Shell Scenarios: 'A Better Life with a Healthy Planet. Pathways to Net-Zero Emissions'

Shell has been using scenario planning for over 45 years to help deepen its strategic thinking. These plausible visions of the future have helped generations of Shell leaders explore ways forward and make better decisions. Shell Scenarios ask “what if” questions, encouraging leaders to stretch their thinking and consider events that may only be remotely possible. The scenarios also help governments, academia and business in understanding possibilities and uncertainties ahead.

Canning House is delighted to welcome Wim Thomas, Shell's Chief Energy Advisor, to share Shell’s latest scenarios report, “A Better Life with a Healthy Planet: Pathways to Net-Zero Emissions”. It illustrates choices, challenges and ideas for society to decarbonise the global economy in a way that addresses both the challenge of climate change and the desire for broader economic growth. It builds on the 2013 Shell New Lens Scenarios – Mountains and Oceans – that showed that, with aggressive but plausible assumptions, getting close to net-zero emissions towards the end of the century, combined with economic growth, is a challenging but potentially achievable vision.

Wim Thomas is Chief Energy Advisor and leads the Energy Analysis practice in Shell. He has been with the Shell Group for some 33 years, with prior positions in drilling operations, subsurface reservoir management and commercial and regulatory affairs in gas. Wim is chairman of the UK national committee of the World Petroleum Council and is a former chairman of the British Institute of Energy Economics.

He will be joined for discussion by Gilberto Arias, former Panamanian diplomat and Senior Advisor at Energeia, and Sarah Chapman, CEO of Faro Energy.

The event will be chaired by Sir Mark Moody-Stuart KCMG, an Honorary Vice-President of Canning House.