My question is why the government is funding Shell of all companies. The ones who have contributed to so much climate change and climate denial in the first place — shouldn’t this come out of their own pocketbook?
It doesn't really matter who is doing it so long as it's being done. The incentives align, and they're well positioned to do this.
1) They convert their entire operation to green energy sources and scrap all their current investments. Meaning a major shift in operations.
2) They capture their emissions in place and turn their emitting sources into neutral (or negative) sources. To be honest, the second is probably easier and cheaper. Remember, the problem isn't so much that we are producing carbon, it is that we are producing carbon and we're ending up with too much in the atmosphere. If we produce carbon and it doesn't end up in the atmosphere then we don't really have the same problem.
> Joanna Sivasankaran, the press secretary for the Minister of Natural Resources, said, “Carbon capture utilization and storage is not a silver bullet to the climate crisis but it is an important tool on the pathway to reaching Canada’s ambitious climate goals and reducing emissions in many industries, including oil and gas.”
No to privatizing profits while socializing loses.
This type of hardware-based market is much less amenable to the type of startup-driven innovation that we see in the software world, because building a large scale chemical plant is so incredibly expensive.
I'm afraid the sanction approach would merely force Shell to limit research/commercialization efforts and take jobs and tax revenues out of Canada.
You're not designing a greenfield system. But if you want to go hardline, there would be severe consequences for Canada.