Well, ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. I'm Andreas Borg, Vice President, Investor Relations ESG in Shell. Before I start, I know many of you will be thinking, "Where is Chirag Dhara, our Executive Vice President and my line manager?" I can assure you, Chirag as well, he's celebrating his wife's birthday today, and on behalf of the IR team, I therefore wish Susanne a very good day. I'm very happy to see you here today at the London Stock Exchange. We are also delighted to have many investors joining the meeting virtually, so I also want to extend a warm welcome to those both here in the room and those that are joining virtually. Thank you for attending Shell's annual ESG update, and thank you for the interest you're showing our company.
Before we start, let me briefly outline, and you won't be surprised about this, that there are no fire alarms planned today. If there is an alarm, we will therefore need to evacuate the building. We do that in the same way as we came in, and if that is not possible, then when you go out of this room, there is a fire exit to the right, and there is one to the left, through the door next to the meeting rooms. The emergency exits are highlighted with a bright green sign. I would also like to remind you to look after each other and to reduce the risk of trip and fall hazards by avoiding leaving bags in the floor, in the corridors between the chairs, or also out in the foyer. Make sure you don't leave bags where people can fall over them. Thank you.
So let us start. We will begin with a presentation from Wael Sawan, our CEO, and from Sinead Gorman, our CFO, outlining our belief about the energy transition and how they inform our strategy. They will also talk about how climate targets and ambition they will also talk about our climate targets and ambition, sorry, and will highlight the progress we have made so far on our journey to net zero emissions. Following a short break, we will also have the opportunity to ask Wael and Sinead, as well as Laszlo Varro, our Vice President, Strategy Insights and Scenarios, questions during the panel discussion and Q&A session. Please indicate your name and company when asking a question. Wael will then provide closing remarks, and our live stream will end.
I realize we may not be able to address all questions, but I and my investor relations colleague will aim to follow up if you have any unanswered questions. For those of you here in the London Stock Exchange, there's also an opportunity to continue the dialogue after the official program. The cautionary note is behind me. It may not look like a very exciting read, but it does contain important information. Please familiarize yourself with the note, which you can find together with the materials on our website under investors. And with that, I'm done, and I can hand over to you, Wael. The floor's yours.
Thanks, Andreas, and good afternoon all. I hope you all took that moment to study the cautionary note and be prepared for hopefully around an hour or so of giving you a bit of a heads-up as to where our strategy is, and then from there we'll take some Q&A. At our Capital Markets Day in June of last year, we told you that Shell will deliver more value with less emissions, with a focus on our guiding principles of performance, discipline, and simplification. We've already seen some good progress on the more value front. In 2023, we delivered shareholder distributions in excess of 42% of our CFFO. We demonstrated capital discipline by delivering at the lower end of our CapEx range, and we've already achieved $1 billion in structural cost reductions. Delivering more value will remain a top priority as we progress through our first sprint and beyond.
But today we want to give you more detail about the less emissions part of our strategy. Hopefully, many of you read the updated ETS, or Energy Transition Strategy, that we published just two weeks ago. We've reiterated our commitment to being a net zero emissions energy business by 2050, and this target is transforming every one of our businesses over the coming years. On that journey, by 2030, we will have our Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions compared to 2016 on a net basis, and we'll achieve near zero methane emissions. We'll also eliminate routine flaring from our upstream operations by 2025, subject to the sale of our Nigerian onshore subsidiary. And that's not all.
When it comes to the emissions created by our customers when they use our products, or the Scope 3 emissions, as we call them, we have introduced a range of 15%-20% reduction of our net carbon intensity by 2030 compared with 2016. That is down from our previous target of a 20% NCI reduction by 2030. We have a new ambition: to reduce our customers' emissions from the use of the petrol, diesel, and jet fuel that we sell, or our oil products, by 15%-20% by 2030 compared with 2021. Sinead and I will go into more detail about how our strategy will help us do that, but before we do so, it's important to realize that our strategy is based on two components. First, our beliefs about the energy system and the energy transition. Second, our competitive strengths and our capabilities.
Let me start with our beliefs about the energy transition. Energy has transformed lives, lifted people out of poverty, and demand for it will continue to grow. The world's population is estimated to grow by 2 billion people by 2050, and providing access to reliable energy to millions who do not have it is an absolute must. While the world has to find a way to supply this energy, it also needs to transition from fossil fuels to low-carbon energy to achieve net zero emissions and to tackle the urgent challenge of climate change. This means that the world needs an orderly, orderly, balanced energy transition, one that maintains secure and affordable energy supplies as the world's energy system decarbonizes. We're seeing this transition around us. The world's energy system is indeed changing, and there's a lot to be encouraged by.
Look, for example, at the accelerating growth of electric vehicles. In 2020, one in every 25 new cars that were sold in the world was electric. In 2023, this was one in five. Also last year, 510 GW of renewable capacity was added in the world. This was the fastest growth in the past two decades. There is a lot of progress being made, but it clearly is uneven, with some sectors moving fast while others face headwinds. Now, on the slide that you see, for example, 64% of the energy used in the building sector today is low-carbon. For industry, this number is around 36%. Transport is around 6%. In both buildings and industry, a lot of this energy is consumed in the form of electricity, which continues to be the largest source of carbon emissions today despite the growth in renewable capacity.
The scale of the effort required becomes even more apparent when you consider that the industry and transport sectors together are responsible for some 70% of all energy demand in the world and more than 55% of global emissions. Dive a bit deeper, and you see even more nuance. There are huge differences within these sectors. I just mentioned the impressive growth in EV sales. In the same sector, however, aviation, shipping, and heavy-duty road freight have a much harder time cutting emissions, and progress has been slower. We see the same in industry where light industry can more easily switch to electricity. This is not true for the production of steel, cement, and chemicals that need energy with high density or energy that can produce high temperatures. Determining progress becomes even harder when we add differences between countries, as we'll see on the next slide.
Different countries are moving at different paces with different approaches to the energy transition. Here on the graph, we see the G20 countries, which are the countries that have made the greatest stride so far. You can see some real pockets of progress, such as in passenger road transport due to the increase in EVs that I referred to in the previous slide, with commercial road transport showing real promise. This is represented by the number of blue squares showing countries that are moving forward in the transition. But as you can see, there are a number of countries that are not moving as fast, represented by the dark gray squares, and are still in the pre-transition phase.
In short, we see some positive signs both from a country and a sector perspective, but there is a lot more to do for the world to achieve net zero emissions with many possible pathways. That brings me to the next slide. Now, this chart shows how the energy transition could play out according to different climate scenarios, such as those developed by the IPCC and the IEA. Each line on the graph marks a different possible development for hydrocarbons and low-carbon energy up to 2050. The overall trend we see on this chart is that oil and gas gradually decline while low-carbon energy clearly grows.
When you consider the number of lines that mark all the different possible developments on this graph, what you can see and what you can infer is that there is a lot of uncertainty: uncertainty about the pace of the transition, uncertainty about how it will play out in different parts of the world, and uncertainty about how different sectors will deal with the challenge of cutting emissions. Looking at the entire energy system can be helpful to see broad trends, but if we want to know more precisely how the energy transition will play out, we need to zoom in, which takes me to our core energy transition beliefs. Now, before delving into each of our core beliefs, which are, centered around energy products and solutions, it's worth elevating the conversation so we are all grounded in the key broad trends that led us to these.
Firstly, energy demand will continue to grow as populations grow and prosperity rises. Secondly, more action will be taken by governments, businesses, and consumers to lower emissions. And thirdly, as we discussed on the previous slides, it is clear that the energy system is changing, but the shape and the pace of the transition will continue to be uncertain. From these, we were able to hone in on four core beliefs around the energy system, which inform our strategy. First, we believe that liquefied natural gas, or LNG, will play an even bigger role in the energy system of the future than it plays today. Second, the world's energy demand will have to be met by a combination of different types of energy, with a crucial role for oil, specifically in the transport and chemical sectors, even though demand could start to gradually fall in the 2030s.
Third, we believe low-carbon energy will grow, both in the form of renewable electricity and in the form of molecules such as biofuels and hydrogen. If you look at the dark blue part of this graph, you'll immediately see what I mean. By 2050, low-carbon energy represents a large share of the world's energy system. Fourth, despite this growth in low-carbon energy, the world still needs to find solutions to deal with the emissions from the oil and gas that will still be necessary. This means developing technologies to abate carbon if the world is to achieve a net zero emissions energy system. Let's look at these four core beliefs in just a bit more detail. First, oil and gas will have a role for the foreseeable future.
