Shell CEO van der Veer: Carbon dioxide regulation necessary to make the markets work

Shell CEO van der Veer: Carbon dioxide regulation necessary to make the markets work

If governments do not intervene, industries will meet the growing demands for energy in the cheapest way possible, and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions will increase. That puts Jeroen van der Veer, CEO of Royal Dutch Shell plc, one of the world’s leading petroleum companies, in an odd position: a leading capitalist campaigning for more government regulation.

“What is the role for government? What is the role for Shell? What is the role for our consumers?” asks van der Veer. “If you don’t specify that, nothing will happen, and in 10 years you will say, ‘We didn’t make the goal.’ And that would be bad news, because I think CO2 is a serious problem.”

Van der Veer has made the issue a top priority, working as the Energy Community leader of the World Economic Forum energy industry partnership in 2007-2008, and this year he was chair of the Energy Summit in Davos.

The problem is that the earth’s population will grow by 50 per cent in the next 40 years, to 9 billion people, and after 2015, easily-accessible supplies of oil and gas will probably no longer keep up with demand. Even if solar power, wind power, biofuels and nuclear energy are fully developed in that time, the demand for energy will be so high that “oil, gas and coal – a combination of fossil fuels – will still grow in absolute terms,” says van der Veer. “Maybe not in percentage, but people will use more of it.”

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