Whether your TV tastes run to Fringe, 24, or the serials, like My Friend Flicka, or The Lone Ranger, there is always a recap from previous episodes.  So here goes.  “In our last episode,”  I talked about how Steve Fludder from GE and Richard Cohen from Bank of America are embracing green efforts because they are good for the bottom-line.  In this post I will look at the view from “big oil”.  Peter Voser, Royal Dutch Shell, was interviewed for ECO-nomics.   U.S. CAP (the U.S. Climate Action Partnership); he believes that market-based energy legislation is needed in this country and others and only by participating with the other stakeholders will it be effective.   His thinking is that to be effective, “energy legislation (must) drive supply security, drive lower fuel emissions, drive new jobs and preserve old jobs.”   “We will quite clearly look out for natural gas developments, which we see as a long-term source of energy that has a lot of positives.” (new projects)

We all think of Shell as an oil company, but they are big in the natural gas industry, too, having started 30 years ago and continue with innovation. (new projects) “By 2012, we will have more (natural) gas production world-wide than we have oil.”  His answer to the question of what will be needed as far as answering our environmental problems, his answer is “From a global perspective, the demand for energy will double by 2050. So we will need most of the energy forms that we know today.” Look for my next post about an alternative source and it’s not wind or solar, but something very different.)

Finally, his thoughts about future transportation; Mr. Voser thinks that by 2050 we will go from 1 billion cars world-wide to 2 billion cars, and about 40% of those will be electric.  That leaves about 1.2 billion to be fueled by other forms.  So hybrids, low-carbon-fuel cars, and more efficient engines are needed (all new or continuing projects)

There is much more in this Wall Street Journal section that we find very interesting, including a view from “big oil”, and a top ten ranking of “clean-tech” companies.  Look to future posts for some more information on these and other topics.