Let me start with LNG, which is expected to grow to 20% of the worldwide gas markets by 2040, up from around 13% today. Approximately 60% of the future LNG demand will come from Asia. On average, natural gas emits about 50% less carbon emissions than coal when used to produce electricity, and up to a third less when used to make steel. This means LNG will play a positive role in the energy transition. Emissions from China's coal-based sector alone are currently higher than the total emissions of the U.K., Germany, and Turkey combined. Replacing this coal with LNG can quickly help to bring down emissions from the sector and others. Switching from coal to LNG for power generation also improves air quality, and LNG can be easily transported to places where it is needed most, helping to provide energy security.
It also provides stability to power grids, complementing wind and solar power when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow. LNG isn't limited to the power and industrial sectors, as we see it increasingly supporting some of the hard-to-abate transport sectors. In shipping, for example, around a quarter of new ships being built today are designed to be dual fuel, with the ability to use LNG. We see a lot of growth potential. Beyond LNG, oil still has a role to play, especially in the transport sector that represents nearly 30% of final energy use today. Oil products such as petrol, diesel, and jet fuel meet more than 90% of this demand. Over time, demand growth is expected to slow down, and in the 2030s, demand for oil products could start falling.
With current worldwide government policies on carbon emissions, demand for fossil fuels used in all sectors could fall to below 70% by 2040. If governments add new policies in an effort to follow a path to net zero emissions by 2050, the part of the primary energy that fossil fuels supply could potentially drop even further. As I mentioned earlier, the pace of change will be different across the world, with some countries moving faster than others. Despite all this change, oil will continue to be critical, especially for aviation, shipping, and heavy-duty road transport, which means the world will need continued investment in oil and gas because even if demand drops, we believe it will drop less than the natural annual decline rate of 4%-5% of the world's oil and gas fields.
As oil and gas's share of energy demand gradually declines over the next decades, low-carbon energy will play a bigger role in the world's energy system in the long term. As you can see on the left-hand graph here, electricity could grow from meeting around 20% of the world's final energy demand today up to 50% by 2050. This is largely supported by the rapid deployment of renewable generation, primarily wind and solar, and the adoption of EVs. On the graph in the middle, we see the growth potential of low-carbon fuels such as sustainable aviation fuels, green hydrogen, and renewable diesel. Today, they supply only a small portion of the world's energy, but as you can see, the potential is there.
For this potential to be actually realized, it will require these fuels to grow in scale and fall in cost so that they can compete with traditional fuels such as petrol, diesel, and jet fuel. With the necessary government support, we expect low-carbon energy, both in the form of electricity and low-carbon fuels, to play an increasingly important role in the energy system of the future. But this won't be enough to be able to reach net zero. For this to happen, we believe there is a role for technologies that capture and store carbon, or CCS, and a compensation system wherein carbon emitters can buy credits that are created by, for instance, protecting nature and planting trees. If the proper regulations and standards are in place, the carbon abatement business could grow significantly, as shown on the right-hand graph.
So there you have it, our core beliefs about the future energy system. First, the world needs a combination of different types of energy with a critical role for LNG. Second, oil will have a continued role to play in transport, though demand could fall over time. Third, renewable electricity and low-carbon molecules will underpin the future energy system. And fourth, the world needs to abate carbon through CCS and carbon credits if it wants to achieve net zero. So with that, let's look at how these beliefs then inform our strategy. Let's start with the destination in mind. Our target to become a net zero emissions energy business by 2050 remains unchanged. How we are going to get there is what needs to evolve as we continue to learn and to adapt while remaining focused.
The best version of Shell that I have seen is a focused Shell, recognizing where our competitive strengths are and going after the areas where we can have the most impact, delivering more value with less emissions. Shell's strategy supports a balanced energy transition that requires different types of energy. Such a balanced transition means that we will need to responsibly deliver the oil and gas people need today while helping to build the clean energy system of the future as we transform our business in the coming decades. At our Capital Markets Day last year, we outlined why Shell would be the investment case through the energy transition, and as you saw in 2023, we're making progress on all fronts.
We're growing our world-leading LNG business further while bringing down emissions from our oil and gas production, enabling us to provide a secure supply of energy to the world, and doing so profitably. Last year, our integrated gas and upstream businesses were a big driver of the $54.2 billion in CFFO we generated. We're investing $10-$15 billion between 2023 and 2025 into low-carbon energy while transforming our downstream and renewables and energy solutions business by choosing value over volume, by repurposing our energy parks, by changing our marketing footprint with less oil products and more low-carbon fuels, and combining all of these actions with our world-class trading and optimization capabilities and our integrated power business. Performance, discipline, and simplification are our guiding principles for everything that we do across the organization.
This has been our mantra for a little under a year now, and we are seeing promising results which have enabled us to grow our free cash flow and to distribute more to our shareholders, all while lowering our emissions. You hear us say more value with less emissions frequently, and this slide helps to frame it nicely with a bit more depth so we can see what the drivers are across our company. What you see here is that today, around 70% of our cash flow comes from our integrated gas and upstream businesses, with the remaining 30% generated by our downstream renewables and energy solutions businesses. The opposite picture is true for our carbon emissions. Around three-quarters of emissions recorded by Shell come from our downstream renewables and energy solutions businesses, with the vast majority generated when our customers use our products.
The remaining emissions come from integrated gas and upstream, again with a large proportion coming from when our customers use our products. Shell will reduce carbon emissions over time as our product mix evolves to meet changing customer demand by growing LNG, by cutting emissions from our oil and gas production, and by offering more low-carbon solutions such as biofuels, renewable energy, and hydrogen while selling less oil products such as petrol, diesel, and jet fuel into the 2030s. With our strong evolving portfolio, the clear direction we have set out, and our continuous focus on performance, discipline, and simplification, we believe we are very well positioned to create value through the energy transition. Let's now take a look at how we've done in 2023 when it comes to our climate targets. And I have to admit, this is my favorite slide because it shows how we have delivered.
We've been clear that we want to earn the trust of our shareholders by doing what we say we are going to do. And this slide brings that to life for me under the less emissions part of our strategy. Let me take a moment just to walk you through our results. We have a target to reduce absolute emissions from our operations, our Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions, by 50% by 2030 compared with 2016, our baseline year. At the end of 2023, we've delivered a 31% reduction, which means we are well on our way towards achieving our target. For some context, while our emissions went down, worldwide energy-related carbon emissions went up by around 7% over the same period. At Capital Markets Day, we also introduced a target to achieve near-zero methane emissions by 2030, and we're delivering on that as well.
By the end of 2023, our methane emissions have decreased by 70% compared to 2016. Beyond that, we are well ahead of the industry when it comes to methane emissions intensity, with a measured intensity of 0.05% from all operated assets with marketed gas. This is more than 10 times better than the performance of the sector overall, which was 1.3% in 2023 according to the IEA. We've also made good progress towards our target to eliminate routine flaring from our upstream operations. We flared 0.1 million tons of natural gas in 2023, some 91% down compared with 2016 levels. And there's more. I want to share two changes in the way we measure our progress with reducing emissions from the products that we sell. The first concerns how our net carbon intensity operates.
NCI, or net carbon intensity, is the metric that we use to show our progress in changing the mix of the energy products that we sell to our customers. At the end of 2023, we've reduced the net carbon intensity of the energy products we sell by 6.3% compared with 2016, our base year. For comparison, we've been cutting our carbon intensity around twice as fast as the world since the net carbon intensity of the global energy system fell by around 3% over that same period. At Capital Markets Day, we outlined how our approach to renewable power would be much more selective and based on where we have inherent strengths and capabilities.
So we withdrew from the supply of renewable power directly to homes in Europe as we believe that others can do this better than we can, and as a result, we expect to sell a bit less power in total. Our focus will be much more on heavy-duty transport and industry because this is where our strengths lie, where we see the most value, and where we can have the most impact. These sectors are also among the most challenging when it comes to cutting emissions, and we're helping by providing our customers with alternatives that they can use today, such as LNG, and by developing solutions for the long term such as hydrogen.
Acknowledging uncertainty and the pace of change in the energy transition, we've chosen to retire our 2035 target of a 45% reduction in NCI, or net carbon intensity, of the energy products we sell compared with 2016. We are now targeting a 15%-20% net carbon intensity reduction by 2030 against that same year of 2016. That is compared to a 20% reduction as per our previous target. Let me be clear once more. We have not changed our destination of becoming a Net Zero emissions energy business by 2050, but the route there is not going to be linear. Which brings me to the second thing I want to say about reducing emissions from the products that we sell.
We have set a new ambition to reduce absolute Scope 3 emissions related to the use of the oil products we sell by 15%-20% by 2030 compared with 2021. Achieving this ambition would represent more than 40% reduction from 2016. To give this number more context, this would be in line with the European Union's emissions reduction goals for transport, which are among the most ambitious in the world. Achieving this ambition, which covers 40%-45% of our total emissions, will mean reducing sales of oil products such as petrol, diesel, and jet fuel as we support our customers transitioning to electric mobility and lower-carbon biofuels. At the end of 2023, we achieved a reduction of 9% compared to 2021. So step by step, we're making progress towards achieving our strategy and delivering on our targets, which we believe are Paris-aligned. With that, let me hand over to Sinead to walk you through how we are transforming each of the respective businesses to enable Shell to become a Net Zero emissions energy company. Sinead.
