In Shell’s latest ad, they let us know that "[p]erfecting CCS won’t be easy, but we believe it is needed to tackle CO2 emissions."

Now, while the carbon capture and storage greenwash isn’t uncommon, to say the least, Shell’s ad is unusual in that Shell isn’t a coal company. 

Shell Oil Company’s parent, Royal Dutch Shell, did once own Shell Coal, before selling off its American and Australian mining operations to other companies, but now Shell is wholly concentrated on its oil and gas business. Yet on the "Real Energy" website, which advertises their alternative energy efforts with cutely animated power plants and refineries, the majority of the text is dedicated to their "carbon management" efforts.  Carbon management, apparently, mostly involves the gasification of coal and then supposed capture and storage of resulting carbon dioxide emissions. 

According to Shell’s website, "the CO2 from gasification [of coal] can be more easily captured than from smokestacks – potentially for storage underground." This implies that Shell, through the development of coal gasification technology, is doing its part to fight global warming—even though gasification only benefits the climate when paired with the non-existent, unfeasible CCS.  

So Shell gets to license its gasification technology to China, whose coal plants have no plans to even try for carbon capture and storage installations, while earning some of the $2.4 billion alloted for CCS research in the latest stimulus package.

Appropriately, Shell’s own attempts to take "clean coal" technology a step beyond their gasification have all suffered major setbacks. Australia’s Queensland project, promoted repeatedly on their website, was recently shelved and another "clean coal" test project, worth $5 billion dollars, has been put on indefinite hold. Clearly, carbon capture and storage has already proven itself economically inefficient. 

In addition, this is money that might have gone to developing true, renewable energy sources—if, that is, Shell hadn’t pulled out of solar energy years ago and more recently, withdrawn even from windfarms—though, of course, they still advertise their wind energy investments. 

Shell’s greenwash hasn’t gone entirely unnoticed; a previous ad of theirs, using the same cute and cartoonish imagery, was banned by the UK’s advertising authority for misleading consumers. The ad promoted a carbon neutral company that was, at the same time, aggressively developing tar sands harvesting. 

The United States also has a government body dedicated to regulating advertising; hopefully, the FTC will step in and do its job. This ad, with its deceptive "green" imagery and CCS lies, perfectly demonstrates the misleading potential of a well-executed greenwash.

If Shell really wanted to "tackle CO2 emissions," they’d stop supporting the coal industry, and instead put that money back into solar and wind energy. But that’s too much to hope for, isn’t it?