Royal Dutch Shell Plc's attempts to meet Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) goals face criticism in Australia where environmentally conscious customers are protesting the oil major’s acquisition of a renewable energy company.
Customers of Powershop Australia - which manages residential and commercial customers onto solar and wind power – are reportedly threatening to switch providers because they don’t want to be customers of a fossil fuel company.
One group, called Environment Victoria, ended a partnership with Powershop Australia as they believed it was no longer tenable.
"You can't slap a bit of green paint on a multi-billion dollar pollution machine and expect us to ignore it," Environment Victoria Chief Executive Jonathan La Nauze was quoted in a Reuters report.
In Australia, Shell responded by highlighting its energy transition promise to halve its absolute emissions by 2030 and reach ‘net zero’ by 2050.
Investments renewable power businesses is part of the plan to achieve that ‘net zero’ target as it diversifies revenue streams into a higher volume of non-hydrocarbon energy.