New plan is a test of investors.

GREEN RESOLVE Imagine the scenario.

You're the boss of a huge oil major that needs to de carbonized by 2050.

Do you a execute a handbrake, turn out of emissions heavy oil production and go big in wind power, which you don't really know much about, or be kind of keep on doing what you were doing in the hope that, like Mr Micawber from Charles Dickins, something turns up if you chose a your BP's Bernard loony.

And since your September strategy day, your shares have underperformed because some investors worry that your pledged to car oil and gas output by 40% will leave them with no dividends.

If you chose Be your Ben Van Burden, who this week said Royal Dutch Shell's oil output will fall at a much slower rate.

How do you work out who's right?

With your prize back above $60 a barrel and van burdens balance sheet in better shape, conservative investors will stick with him.

Even so, shell stress she hinges on capturing and storing the carbon it emits on on offsetting emissions via natural absorbers like trees.

Most people agree carbon capture has a role to play, but the technology is expensive.

In green, lobbyists worry it is untested.

As for trees, limiting warming toe 1.5 degrees Celsius assumes, in Shell's own scenario, a reforestation oven area approaching that of Brazil.

While shareholders like their dividends, plenty more are increasingly taking climate change seriously, Aviva investors recently said it could sell big emitters it deems not to be doing enough.

If shells new plan starts to look insufficiently radical, investors might have to rethink what being conservative actually means.