Thank you, Wael. Perfect. So by now, you've all heard about our beliefs and how they inform our strategy. Now I want to zoom in a bit and show you what that means for our businesses because that's where our energy transition story comes to life through the products we provide, the customers we serve, and the sectors and regions in which we operate. There are three main parts to our story. Firstly, we have a leading integrated gas business, which we intend to grow, supplying liquefied natural gas with some of the lowest emissions intensity in the industry.
Secondly, we have an advantaged upstream portfolio delivering higher margin, lower carbon barrels critical to our energy system now and in the future. And thirdly, our downstream renewables and energy solutions business, which we are transforming to help our customers decarbonize through the energy transition. Now let's take a closer look at integrated gas and upstream. Wael talked earlier about our belief that global demand for LNG will continue to grow and the critical role LNG plays in the energy transition. We aim to deliver LNG with some of the lowest greenhouse gas emission intensity in the industry. We will do so by building new plants, which are more efficient, and implementing projects to reduce methane emissions from existing assets and our shipping fleet. Two standout examples are LNG Canada and the North Field expansion in Qatar.
When it starts up, our LNG joint venture in Canada will use natural gas and renewable electricity to reduce emissions from the plant by more than one-third compared with the world's best-performing facilities. And in Qatar, we are a partner in the North Field expansion, the largest LNG project in the world. By using carbon capture and storage, North Field East could reduce its Scope 1 and 2 emissions. And as we grow our LNG business, reducing methane emissions is vital. At Capital Markets Day, we set a target to achieve near-zero methane emissions by 2030. As you can see in the chart on the right, we are industry leaders. In 2023, we continue to keep our methane emissions intensity well below 0.2%. And over the years, we have focused on increasing transparency and improving the accuracy of our methane emissions reporting and across the industry.
We have done so by working with partners, governments, and universities to develop and implement technologies to monitor and reduce methane. For example, by the end of 2023, around 80% of our fugitive emission sources at our operated oil and gas and LNG production facilities used leak detection and repair programs. We are also a contributor to the United Nations Oil and Gas Methane Partnership Reporting Framework, and I'm proud to say we were awarded Gold Standard status for our reporting. This is the third consecutive year that Shell has achieved the highest standard. Moving on to Upstream. Growth in oil demand could slow in the second half of this decade, and it could start declining in the 2030s. However, we believe continued investment in oil and gas will be needed because the natural decline of the world's oil and gas fields is faster than the decline in demand.
Here, our aim is to reduce emissions from oil and gas production while keeping liquids production stable through to 2030. Our oil production will increasingly come from our deep-water positions. Looking at the chart on the right, you can see our deep-water portfolio has one of the lowest greenhouse gas intensities in the world for oil production, especially in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, where we are the leading operator. Roughly 40% of the projects delivering 500 kboe day of new production from 2023 to 2025 comes from deep water. These barrels are a great example of how we create more value with less emissions. There are some fantastic examples of how we're working to further reduce emissions from our oil and gas assets. One that I often talk about is from the Gulf of Mexico.
Our new platform, Vito, is expected to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by around 80% over its operating life compared with its original operating design. 10,000 miles across the Pacific Ocean, we have Timi in Malaysia, our first wellhead platform powered primarily by solar and wind. This is a great example of how we are looking at ways to electrify our offshore oil facilities and using wind and solar power to reduce operational emissions. I expect more of this to come as we implement carbon management plans or reduction plans across our portfolio, moving us closer to achieving our target to halving Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2030 and eliminating routine flaring from our upstream operations by 2025, which is five years ahead of the World Bank initiative.
To summarize, our deep-water portfolio is very well positioned to continue to drive and deliver high-margin, lower-carbon barrels as we maintain our focus on value over volume, allocating resources to those opportunities that rank positively from both a financial and a carbon perspective. Now turning to downstream. Renewables and energy solutions, which is also undergoing the necessary changes to help our customers decarbonize. As Wael mentioned earlier, our strategy is based on our beliefs of the energy system and an ambition to lead in areas where we have competitive strengths and where we believe we can contribute more in the energy transition. This means focusing our efforts on transport and industry, our two biggest customer sectors. These two sectors make up more than 70% of total global final energy demand and more than 55% of global carbon emissions today.
We have identified decarbonization pathways for our customers in these two sectors, as shown on the slide. Each pathway is based on where we believe we have the competitive advantages to provide our customers with the products that they need through the transition. This leads us to focus on four decarbonization areas this decade. Our first two focus areas will help decarbonize transport. Here, we are expanding our electric vehicle charging network and growing our biofuel production capacity to supply low-carbon fuels for cars, trucks, ships, and planes. These focus areas play to the strength of our brand, deep customer relationships, and global reach. Moving on to industry, where the products we sell today, such as LNG, are the starting point for many customers on their journey to Net Zero. We want to help our customers reduce emissions further.
This is why our third focus area for this decade consists around investing in technologies to capture and store carbon, as well as the development of new technologies which can help decarbonize this sector in future decades, such as hydrogen. Power is our fourth focus area for this decade to support the decarbonization of both industry and transport. As the energy system continues to electrify, we want to be able to supply our customers with renewable power. We also want to integrate this power into other parts of our business to reduce our emissions and enable the production of low-carbon solutions for the future. We are continuing to selectively grow our integrated power business with a focus on value, making disciplined choices on where we invest and where we step back.
Now let me tell you more about how we are putting the strategy into action and how our actions are supporting our customers to decarbonize and reduce emissions. As Wael said earlier, we have set a new ambition to reduce absolute Scope 3 emissions related to the use of oil products we sell by 15%-20% by 2030 compared with 2021. So how do we get there? By doing two things at the same time: gradually reducing our oil product sales and growing our low-carbon offerings, such as EV charging and biofuels. The actions we outlined at our Capital Markets Day are what will enable this.
Firstly, the transformation of our energy and chemical parks will allow us to produce more low-carbon products and is already underway at Norco in the USA, Scotford in Canada, Pernis in the Netherlands, and Rhineland in Germany, where we recently made the decision to stop processing crude oil at the Wesseling site and convert the hydrocracker to produce base oils. We are continuing the planned divestment of our Bukom and Jurong Island assets in Singapore. Secondly, we are strengthening our global marketing network by making value-driven decisions region by region. This means growing in certain markets while reducing our presence in others where it no longer makes sense. One example is Shell Pakistan, where we have signed an agreement to sell our shareholding. Thirdly, we are growing our EV charging and biofuel businesses, two of our focus areas for the decade given our competitive strengths.
We will continue to scale our network of public EV charging points, aiming for around 200,000 by 2030. At the end of 2023, we had around 54,000, up from 27,000 the year before. Most of these are in China, one of the fastest-growing electric mobility vehicles out there. With biofuels, we will continue to build our market-leading position. Shell is already one of the world's largest energy traders and blenders of biofuels, meeting around 6% of global demand today. We are also the largest producer of second-generation ethanol and the leading sugar cane ethanol producer globally through our Raízen joint venture in Brazil. So I've just talked about how we will reduce absolute Scope 3 emissions from the use of our products by selling less oil products while growing our low-carbon offerings. Doing so will also get us closer to meeting our net carbon intensity target.
Now I'd like to focus on two other important drivers to lower the net carbon intensity of our portfolio: growing sales of renewable power and developing carbon capture and removal. We are building selective integrated power positions to enable the transition, focusing on markets and regions where circumstances are favorable and where we can participate across the value chain: places like Australia, the USA, Europe, and India, where we aim to maximize value by investing in renewable generation and battery storage and taking advantage of our trading and optimization capabilities whilst we supply renewable electricity to primarily business customers. In the same way that we combine power with other activities, we are also using our existing capabilities and the integrated nature of our business to unlock the potential of CO2 capture and storage.
By implementing CCS projects at our facilities, we are reducing our own emissions and those of the products that we sell. In the future, as customer demand increases with strong policy and regulatory support, we will be able to serve more and more customers, especially in sectors like heavy industry. So let's take a look at the investments we have made in 2023 and what we plan for 2024 to 2025. As our portfolio evolves, we are making significant investments in low-carbon energy. In 2023, we spent $5.6 billion in low-carbon investments. That includes EV charging, biofuels, and renewable power. This is almost one-quarter of our total capital expenditure in the year. In line with the guidance provided during Capital Markets Day, we are investing $10-$15 billion from 2023 to the end of 2025 to develop profitable, low-carbon opportunities that enable the energy transition.
