Energy companies are betting demand for natural gas will rise at a break-neck pace for decades, undermining warnings that tackling climate change would require a rapid switch to renewable energy. Top oil companies including Royal Dutch Shell ( RDSa.AS ), BP ( BP.L ) and Total ( TOTF.PA ) are adapting with growing urgency to the need to develop cleaner energy sources, investing more and more in solar and wind power, electric vehicle technology and even forestation. Still, they see oil, and especially natural gas, the least polluting fossil fuel, playing a major role throughout the decades of transition and beyond as demand for electricity and plastics grows. “Shell’s core business is, and will be for the foreseeable future, very […]