Shell has today told a Dutch court a 2021 order that it should drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions lacks a legal basis and risks obstructing the fight against climate change. In a landmark ruling that shocked the energy sector, a lower Dutch court in 2021 ordered Shell to reduce its planet warming carbon emissions by 45% by 2030 from 2019 levels. The order related not only to Shell's own emissions, but also to those caused by the buyers and users of its products.
Shell said that implementing the ruling would force it to shrink its business and would only lead customers to shift to other suppliers of fuel. "This case has no legal basis", Shell's lawyer Daan Lunsingh Scheurleer told a court in The Hague on the first day of hearings in Shell's appeal against the order. "It obstructs the role that Shell can and wants to play in the energy transitio