We will do so in a disciplined manner, investing in projects that meet our internal hurdle rates and leverage our strengths. On average, we expect to maintain several similar levels of investment, around 20% of total annual CapEx, on low-carbon energy solutions in 2024 and 2025. This makes us a significant investor in the energy transition. Through our disciplined investments and actions, we are transforming our company to deliver more value with less emissions, gradually changing the portfolio mix of the energy products we sell in line with changes in customer demand over time. This slide shows how our sales portfolio has changed in the last seven years, where we are now, and how it may change as we get closer to the end of the decade.
As we have already said, we will continue to produce LNG and oil with less emissions, while the mix of the products we sell will move towards low-carbon solutions like biofuels, renewable energy, and hydrogen, and away from oil products such as petrol, diesel, and jet fuel. Three factors will be vital on the journey to Net Zero policy: technology and continued investment. With good policy, governments can encourage demand and investment in low-carbon solutions. A key part of our engagement with governments and regulators focuses on this specifically. In the U.S.A., for example, we advocate permits for projects to be granted faster and with fewer hurdles. In the EU, we supported the Fit for 55 package, including targets for the use of renewable hydrogen and advanced biofuels. Technology and innovation has been and will be one of the most critical aspects of the transition.
It is also part of our DNA, with more than 125 years of experience developing and deploying new technologies and products. And finally, we are a leading investor in research and development across our peer group today. In 2023, we spent over $600 million in R&D projects that contributed to decarbonization, almost half of our total R&D expenditure in the year. And we will continue to invest through our partnerships with startups and leading academic institutions in the latest technologies to take us forward in the energy transition. Now let me hand back to Wael.
Thank you, Sinead. I want to end where we started, with the point that the world needs a secure supply of affordable and low-carbon energy. This is why Shell's strategy supports a balanced transition by delivering the oil and the gas that people need today while helping to build the clean energy system of the future. We have a strategy that creates shareholder value and sets out how we will provide reliable, affordable energy to our customers while transforming to become a Net Zero emissions energy business by 2050. On this slide, we show how we will measure our progress. Together with our guiding principles of performance, discipline, and simplification, and a razor-sharp focus on those areas where we have competitive advantages, we will continue to deliver in the years to come, creating more value with less emissions. I thank you for your attention.
Thank you, Wael. Thank you, Sinead. I think it's now time for a break. We are actually a little bit ahead of time, so I suggest that we come back at the top of the hour. For those here in the room at the foyer where you came in, there will be some refreshments. To everybody, we would like you to be back at the top of the hour such that we start at the same time and we don't have people waiting online for people here in the room coming back in. If I could ask you to please come back on time at the top of the hour. Thank you. Thank you for being back on time. We are ready to start the Q&A session now.
The first thing I have to tell you is that I have taken the decision to ask the first six questions, and you're laughing, but it's true, and I apologize for it upfront. I realize it can be perceived as Shell asking Shell questions, but the rationale is actually the opposite. Every year, I talk to hundreds of institutional investors, and especially those that are somewhat ESG-biased in one way or another. In that light, I felt there were a few messages as well as a few critical questions that I believe we should address, and I've therefore decided to start with them. So here we go. The first two questions are around setting the scene, and the first one is for you, Wael. What has changed for Shell since the first energy transition strategy in 2021?
Let me just okay, good. The audio's on.
Look, a lot has changed. Context has changed. Three years ago, of course, you look back, we hadn't foreseen at least most of us hadn't foreseen geopolitical conflicts like we see at the moment in Europe, what we see, of course, in the Middle East, and what you see with the polarization of the issues between the U.S. and China. Inflation and escalation and interest rate spikes as well play into the current thinking of where we are. There's a lot of positives as well. Inflation Reduction Act was one of the boldest measures that we have seen in a long, long time. Fit for 55 was another big step forward. The Chinese really leaning in to the deployment of renewable generation. All that context, I think, has fundamentally shaped some of the thinking that's gone into ETS24.
But if I take it on the internal side, three things I'd point to, Andreas. I think, one, we've learned a lot. Since ETS21, we've learned a lot, and you've seen us respond to some of those learnings. For example, for a long time, we believed in hydrogen mobility, particularly passenger vehicles. That wave didn't come like we had hoped, and so we've backed away from that a bit. We tried to earn a living in the home energy space, supplying power to homes. Again, we realized we were not advantaged in that space. So I think we've learned where we can do well, such as in biofuels and EV, and we've learned where we can't do as well.
I think the second bit is what's happened since then is we've tried to really crystallize our strategic clarity, in particular around the more value with less emissions, and we've talked about that in the presentation. I do think that focus on competitive strengths, recognizing that we will only actually shape our future in the energy transition if we have our shareholders on board and if we are able to continue to reward them and to attract the capital that is required to grow our investment in the energy transition. And so that clarity, more value, less emissions, and what you see, hopefully, in ETS24 and in capital markets today, that two sides of the same coin coming together to crystallize our strategy, I think, is another step forward. And thirdly, and finally, I'll just reference performance.
In ETS21, in Energy Transition Strategy 21, a lot of the discussion was about what's the next target and what's the next ambition and what's the next target and what's the next ambition. We've tried to focus on actually deliver, shift the debate from promises to actually show me what you're doing. And that's why I was really pleased with the momentum that we have brought forward. That's why we put performance, discipline, and simplification as a core part of the strategy, both in delivering the more value as well as the less emissions. So hopefully, that gives you a flavor, Andreas.
Yeah, thank you. And you're not laughing any longer. You realize I will ask six questions. So we will move on to number two, and that's for you, Sinead. Sinead, you were the decision executive for the energy transition strategy publication. And in that light, following question.
The energy transition creates a lot of discussions in society. What were, for you, the key dialogues and decisions within Shell ahead of the publication of the ETS24?
There were a lot of discussions in Shell as we ramped up to this. I'll probably keep it shorter than I could go with that answer. First and foremost, for me, was consistency. What you'd expect from any CFOs wanting to ensure that what we say is consistent throughout. And for me, it was important that we have one strategy. It is one. It's not a different strategy depending on whether we talk about value and a different strategy when we talk about less emissions. So it is one strategy.
But to be really sure about that, we took the time to sit down and to, as both executive committee, as a board across many different groups inside and outside of Shell, talk about what the core beliefs are. And you see those come up in the presentation. I think Wael spoke to most of those earlier on, and you see it, hopefully, in the document. And that allowed us to be very, very confident that the more value, less emissions is stable. It is exactly what we believe. So what you're seeing now is not any new financial targets or anything else. It's actually us just playing out the other side of the coin, exactly what we said. So we're not doing anything different than we said in CMD or Capital Markets Day. We're just playing that through. So that's the first one.
Second, for me, was that as we played this out and as we talked about it, it had to require discipline, particularly around capital allocation. We need to be humble about the fact that we don't know where some of these value pools will show up as you go through the decades. So it's about creating that optionality, being able to actually adjust as demand changes, and ensuring that we, therefore, focus on where we allocate our capital according to where can we add value, what are our capabilities. And the third one is really linked to what Wael just discussed. It was around the cultural side of things. I hope what you're seeing is that what we go out with is very much boringly consistent. It is about making sure that we deliver exactly what we've said.
So getting the culture behind it, getting the company behind it, making sure that there was no surprise for the organization, that they understood where we were going. And we spent a lot of time doing that. So those are the sort of three areas I would go to, which was just important before we actually talked to the market about it.
No, thank you for that. And I hope that's good for scene setting. Now, moving more critical questions that we also receive. And I will go to you, Laszlo. As a scientist, as an energy transition expert, is Shell Paris-aligned? And maybe link to that, why are not all external experts saying the same as Shell when it comes to being Paris-aligned or not?
So the Paris Agreement envisages available two degrees climate stabilization by achieving an equilibrium of emissions and sinks.
This is the legal text of the Paris Agreement achieved in the second half of the century. There is no commonly agreed standardized methodology of how do you translate this global ambition into the business model and business plans of an individual private corporation, especially in the energy sector. So consequently, we went back to first principles, and we worked from the IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report published last year, which published an assessment of a scenario database. So Shell has its own internal scenario analysis. But in addition to our internal scenario analysis, we also worked on the IPCC's assessment of what is the quote-unquote "scientific consensus." Now, some of those scenarios have very high reliance on either bioenergy or carbon capture and storage, technologies that Shell is very familiar with. And we didn't want to have excessive reliance on those technologies, given the debates around them.
The common feature that emerged is that there's a remarkable convergence among those scenario pathways towards around the 20% intensity reduction by 2030. There is also a remarkable consensus among the various scenarios that in the first stage of the transition, a disproportionate share of the carbon intensity reductions is delivered by a rapid phase-out of coal-fired power generation by low-carbon electricity sources. For example, in the IEA Net Zero Roadmap that you might be familiar with, 40% of the intensity reduction is delivered by the phase-out of coal-fired power generation. Now, you cannot phase out coal-fired power generation from Shell's portfolio because it was never there.
