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You’ve been with Shell for over 18 years, almost your entire career. Can you tell us what made you decide to start with Shell?

I had an unconventional start to my career at Shell. I began working here 18 years ago after meeting a Shell recruiter at an event. At the time, I was actually a member of an international environmental NGO, so when we started talking, I challenged the recruiter about Shell’s reputation and why I would be a good fit. He responded with a question that hit home: “Do you think you can make a bigger impact as a bystander or from within?”

I was relatively young back then, and felt that by joining the organisation, I could grow into roles where I would be the one making decisions. I could start moving things in the direction I wanted to see. The recruiter’s reply eventually convinced me to accept a job with Shell, where little by little, I now feel that I’m making a positive impact.

Since the beginning, I’ve been very sensitive to the changing environment. In my lifetime, I've seen the glaciers in the Alps recede and witnessed other significant ecological shifts. These are fast and irreversible changes to a delicate balance, and as a father of three, they concern me personally. These macro- and micro-level issues have been a big factor in my commitment to make change at Shell for all these years.

What has your growth within the Shell organisation looked like?

My first job with Shell was working in the fuel supply chain, going to retail sites and managing logistics. Then, I worked in corporate strategy as an analyst on projects involving Shell's long-term future.

At that point in my career, I had the opportunity to move from the �鶹��ý to Houston, Texas to work as a project engineer and manager in the liquefied natural gas (LNG) sector. LNG is a highly valuable decarbonisation resource, so it was a significant growth area within Shell, with many opportunities for employees. A few years later, I took a job as a production manager at the plant where I currently work and eventually moved into the general manager position.

Ample development opportunities are one of the things I appreciate about working with Shell. In the last 18 years, I’ve been able to advance my career, learn from different roles, and make adjustments when my priorities changed.

Can you describe your role and talk briefly about your day-to-day work?

Right now, I'm the plant manager for the catalyst manufacturing plant in Ghent, Belgium. My morning starts with our daily huddle, where I hear from my team about how operations are running and what requires our attention. We have about 120 people working in our plant, along with 15 to 20 contractors, so while it’s a big team, it's also small enough that I know everyone to some extent. I make an effort to have conversations with people working in different areas as often as I can.

From a leadership perspective, I like to develop personal relationships with all my employees and senior team members to ensure I understand their challenges. My goal is to support, advise, and coach the group, so they can capably make executive decisions, even when I’m not there.

Stakeholder management – addressing internal, external and government concerns – is also a big part of my role, and the human connections I build help me do that more effectively.

What changes do you see on the horizon for the oil and gas industry? Are you excited about the way the sector is changing?

I see positive industry changes, especially within Shell Catalysts & Technologies. First, so much less of the oil and gas taken out of the ground is being burned for fuel. Natural gas and crude oil are very versatile molecules, with much greater potential than just being burned. With the right catalysts and technology, they could be used to make base chemicals for manufacturing novel products, such as infinitely recyclable plastics.

This approach is in line with Shell’s vision to transition refineries into energy and chemicals parks, and it helps our customers gradually reduce the carbon intensity of their products. That’s why we’re so focused on designing and producing the tools and processes needed to manipulate those molecules. We're discovering and developing new applications all the time.

The other change I see is that the carbon intensity of our products is continually decreasing. We are developing the tools in-house to gradually reduce our carbon footprint, either through process technology or catalytic technology.

Innovation in this area is an exciting development. It doesn’t just benefit our plant, it can positively impact the entire oil and gas industry.

Can you speak to any strategies the Ghent plant uses to reduce its carbon footprint?

There are three types of CO₂ emissions to address: Scope 1, Scope 2 and Scope 3.

Scope 1 Emissions

These include emissions created by our plant, such as CO₂ produced by burning natural gas. When addressing Scope 1 emissions, there’s one straightforward place we can start: if we don't burn it, it doesn’t generate a byproduct. So, the first strategy for reducing Scope 1 emissions is electrification of demand, assuming we can do it in a price-effective manner.

When we burn natural gas and know we’re going to be generating that CO₂, we’re concerned about energy efficiency. We want to make sure that every molecule of natural gas we burn goes a long way and is fully leveraged for its caloric value before we emit the waste heat into the atmosphere.

Our Ghent plant has an Energy Management Agreement with the local government. The terms of this agreement essentially state that whenever we find ways to reduce our footprint with a reasonable return on investment, we’re obliged to do that. We’re continually evaluating new strategies and making investments to gradually reduce the footprint of the tonnes of catalysts we sell.

Scope 2 Emissions

Scope 2 emissions refer to the CO₂ footprint of imported energy, which would be the electricity we import to operate the plant. We already have solar panels on the plant's roofs, which provide a portion of the electricity we need. We also buy green energy with renewable energy certificates, so our Scope 2 emissions are already close to zero for any of the electricity we use.

What would it look like to go further? To reduce Scope 2 emissions even more, we are making some of our real estate available for a partner to invest in green power production capacity, thereby providing locally produced green electrons to the site, as well as making more green power available for other users on the grid.

Scope 3 Emissions

These include all emissions produced outside of our site, whether those are emissions generated when customers use our products or created by the producers of our raw materials.

When we’re looking for ways to reduce emissions, we consider the cumulative effect throughout the whole supply chain. Our raw materials do have a footprint, and we can work with our suppliers to understand and reduce the impact of the raw materials delivered to us, just like our customers do with our products.

Supply chain emissions are a relatively low percentage of the total emissions at Shell Catalysts & Technologies, because we use strong integrated business practices that enable us to minimise air freight. Transporting product via ocean liner versus air cuts emissions by an order of magnitude.

Do you use any strategies outside of carbon reduction to minimise the plant’s effect on the environment? There must be a lot of potential opportunities that you have to consider; is that challenging for you as a plant manager?

Aside from addressing those three emission types, we’ve implemented other strategies to reduce our environmental footprint. For example, we have to clean our plants and machinery between uses to avoid contamination, which produces wastewater. Instead of disposing of it, we use that water to make the material that’s used to extrude fresh catalysts. We consider ways to lower emissions in everything we do, from our internal sustainability cycles to processes that involve our customers and suppliers.

Europe, now together with California, has the most stringent environmental regulations anywhere in the world. I'm a big supporter of that because I believe strongly in our ability to reduce our footprint and help our customers do the same. I take great pride in being able to run a competitive business in one of the most rigorous regulatory environments, working toward cleaner operations than what we have today.