February 10, 2026 [S&P Global]- Shell CEO Wael Sawan has downplayed the company’s commitment to reach net zero emissions by 2050 as governments have struggled to create a conducive policy environment and world energy consumption has continued to surge.

“Our objective has been to be a net zero business in a net zero world,” Sawan said when questioned on the climate target at International Energy Week 2026 in London Feb. 10. “We cannot divorce Shell from what the world is doing,” he said.

In its Energy Scenarios 2026 outlook released in January, Shell said the world could consume a quarter more energy in 2050 than it did in 2025, and the company has targeted pumping at least 1 million boe/d more oil and gas by 2030.

That view could be at odds with the international energy company’s aim to reach net zero emissions by 2050, a target it first set out in 2020.

In 2024, Shell weakened its interim 2030 carbon reduction target but recommitted to its net-zero 2050 plans to support its Paris Climate Agreement goals.

Addressing the IE Week conference, Sawan said that governments should take an “energy addition” approach to supporting low-carbon fuels, encouraging the trillions of dollars of infrastructure investment needed to develop nascent markets without inhibiting fossil fuel growth.

“Were there a huge focus and ambition in enabling policies, then I think it [net zero 2050] is absolutely possible,” he said. However, he conceded that governments face a difficult challenge juggling competing spending demand for defense, infrastructure and affordable energy in an increasingly volatile landscape.

To date, mandates on low-carbon fuel use have proven the most effective way to cut emissions and encourage the development of markets such as biofuels, the Shell CEO said, stressing the importance of a government-led approach. “The concept of voluntary markets had not materialized in the way I admit we had hoped,” he said.

Spending discipline

Shell has invested over $10 billion on low-carbon infrastructure in recent years, and continues to progress with flagship projects including its ‘Northern Lights’ carbon capture and sequestration development in Norway and Europe’s largest green hydrogen project, Sawan said. Yet a growing focus on capital discipline has seen the company drop other high-profile investments, including a Rotterdam biofuels facility once set to become one of the largest in Europe.

Instead, the company has emphasized its focus on its core competencies in oil and gas, backing LNG as an important component of the future energy mix.

“We want to be the world’s leading integrated gas and LNG player,” Sawan said, projecting that consumption could keep growing for another two decades and reiterating plans to grow Shell’s sales volumes by 4%-5% each year through to 2030.

From a base of $20 billion, Shell plans to increase its spending on integrated gas and marketing by another $5 billion, Sawan said, underscoring the importance of reliable supply to support greener grids depending on intermittent renewables.

Price environment

As energy majors adjust to weaker oil prices and new competition from an imminent “superglut,” Shell has vowed to stay the course with its production plans.

After reporting the company’s weakest quarterly revenues in four years on Feb. 2, Sawan pledged to “focus on what we can control,” promising new spending cuts and more “tough choices” on shedding loss-making assets.

Speaking at the IE Week event, Sawan repeated that the company is “resilient to the downside” and can leverage price volatility in its trading department. Nevertheless, he pointed to recent price support from geopolitical factors including US-Iran tensions keeping benchmarks above more bearish forecasts.

“Having said that, today we sit on a $68/b, $69/b oil price, where the machine that Shell is built on is able to take advantage of that,” he said.

In LNG, meanwhile, the CEO remains sanguine on the arrival of new competition, noting opportunities to capture additional demand in segments such as container shipping and trucking in a weaker price environment.

“We might get at some point to a point in time where there is ample LNG in the market. That would be terrific. We built a company that is resilient to that,” he said.