In fact, as LNG plays a role in phasing out coal-fired power generation, what happens from an accounting point of view is that a state-owned utility in Asia would cut its Scope 1 emissions by 2 tons, and Shell's Scope 3 emissions would increase by 1 ton, and global emissions will decline by 1 ton. So given the role of LNG in this coal phase-out, our business model is quite different from the global average. So we were very confident on the basis of the scenario assessments that a 15%-20% range, given Shell's business model focusing on transport and industry, is appropriate. Just to illustrate the state of the transition, we are actually more than halfway between 2016 and 2030. As Wael mentioned, so far, the global energy system delivered a slightly more than 3% intensity reduction, including COVID.
100 million electric cars would cut the carbon intensity of the transport sector mathematically by 0.75%. And 100 carbon capture and storage projects, identical to the Quest project that Shell operates in Canada, would cut the carbon intensity of the industrial energy use globally by 0.9%. So yes, a 15%-20% reduction ambition, given Shell's business model, we are very confident that that's aligned with a 1.5 pathway.
Thank you, László. The next question is probably the most frequent received question since we announced the energy transition strategy two weeks ago. I will ask that to you, Sinead. Why did you change the targets and introduce an ambition immediately before the Milieudefensie Court case hearing, the appeal case starting next week in The Hague?
This is a really short one. Very simply put, in 2021, when we came out with the energy transition strategy, we said it would be within three years. We would go out for an advisory vote from our investors. It's three years later, which means it comes to this AGM. So we had two choices. We leave it a little bit closer, so into later in April, so right before the AGM, which would mean slightly after the court case, or bring it up forward. What you see with us is transparency. We get it out there. We allow people to review it. We brought it forward. So in that sense, timing is just linked to what we promised before.
Super. Thanks. Looking a little bit ahead and you talk to it, we have the 2024 annual meeting coming up. And in that light, László, a question for you.
What do you think about the Follow This resolution requesting Shell to do more in terms of energy transition?
So I don't think there is a debate between us and Follow This that the energy transition should be accelerated. That's a wealth of scientific evidence showing that it is not on track. That acceleration primarily will have to involve the expanding clean energy investment. It's a capital-intensive industry. You have to put steel into the ground. And I'm actually quite grateful to Follow This because they express a strong confidence in Shell's ability to build clean energy projects. Now, but unfortunately, the specific resolution proposal is not about that. The specific resolution proposal would involve essentially dismantling some of Shell's core business. And it's very important to understand this difference. And just let me show you with an example. Shell started to significantly invest in solar power in India.
Maybe we should do more, and that's a good debate to have. But our solar power investments in India have precisely zero impact in Shell's accounted Scope 3 emissions for two reasons. One, it is a coal-dominated energy system, and we are not selling coal in India. The second, it's a rapidly growing energy system, and we are capturing the growth. In order to cut the Scope 3 emissions of Shell to the level proposed by Follow This, we would need to stop supplying gas to families that heat their homes with gas. Now, again, there is no dispute that energy efficiency of the building sector should improve. There is no dispute that gas boilers should be replaced by air source heat pumps.
However, up until there are 100 million families who want to heat their home in the winter, it is not our role to tell them that they have to freeze. And I would also record that for our LNG business. In the electric sector, wind turbines and solar panels operate with a zero marginal cost. Nobody would ever stop operating a wind turbine and shut down a wind turbine in order to run a gas plant on LNG. Gas plants are dispatched only when wind and solar is not available, or when hydropower is not available in Brazil, or when nuclear power is not available in Japan. So it is LNG that maintains the security of LNG supply. We have a responsibility to do about this.
I have to tell you that I'm actually very grateful for having a very good collaboration in Germany with the German government, where energy policy is run by the Green Party. I'm pleased to say that we are very well aligned with the Green Party-led German energy policy on the unique importance of LNG in maintaining energy security. To sum it up, how to accelerate clean energy investment and what is Shell's role in that is a very useful debate. But that specific Follow This proposal is, in our view, well-intentioned but misguided.
Last question so you can start to be ready for asking your questions. And that's for you, Wael. And it is a little bit long, but I hope it works. But let's go here.
While you provide limited guidance to shareholders up to and beyond 2030, you also retired the 2035 net carbon intensity target. Why can you not share more? And given the uncertainty in the energy transition, would it not have been better to wait and see how your power business develops and stay committed to the original net carbon intensity targets for both 2030 and 2035?
That is a long one. Let's try to divide it into two. I think your first question is around just the visibility out to the future. I think, Andreas, we've given quite a bit of visibility, both on the more value part of what we part of our strategy, as well as the less emissions. I mean, remember, in Capital Markets Day, we were very clear. We're going to stabilize our liquids production, our oil production, up to 2030.
We said we're going to grow our LNG production by 20%-30% by that point in time. We gave EBITDA estimates for many of our more nascent businesses. We talked about the 6% free cash flow growth per year, year after year, between now and 2030. So I think we've given quite some guidance to our shareholders when it comes to more value. When it comes to less emissions, we've talked about earlier today the other guidance we've given, which is on Scope 1 and 2, our commitment to having our emissions. And we gave you an update on the progress. We've talked about a clear destination of near-zero methane emissions, which is one of the three core planks of COP28 and what the conference of parties announced at the time. So again, more clarity there.
We've talked about ending routine flaring by 2025, subject to the sale of SPDC. We have given guidance around Scope 3, not just one element of guidance, which we've given in the past. We've given the net carbon intensity. We've now introduced the 15%-20% emissions reduction from oil product sales. So I think we've given a very rich picture between now and 2030. The question then becomes, how much do you want to give beyond 2030? What's very clear is our destination of 2050. But I hope that what you've seen from this management team is we're not going to simply give you a chart in 2040, which we don't have line of sight to how it's going to actually materialize from a company perspective. We know what we can do by 2030.
We felt that as you approach 2030, you're going to get a lot more visibility for what happens between 2030 and 2040. And you can choose at that point to be able to share the next set of targets and ambitions. But we do not want to be in a position where we are promising things that we do not have line of sight to today, which is why we felt it was appropriate, rather than simply take the easier route of, let's keep 2035 out there and come back in a few years and decide what we do with it. No, I'd much rather this management team coming into place over the last year or two, let us just be clear on what we see and what we can actually deliver.
And then you can hold us to account year after year because we're going to give you the visibility on all of these metrics year after year. And you can judge whether we are making the progress that we are making. So I think on balance, we found the right opportunity there, Andreas, to be able to share enough while at the same time humbly recognize what we don't fully know between now and 2050.
Thank you. Clearly, I've asked my six questions and overplayed my role. But I now invite you to ask your questions. It's quite important that you use the mic that you will be getting because else the virtual room cannot hear your questions. And for the virtual room, please type in your questions using the Lumi platform. I will then get the questions up here.
I will read it up such that the audience at the London Stock Exchange can hear those questions. So that's how it works. But yeah, raise your hands if you have some questions. So let us start here on the second row to the left.
Thanks, Andreas, and thanks, everybody, for really helpful events so far. I've got a question for Wael and a question for Sinead. And I promise the second one is really short. So it's Matt Crossman from Rathbones Group. Apologies, Andreas, to everyone on the call. So just setting in context, according to the IEA, we need that rapid decrease in all fossil fuel use if we're going to hit net zero. And the IEA now projects that demand for coal, oil, and natural gas will all peak this decade, even without any new climate policies.
So the problem we have as investors in this sector as a whole, as opposed to just specifically in Shell, is that it seems like every oil company sees that future in LNG and is positioning themselves towards that as the transition fuel, while the overall picture in the medium and long term is of one of decline in natural gas demand. So if you look at the IEA's net zero scenarios, it drops from 4,150 billion cubic meters in 2022 to 900 billion cubic meters in 2050. So the first question for you, Wael, is many of your peers say that they're going to benefit from this LNG trend and that they will be the best and the cheapest. How are you going to corner that demand and make sure you extract those barrels that everybody else says they're going to extract?
And then very, very quickly for you, Sinead, it's about in the guidance given around the liquids target, the replacement target, the 15%-20% cut. So we understand that that 2030 target has been issued, but actually the oil production guidance is unchanged and is stable. So how do you square the 15%-20% target cut with an unchanged production guidance? Thank you.
You want to start with that?
Yeah. So I prefer your one. Very quickly, we'll switch now. What we're basically saying is the ambition is 15%-20% done in terms of oil products. And really, what we're saying there is it's a bit of a mixture. We will start declining in terms of our fuel sales over time. That will be linked to demand. But we'll obviously, of course, increase in terms of drop in fuels and different aspects like that.
