(Bloomberg) -- Shell Plc is looking to sell part of its portfolio of nature-based carbon projects amid a market contraction for emissions offsets.
The plan continues the oil major’s shift as Chief Executive Officer Wael Sawan focuses on driving returns for the business. The company has retreated from operations where it doesn’t see a strategic advantage, such as offshore wind development, despite pledges in recent years to deliver significant growth in these low-carbon areas.
Shell first launched the portfolio of offsets, which covers dozens of projects, in 2018. Three years later, it set a target to generate 120 million carbon credits annually, an ambitious goal in a relatively small market. Shell also was the world’s largest publicly disclosed buyer of the units last year, according to BloombergNEF.
A Shell spokesperson said a number of options are being considered, but the current intent is for the company to retain a minority stake.
Shell is in talks with potential investors that include a group of private equity firms, according to people familiar with the matter.
The bulk of the projects for sale generate so-called REDD+ credits, which each represent 1 metric ton of carbon dioxide emissions saved by measures taken to avoid deforestation, the people said.
REDD+ projects have been subject to intense scrutiny during recent years as investigations revealed they significantly overstated their positive impacts.
Spot prices in the REDD+ market have collapsed to an average of $3.60 per credit this year from $12.50 in 2022, according to MSCI Carbon Markets. Demand hovered around 59 million tons of retirements last year, compared with a peak of 63 million tons in 2021.
The first signs of Shell’s withdrawal from the upstream carbon market emerged six months after Sawan took the top job in January 2023. The company’s prior commitment to spend as much as $100 million per year to build a pipeline of carbon credits was shelved as Sawan doubled-down on fossil fuels, Bloomberg reported.
That was part of a broader effort to retire targets set by his predecessor.
The structure of the proposed deal is being deliberated. One option would see Shell sell its equity stake in the projects but commit to continue buying the credits, the people familiar said.
An alternative would be for the firm to offload the projects with no corresponding offtake contract — an arrangement less likely to attract buyers, they said.
Shell’s planned sale comes amid a wider process of consolidation in the sector against a shifting regulatory backdrop. Compliance programs, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region, are spurring demand for credits that meet the rules of each individual market.
Conversely, new quality criteria from the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market, an industry watchdog, is affecting buyer choices in the unregulated global space.
“I’d expect Shell, like many oil majors, to diversify into engineered carbon removal like direct air capture,” said Kyle Harrison, global head of carbon and environmental markets at BNEF. “The pain point right now is cost and scale - as these improve it will open the door for more companies to adopt these solutions.”
(Adds that Shell is looking to sell a stake in the business in the first paragraph.)
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