Fuel rivalry: what will power our cars in the future?

I’m in Houston at the moment, where I’ve been discussing fuels of the future. But being here again has reminded me of a major moment from the energy industry’s past...

Back in 1901 oil explorer Anthony Lucas struck oil in Spindletop, an oil field around 80 miles from here. Oil erupted from the earth at a rate of 100,000 barrels a day for nine days straight. It was a big moment for Texas, a big moment for the USA and a big moment for the future of transport.

Because the oil drilling frenzy that followed went on to dramatically boost worldwide oil production and kick off a rivalry between the transport fuels. And I think we all know which fuel won.

The wheels of progress

Lucas’ discovery started a big change in the fuelling of transport: in 1901 there were around 4,000 horse-drawn carriage builders in the USA. By the end of the 1920s only 90 were left.

Oil had many advantages when compared to other fuels. Internal combustion engines were more reliable and efficient than horse drawn carriages. They started much faster than steam engines.

From planes to trains, barges to battleships, MINI Coopers to monster trucks, every form of motorised transport eventually began to run on oil.

And today the transport sector needs to change again. It needs to radically reduce emissions to limit global warming and improve the quality of the air we breathe.

Enter battery electric

Some say that batteries will triumph this time. According to the International Energy Agency – or IEA – the total number of battery electric cars in the world will increase from about 3 million today to 280 million in 2040.

This might sound like another Spindletop moment – a moment of sudden change – but it is not. Because the IEA expects the total number of cars to grow to 2 billion by 2040. And the challenge for battery electric cars is that they are not yet as user-friendly as cars with an internal combustion engine: they take longer to charge, cannot drive as far and are more expensive.

And that is just passenger cars, we’ve yet to find an effective way to electrify trucks, ships and planes.

No single solution

We cannot just be looking to establish one single solution. We need to be striking a balance between different fuels depending on customers’ needs and local availability.

This is why Shell is investing in electric car-charging, for example, by our recent acquisition of charging company Greenlots here in the USA.

But we are also investing in other new fuels for transport. Shell’s Raízen joint venture in Brazil produces one of the lowest-carbon biofuels available today and is starting to develop advanced biofuels from waste. Shell is also helping to build the infrastructure needed for hydrogen to grow as a transport fuel, here in California as well as in Canada and Europe.

Act now

Electric cars, biofuels and hydrogen all have great potential to shape the future of transport. But it will take time before they gain enough of a market share to substantially reduce emissions from transport. Time the world, quite frankly, does not have.

We need to invest in cleaner fuels that can start to have a positive impact on reducing emissions in the 2020s or 2030s. But we must also focus on the transport fuels that nearly all of the 7.5 billion people on earth use today.

Fuel makers, car-makers, policy-makers… we must all continue to improve the efficiency of internal combustion engines. And we should grow the role of natural gas in transport as liquefied natural gas – or LNG – is a cleaner-burning fuel than oil.

A shared goal

The exceptional thing about the Spindletop discovery was that it was exceptional. Today we are not about to see a similar level of overnight change in transport, no matter how helpful that would be!

But this does not mean we can lean back: on the contrary, we need to change urgently. But if we actually want to reduce emissions, we should not see the future of transport fuels as a fight with a clear winner, but as a partnership.

I believe the future of transport will be shaped not by one, but by many fuels. Some of them will be new, like electric batteries, and some will be traditional, like LNG, but they must all have one thing in common: they must all help to bring down the emission of greenhouse gases and pollutants.