So remember, you see biofuels switching over, and those will come through as well. So that's one side of it. You also then alluded to the fact that our crude production stays, in effect, flat. That is because we already hit the target of decline. As you know, we've had a significant decline coming through. So what we've basically said on our liquids production, and it's the production, not the sales, because that's the other side of it was sales on the ambition, basically, that stays flat because we've already met it. And because what we see is we actually have to run quite hard to even just keep it at that level, given the decline rates of the field, to two very different aspects, one on sales and one on production.
Thanks, Sinead. And I'll dovetail from there.
I mean, remember, we sell 2-3 times the amount of oil products that we actually produce. So this is about just getting that portfolio in more and more sync. On the LNG side, it's roughly 1 to 1. So third-party sales are equivalent to our equity-produced sales. And that's a balance that we like for that business. And as Sinead said, for biofuels, it's 6-7 times more than what we actually produce. So this is just making sure that production is matched with the appropriate level of sales in our portfolio. When it comes to LNG, I think, firstly, the very fact that all of our peers are talking about the very strong expectations around LNG is further confidence for us that we are very much on the right track.
And remember, when the IEA talks about the role of oil and gas, they're not talking specifically about LNG. LNG is actually growing much faster than what gas is currently growing at. And you'll see in the IEA, and I'm sure if we want to deepen into it, Laszlo can speak to that, actually, LNG disproportionately grows at the expense of gas because many of the countries that have been typically producing domestic gas for their own consumption are running out of some of that gas: Bangladesh, Vietnam, Philippines, and the like. And therefore, mobile gas being able to get to different parts of the world, in particular, as that supply continues to grow and create more liquidity in the market, I think, is a good thing. Now, specifically to your question, how do we win in this space?
I think, firstly, to recognize we start in a very, very good position. We are the single largest player in LNG, international energy company. I mean, of course, only QatarEnergy is larger than us on equity production. And we have a very, very strong portfolio that's coming through: LNG Canada, the two Qatari projects, Nigeria Train 7. So we have a significant amount of supply. We also have relationships that we built with our customers for decades. And last year was the year where we opened up the largest number of markets in the history of Shell's LNG business. And what you find is those relationships are holding us in good stead as we actually are able to go long in points in the market where we see attractive prices. And whenever there's softness in the market, we try to pull more supplies into our portfolio.
So we're playing the long game here. We have, I think, an unparalleled set of assets. I think we have an unparalleled trading and optimization capability that's been demonstrated time after time after time. I like the position we sit in. And we've made very clear in our ETS24 and Capital Markets Day, we're in LNG to win, not just to participate. And so we are absolutely intent on continuing to do that.
Thank you for the question. Martijn, I don't know. Did you have a question?
Yeah. Yeah. No. If we have so many questions. But I had a few more. So I wanted to sort of briefly follow up on that LNG question because particularly the long-term outlook for LNG demand that Shell has sort of projected is a bit of an outlier forecast.
And I was wondering where the sort of confidence comes from, sort of in the very long run, like the sort of 2040, 2050 sort of numbers are higher than others. And the other sort of question I want to ask is the outlook for the energy system that you present makes a lot of sense. But quite often, I find that sort of the story in oil and gas markets leads to a change in behavior that sometimes can sort of prevent the story from playing out in the first place, if you see what I mean. We all believed in underinvestment for a while. Then investment comes back. And now there's no underinvestment anymore. It's sort of like the system itself responds to the story.
I was wondering if you had given any thought to this particular outlook to which you are now responding, but also how the rest of the system might respond to an outlook like this. Are we going to see, oh, oil demand peaking in the early 2030s, let's stop investing? Or are we going to see, hey, oil demand is peaking in the early 2030s, let's pump it out as fast as we can? Slightly broad question. I was wondering if you had given any thought to that.
I'll say a word. Then maybe if you want to add, Laszlo. Look, at the end of the day, of course, you're right. I mean, investors and buyers all respond to the different stimuli that they see in the market.
What we continue to see at the moment, and I think it's been instructive the last couple of months, is that there are certain fundamental realities. In a place like India, for example, gas demand will continue to grow at price points in the cycle. Once we came below $10 per million BTU on TTF, you saw a spike in uptake from India. What we've also seen is above $10, they just take term contract, and they don't go for spot. So there are certain realities, as every country is looking at the alternative options they have to be able to do what they need to do to keep their citizens fueled in the right way. Now, what does that mean for the longer term? And maybe if I can dovetail into our own forecast for LNG in 2040, firstly, to recognize that, of course, there's quite a range.
Typically, you see people talking about anything from around 575-700 million tons by 2040. There's a couple of big movers in that space. What China does matters, right? What India does matters. What largely Southeast Asia does matters. There's a few big, big markets. And we will continue to monitor those trends. But I was just in Beijing this week for the China Development Forum. What is absolutely clear is that the Chinese want to get towards closer to 15%-20% of their overall fuel energy mix coming from LNG or gas, specifically. And they're very, very intent on the role of LNG in that. There's a limit to how much they want Russian exposure. And there's a limit to how much domestic consumption they can go for.
So clearly, the policies are being put in place to be able to consume more of that LNG. If we do have sufficient supplies coming in the second half of that decade, I'm absolutely convinced that you'll get the price points that will significantly stimulate demand. And so what we're not trying to do is to guess where the world is going to. What we're trying to do is to make sure that we anticipate a range that the world's going to, that we build a portfolio that's at the lower end of that cost curve, that we build the arteries through our shipping and through our customers to be able to serve that growing demand, and that irrespective of what shape the world goes in, that we can win in the LNG space vis-à-vis peers.
I think the biggest mistake is trying to be deterministic about where 2024 LNG is. We give a view to the world. But I can tell you, we build it on the back of resilience in the way we approach our portfolio. Anything that you want to talk about, Laszlo, on that?
Yes. So around 30% of global carbon dioxide emissions come from domestic coal. So like Chinese coal mined and burned in China, South African coal mined and burned in South Africa. So this is coal which never crosses an international border. Never participates in international trade. And consequently, we tend to forget about it. But at 30% of global carbon dioxide emissions, Chinese domestic coal mining in energy terms is twice as big as the oil production of the Middle East.
Now, there's absolutely no doubt that the big drama unfolding in the Chinese energy system is a leapfrogging from coal to renewables and from coal to nuclear. That's the big drama. And compared to that, LNG plays a secondary supportive role. But when the size of the pie is twice the oil production of the Middle East, then the secondary supportive role in absolute terms is still very, very large. So in the past couple of years, new gas turbine investment in China is running at roughly 10 gigawatts per year. Last year was actually well over 10. So this is that the new gas turbine capacity is starting construction. When 15 years ago, the United States was doing 10 gigawatts per year, we called it the Dash for Gas. And this is the investment which is unfolding in new gas capacity in China.
In India, the government has a specific officially approved government target to increase the share of gas in the Indian energy mix to 15% from the current roughly 7%. And this is increasing share in our rapidly growing energy system. And this is actually backed by the Indian government underwriting a multibillion-dollar program to roll out the domestic pipeline system to get the gas from the coastal LNG terminals to the major cities. In India, it's primarily industry energy use and also transport for the trucking sector. So we definitely see this really robust investment unfolding. Again, in the past two or three years, Shell delivered the first LNG cargo into Vietnam and the first LNG cargo into the Philippines. Now, these two countries, the Philippines and Vietnam, share a couple of interesting characteristics.
One, per capita electricity supply is at the level of around 2,000 kilowatt-hours per capita compared to 6,000 in Western Europe or 10,000 in the United States. The second, both of them are actually renewable energy success stories. Shell is actively investing in solar in the Philippines. Shell was partner of the Vietnamese government in the first Article 6 Paris Treaty implementation with the government of Singapore. So we are playing a role in the renewable revolution as well. But both governments are very clearly on the record that they are not comfortable directly jumping into 100% renewables. That's very, very clear in both government sides. And both countries had a track record in the past decade of really, really politically controversial Chinese-funded coal projects as part of the Belt and Road Initiative. So these are the common characteristics.
In this context, we are very firmly convinced that Shell delivering the first LNG cargo working with the governments of Vietnam and the Philippines is a good thing.
Thank you. Let's go to the right-hand side for me, Lydia.
Thanks. And it's Lydia Rainforth from Barclays. Two questions, if I could. On the Scope 3 side, obviously, you've brought Scope 3 emissions down for oil products. But we haven't included the overall Scope 3 emissions. When you talk about LNG, and obviously, I think you're growing volumes, 11 million tons out to 2030, is there a way of being able to show that point that Laszlo was making earlier to displace emissions? Is there any way to actually be able to prove or quantify the emissions that you're displacing?
And then secondly, on the idea of more value, less emissions, on the refining part of the business, I think it's the trading side that makes far more at the moment than the asset side. Is that how you see the business growing? Or over time, do the assets start making more money? Or is it just working out that trading and optimization is where you make the real money?
