Shell believes it can be the world’s biggest power company by the early 2030s driven largely by renewables and gas. It thinks electrification will grow rapidly and eyes double digit returns from smart trading and management of flexibility.
In an interview with Bloomberg TV, Maarten Wetselaar, Integrated Gas & New Energies director, said the company is interested not in legacy power sector business or economics, but “what we see in next 20 years – intermittent demand and supply”.
He implied that Shell sees greatest margin from domestic retail – selling not just power, but solar, storage and smart home and electric vehicle management, nodding to recent deals for Sonnen and others as enablers.
However, generation is also important, as Shell does not believes consumers will want to buy clean energy from those that do not generate it.
While Shell has stepped up its investment in clean technologies in recent years, it will move rapidly to scale once its strategy is proven, said Wetselaar.
The only aspects of the new power sector he ruled out investing in were coal, nuclear and transmission.
See Bloomberg’s story and video interview here.
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Shells enters UK electricity market
Shell to double annual clean energy investments to $2bn
Shell signs PPA with England’s largest solar farm
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We have been here before. During the 1980s, Shell owned the UK’s most successful energy services company( Emstar), Plus the largest cavity wall insulation company( Thermocomfort). And then a new senior management team arrived, and got rid of both subsidiaries.
Having studied and been working in the energy market for 40 plus years, it seems that the old adage of “nothing new under the sun” fits the energy area very well.
If the latest Shell business model brings fresh investment to energy services that is good news., There are several suppliers making plans to bring ESCOs models to the market. Let us trust that they will be around much longer than the last time