Shell Quietly Shelves a Radical Plan to Offset Carbon Emissions

Six months after becoming the chief executive at Shell Plc, Wael Sawan quietly ended the world’s biggest corporate plan to develop carbon offsets, the environmental projects designed to counteract the warming effects of CO2 emissions.

In an all-day investor event in June, Sawan laid out an updated strategy for the European oil major that included cutting costs and doubling down on profit drivers like oil and gas. As important was what he omitted: any mention of the company’s prior commitment to spend up to $100 million a year to build a pipeline of carbon credits, part of the firm’s promise to zero out ...