I'll quickly touch on the first one if you want to take the second one, Sinead. Lydia, it's an area we have a lot of interest in, being able to truly trace those molecules and where they end up. The challenge, as you know, of course, is in a place like Japan, you're selling to the big aggregators like JERA, Tokyo Gas, and others. In a place like Korea, it's KOGAS, and so on and so forth.
So what you end up having is more a perspective on the displacement on a system basis. But one of the areas we keep trying to sort of work with our customers on is being able to have that line of sight so that we have a lot more clarity as to where those molecules are going. From a system perspective, we continue to have confidence that there is displacement. Can we tell you it's specifically this or that? We can't, which is why we didn't go into a Scope 4 narrative because it's a difficult one for us to necessarily be able to bank with data. But conceptually, we don't disagree with the direction.
Yeah. You're completely correct. On the trading side at the moment is the part that makes the money for our renewables business. In there, there's a lot of trading of power as well.
There is some pipe gas, without a doubt. So I think first and foremost, do we expect U.S. assets to make money? Yes. Or we won't be in them. Let's be very clear. These assets have to be we have to get a return on them. So very much focused on making sure that we focus on that value part, being able to continue to drive that. A lot of them are startups as well. So you're still in that we're either investing in some of the renewable generation. Some of it is just the investment costs in there. So we're beginning to see that turn on many of them. But I do expect trading to continue to be a significant part of what we do because part of it is the optimization around it. That's what we're good at. And that's where we can excel compared to others.
But we'll continue to build out the physical assets because the optimization can only happen if you have some physical assets as well.
But they have to be profitable. So for me, as far as I know, it's very difficult to track the individual molecules. Having said that, for me, the two most iconic symbols of the 2020 to 2023 gas crisis were here in Europe when the German government sent out the riot police to kick out Greta Thunberg when she tried to protest against a lignite mine. And in Asia, when the Prime Minister of Pakistan announced that this is it, we're done. We're done. We lost our confidence in LNG. It's going to be four new Chinese coal-fired power plants. And we dig out our domestic coal resources in the Thar Desert. And that's it.
So there's pretty compelling evidence that gas shortages lead to undesirable environmental side effects.
I think Legal & General was just behind. Yes.
Thank you, Andreas. Hi. It's Lewis Ashworth here from Legal & General Investment Management. I just wanted to build upon what you said about some economies saying that they absolutely want gas to be a part of the energy mix in the future. I'm just wondering what the reason is for that and what the main barriers are for stopping those economies from leapfrogging to renewables instead of this transition fuel of gas.
Sure. So basically, with a bit of a simplification, natural gas is used in three areas. One is building heating, which is dominantly current. It's dominantly Europe and North America. That's unambiguously should decline with improving energy efficiency and deployment of heat pumps. The only major emerging economy which has cold winters is China.
In China, building heating is dominantly cogeneration, so district heating from coal-fired power plants. Now, you can either regard it as coal-based heating, or you can either regard it as waste heat, depending on how you want to account it. But for example, the city of Beijing replaced their coal-fired cogeneration with gas cogeneration. So the city of Beijing is now heated with natural gas. Outside China, these are hot climates where it is industry and power generation. Now, in the power generation sector, most emerging economies roughly at the 10%-15% wind and solar share. There is no technological showstoppers increasing that ratio. But the technical difficulties depend on a number of factors: geography, transmission system, how much hydropower you have. But in general, in most Asian power systems, the modeling suggests very, very significant technical difficulties above 50%, certainly above 75%.
This is why practically every Asian government is very outspoken that they want some dispatchable power generation in their system, which is today dominantly coal. To some extent, Thailand is already majority gas in this respect. Whereas in industrial energy use, OK. So when you hear this sentence that this facility, like in the steel sector, there are direct iron reduction facilities which can run on natural gas and can run on hydrogen. Or you have similar facilities in petrochemicals and so on. So when you hear the sentence that this facility is hydrogen ready, the correct interpretation is that my driveway is Ferrari ready. As it happens, I drive a Toyota on it. But once the relative cost of a Ferrari becomes all attractive, it's actually Ferrari ready. You can drive a Ferrari on it as well.
So as of today, a lot of the so-called hydrogen ready facilities are in practice running on natural gas because in the past two or three years, and Shell is learning that in the hard way, that some of the previous expectations about how rapidly the cost of green hydrogen will decline might well have been too optimistic. So again, the end journey will be green hydrogen-based steelmaking. But in the meantime, there will be a sustained period where natural gas will step in as an industrial bridge fuel as well.
We have Paul Cheng here online on the virtual room from the US sell side. And he is asking, as the green electron market becomes more developed, will Shell still need to own these alternative power assets given the relatively low return profile?
Secondly, of the expected low-carbon investments for the next two, three years, what percentage of that is to reduce your own emissions? You want to take this?
Yeah. Certainly. On the first one, I think it's a great question, Paul. Do we need to own the assets? No, we don't. I think that's consistent with Capital Markets Day. We said, where is our differentiating capability? When you're looking at a transition such as this, the energy system needs all of us to play to our capabilities. And I think we were very clear that we don't believe that we have necessarily the differentiating capabilities on renewable generation ourselves. We'll do some. And you'll see it in certain markets where we do that. But there are many others who can do it better. So do we need to own them? Not necessarily. Can we play in that space? Absolutely.
But what we want is access to the green electrons, which is exactly where Paul is going to as well. So you'll see us look to be much heavier in terms of the access to the electron rather than you will see us owning those assets. And then secondly, in terms of how much of the spend, frankly, the majority of it is on actually investing into the future. So it's whether that's the biofuels, the hydrogen, et cetera. We don't give that split at the moment because it's really not that meaningful in the sense that we already, as part of our ongoing maintenance, we are switching over and reducing our Scope 1 and 2.
And you see it in things like Timi, which we referenced in the presentation as well, where we're bringing in solar and wind options to be able to electrify effectively many of our different plants. So it depends on whether you believe that's Scope 1 or 2 or is actually generating electricity at the same time.
Thank you. Let's go here. Thank you.
Andrew Cosgrove from Allianz Global Investors. There are lots of assets that you are looking to sell because of their issues. How do you balance the desire for speed, the desire to get full value, and the desire to sell them to a responsible owner who will continue the path of improving them rather than deteriorating them?
Sure. I think this is one of the key parts because for us, divestments are part and parcel of just running your business.
It's part of evolving your product mix, which is exactly what we've been talking about today. As we look to divest our assets, we do a range of different things. We look at, of course, getting maximum value at the right time. We also look at who is the likely buyer and who is going to invest into them for the future. Part of what we do is ensuring that we provide information as to what we've done so far in terms of the carbon management plans that we were talking about earlier. We talk to the investors about what are they going to do about staff? What are they going to do about running these assets in a certain way? And I think Nigeria is a case in point. We're in the middle of looking to, as we've been very public about divesting SPDC, so our onshore operations there.
And part of doing that is ensuring that the buyer can continue to run this in a responsible manner, which is key because we want these assets to actually be able to operate into the future. The country needs it. The people need it, et cetera. So part of what we look at is, in some cases, it's providing capabilities after the fact. Sometimes it's providing a minimal amount of funding for decommissioning or whatever it may be along the way. But there's a very specific plan depending on who is the buyer at the end of the day.
Did you have Josh Stein? I think you had your hand up.
Thank you. Irene Himona, Société Générale. You referred to Nigeria as the disposal has been critical to eliminate routine flaring. I wonder if you can remind us what needs to happen to complete that asset disposal.
And then secondly, thinking about the new 20% absolute Scope 3 reduction target, you mentioned you have line of sight to 2030. So roughly, what can we expect in terms of the reduction you need on your product sales or retail petrol stations to achieve that new target? Thank you.
Yeah. I'll take that. So I think on the 15%-20%, the second one, it's important to recognize that as we announced in Capital Markets Day a set of actions, those are still playing out. And those are what will be required to be able to achieve that outcome. So for example, we have said we are looking at our reviewing certain assets in our chemicals and products portfolio, one of which we have decided to divest, which is Bukom. That plays into it. We've talked about divesting around 500 mobility sites as part of our value over volume.
That will also play, of course, a role in reducing the overall emissions. So the trajectory that we provided in Capital Markets Day is exactly the same trajectory, Irene, that holds to delivering that target. As we go, we've put a range in, 15%-20%. Of course, as we discover more opportunities to be able to both drive more value and achieve less emissions, we will continue to get there. Sorry. Your first question again, quickly.
SPDC.
SPDC. Look, SPDC, what we have gotten to at the moment is, as you know, we've announced the fact that we have reached an agreement with the buyers. The biggest thing right now is the approvals from the federal government to be able to sign off on those, which can take days, weeks, or months. We'll see exactly where we end up. But that is the key outstanding element.
