can do two millennia later.
    MBA Student Presidio World College, San Francisco
  • JustPassingBy
    Possible optimistic explanation :

    - scientists inside Shell have successfully explained managers that climate change was real and dangerous


    - economists inside Shell have deduced from those scientists data that it was a real threat even to Shell's business model in the short/mid term


    - all are so out of ideas and in such a hurry to fight it that they hope that financing such kind of short term, local based initiatives will help them build viable business models around it. As they are basically an energy company, they are probably willing to adapt to small local scale energy alternatives but don't really know how to do it yet. Hence this sudden will to encourage original and inventive initiatives : they probably expect to gather useful data for their incoming business model evolution.



    Clearly optimistic, but not improbable.

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