Asked last month by a frustrated investor if, “hand on heart”, Royal Dutch Shell was more concerned about “the sustainability of the company or with the sustainability of the planet”, chief executive Ben van Beurden acknowledged that climate change will be “the defining challenge” facing the oil industry for years to come. He then went on to describe the benefits of energy for millions of people around the world as “quite often a matter of life and death”. He could have been talking about his own industry, which has only just emerged from a brutal downturn and which, according to some, is facing an even graver challenge: whether to invest in oil at a time when climate concerns could see demand peak as early as the 2020s. It is a question that dominates the energy industry and will determine what the oil majors, including Shell and BP, look like […]