Of course, there's all sorts of completion requirements from a financing perspective and so on and so forth. But this is a deal that has been worked extensively before the day that we announced it. It worked not just in terms of how do we complete, but worked in terms of a lot of the questions that were a lot of the elements of the previous question, looking at how we're going to be able to create the right support to ensure the capabilities that Sinead talked about are in place, making sure we are working with the right government entities to transact in a way that aligns with their expectations of the transaction, and so on and so forth. So really, it is the approvals right now that are outstanding.
Another first question here, Pedro.
Hello. Alejandro Vigil from Santander. A question probably for Laszlo.
You mentioned before that the expectations of cost reduction in hydrogen have been disappointing. Which are the technologies that you see with more potential to improve in terms of cost, also in connection with this potential 10%-15%, or well, the plans of 10%-15% allocation into low-carbon technologies? Thank you.
So you touched upon one of the key strategic and geopolitical dilemmas of the transition because, with a bit of a simplification, anything that is mass manufactured in China is progressing very well. And anything which is not mass manufacturing in China is struggling a bit. OK. So as simple as that. So solar is doing from strength to strength. And in fact, solar is pulling ahead of even wind. And that's quite important because solar and wind, we always use them in one sentence, but they have very, very different stochastic patterns.
Solar is much more likely to saturate the power system because all the solar panels operate at the same times. So far this year, the likelihood of negative price events in Europe has been three times higher than it was in 2020 during the COVID lockdowns. So this solar pulling ahead, this creates very strong business opportunities for all flexibility sources, including batteries and other solutions. The batteries are also doing very well. So we have been significantly revising our analysis in terms of where do we see the interface between electrified and non-electrified transport in the future. And Shell has started to really progressively develop solutions for electric trucks, electric buses because we now see batteries coming into heavier vehicles as well. Offshore wind experienced the perfect storm in the past 2 years. It was a combination of engineering factors and mechatronic factors.
But our view is that offshore wind is not out of the game. So we have been working with all the major turbine manufacturers. It has been a very challenging two years. But there are also signs of the industry turning the corner. And we definitely see that in Western Europe, in the Northeast United States, in some parts of Asia, offshore wind will definitely play a role. Now, specifically in the case of green hydrogen, I think what a lot of the initial analysis missed is that the electrolyzer stack itself is a modular technology which you can mass manufacture and you can scale up the manufacturing. But whereas in the case of solar panel, after the modular solar panel, you get the electrons and you need just a simple AC/DC converter and you're done.
In the case of an electrolyzer stack, what comes out is a very difficult-to-handle, very dangerous gas. So there's a lot of quite complex chemical engineering that is being done as a balance of system for a hydrogen project. And that is proving to be more difficult to improve than what was initially expected.
And maybe just to quickly build on that. And that's what we have found building out Holland Hydrogen One actually plays to many of our strengths, our ability to be able to bring those offshore wind electrons into the electrolyzer, our ability to be able to play into the commercial road transport space, our ability to optimize through our trading and optimization minute by minute where the electrons are going to go into the electrolyzer, into the grid.
And so exactly as Laszlo said, it is complex, which actually means you have high barriers to entry, which starts to give us conviction that our business model could be interesting. Now, early days, we'll need to get it up and running and see whether the thesis works. But so far, it's interesting to see just how much it plays to our strengths.
We will take two more questions. The first one will come from the virtual room again. Josh Stein, a U.S. institutional shareholder, is asking, how does Shell balance the lower relative return on low-carbon investment with the need to reduce the company's emissions?
I'll touch on that. So I think, again, there's two sets of emissions we're trying to reduce. One is our own emissions, where we are able to continue to drive those Scope 1 and 2 reductions.
And you see us making great progress in that space. Then there's the Scope 3 emissions, which indeed, right now, structurally, it is lower returns. What we are aiming to do, though, is to make sure that the risk-reward balance is the right one for us. And so this is not just a return picture. It is a question of how that risk-return profile looks. We have already given guidance, for example, for IRR expectations that are north of 12% in both of our core-focused areas in the low-carbon space, which are biofuels and EV charging.
And so we believe that the risk profile of those with a return in the 12%+ range, coupled with our returns from our traditional oil and gas business, creates a more compelling and actually a more resilient cash flow trajectory for us to be able to both honor our dividend and to continue to have the firepower through the cycle, importantly at the low points in the cycle, to be able to continue to step into buying back our shares, a core element of our strategy for as long as the disconnect in the valuation that we see in the market is. And so that's how we think about it.
Thank you. Also a hand down at the back, Priscilla.
Thank you. Harry Ashman from Redburn. Just a quick question on the court case. I appreciate the question around the timing and the difficulty there.
But surely the 2035 target removal and the tweaking of the 2030 target, how do you balance the perception of that weakening your alignment with the Paris Agreement in the eyes of the court? So how do you plan on presenting that to the court and indeed to shareholders and the public as well? Because the timing's a tricky one there.
Honestly, that's how we plan to present it. I mean, indeed, one could have fudged this and sort of keep the 2035 number and sort of let's figure it out next year after the court case. That's not how we operate. Our perspective was, look, we've had a strategic shift in the home energy sales. We cannot, in good conscience, as a management team, stand up there and still talk about a 20% ambition or 20% target that was based on a certain strategic rationale.
That rationale has changed. So in good conscience, I think we owe it to ourselves and to our shareholders to be honest with them when we couldn't meet that. Similarly, in 2035, remember, the 2035 target that was in place had a very clear link to the fact that we believed in 2021 the system would evolve by now, which would allow us to be able to take advantage of the emissions reductions at our customers' sites. We're nowhere close to that. So we can either keep that target just to fudge things, or we can be very, very honest. We've chosen to be very clear that what we put out, this management team wants to be able to be held accountable for.
We felt that 15%-20% and dropping the 2035 at this stage was much more in line with the ethos that we have brought in over the last couple of years.
Thank you. Hey, thank you. We are running out of time. I hope it has been helpful with the presentation and with the dialogue here after the break. I will hand over to Wael in a second just to reflect and to close the session today. Investor relations will aim to follow up on the unanswered questions. For those of you here in the room, there is an informal session after which we'll drinks. You can continue the dialogue both with the investor relations but also with management that also will stay. There are further opportunities for those in the room to ask your questions. For me, thank you very much. And over to you, Wael, to close.
Yeah. Thanks, Andreas. And let me echo my appreciation to all of you. Really thankful for the opportunity to be able to just share a bit more context to the Energy Transition Strategy 2024 and to those as well who called in. Look, when we kicked off Capital Markets Day, what we said we wanted to be able to do is to be able to become the company that delivers more value with less emissions. We want to be the management team that is able to deliver on the promises it makes, if not beat those promises. We said we wanted to bring to life performance, discipline, simplification in every single thing that we do as a company, both in delivering more value as well as less emissions. I look back at our journey over the last three years.
I look at some of the incredible numbers that this company has been able to deliver: 70% reduction in methane emissions, 70%, 91% reduction in routine flaring, 30% down on Scope 1 and 2 emissions, and double the trajectory that the world's going on in net carbon intensity. So if we shift from a world of just talking about promises to actually what we're doing, I hope you would agree that we're making the right progress, not just on the more value but also on the less emissions. Now we have a trajectory of another six years to get to the 2030 number that we've put out there. We continue to find opportunities to be able to do that by being clear that we do have constraints. We have constraints on resources, whether that's capital or whether that's carbon.
We're trying to build the company that is going to be resilient to that. We've told you that we continue to think that oil production is going to grow in the next six years or so. Yet we're choosing to start to dip our oil product sales in anticipation of what might happen in the 2030s while continuing to drive value. We'll do that with eyes wide open. We'll do that by making sure that we focus on the lower value elements as we bring that trajectory down towards where we want it to be. So I hope what you take away is a company that is in action. We've said we want to transform the business. We said we're going to drive improvements in our CFFO. We're going to drive improvements in the discipline in our capital deployment.
We're going to drive improvements in our structural costs. We're going to drive improvements in our emissions and our customers' emissions. I think the ETS24 gives us an opportunity to demonstrate we're doing all of that. I would humbly submit to you that the world of the next few years will continue to be uncertain, that there will be surprises. We do believe that the numbers we have put out there are ones that we have sufficient levers to be able to achieve both on the more value and the less emissions. But as we learn more, we will continue to evolve the strategy. We'll lean harder in the areas where we see those returns. We'll lean back a bit in the areas where we are concerned that maybe the value pools aren't there.
And so I hope, on balance, what you do take is a clear, honest reflection on a company that is trying to hit both of those elements of more value and less emissions and to indeed demonstrate that we are the investment case through the energy transition, playing the long game as we approach our 2030 targets and ambitions and as we position the company for the decade after that. I thank you again. And I look forward to engaging with some of you here just outside over drinks. And to those who are on the call, thank you very much for calling in from wherever you've called in. Thanks, everyone.