Like Sykes, it made a transition from black to green — and in doing so, it demonstrated it's possible for big energy companies to pivot to clean energy.
To limit the influence of climate change, those emissions need to rapidly decrease — which means that big energy companies need to change their operations.
A 2022 study found that 51% of the world's biggest publicly listed energy companies had not set out a strategy to reduce their emissions.
Shell, for example, says it has about 50 gigawatts of renewable energy in operation, under construction, or in development.
"If we could do the energy transition without them, I wouldn't be doing this," van Baal added.