Shell pockets equivalent of an average UK annual salary ‘every 37 seconds’ as Greenpeace targets oil giant over ‘shameful’ Q2 profits

Greenpeace activists deployed an electric advertising van across central London this morning to coincide with Shell’s colossal second-quarter earnings announcement. 

The stunt highlights what the organisation described as the “obscene” profits being made by one of the world’s biggest fossil fuel companies while communities across the globe suffer the escalating impacts of climate change.

Shell today reported almost $10 billion ($9.84 billion or £7.4 billion)  in profit for the second quarter of 2026 alone.

Images from today’s action are available here.

Greenpeace analysis shows the scale of those profits:

• Shell made the equivalent of an average UK worker’s annual salary in profit every 37 seconds.
• An average UK worker would need to work for around 210,000 years – or 5,300 full working lifetimes – to earn what Shell made in just three months.
• Shell’s Q2 profits alone could have funded around 4.7 GW of new onshore wind capacity – enough to generate electricity for around 5.8 million UK homes.
• The fossil fuel giant’s Q2 earnings could cover the annual energy bills of nearly 4.5 million UK households – more than every household in London, based on the current Ofgem price cap of £1,663 a year for a typical direct debit household.
• Someone earning over £9,900 every day since the birth of Jesus still wouldn’t have earned as much as Shell made in profit in the last three months alone.

Responding to Shell’s bumper second-quarter profits, Greenpeace political campaigner Rudy Schulkind said:

“We’re running out of words to describe the obscenity of these numbers. As these figures land, Europe is engulfed by apocalyptic wildfires, communities across Asia are reeling from devastating floods, and the UK battles through drought and yet more dangerous heat. 

These aren’t anomalies; they’re the defining story of the fossil fuel age: Shell takes the profits, and the rest of us pick up the catastrophic bill.

“There is nothing to celebrate about a business model that generates billions for shareholders while families lose their homes, farmers’ crops fail, public services buckle and future generations inherit an increasingly unstable climate. Let’s be clear: these profits are built on a business model that is upending lives across the world.”

The protest comes as the Northern Hemisphere experiences another summer of destructive climate extremes. Across Europe, North Africa and beyond, communities have endured deadly heatwaves, catastrophic wildfires, prolonged drought and devastating floods.

In the UK, record-breaking temperatures this summer are estimated to have contributed to around 2,700 excess deaths, while prolonged dry conditions have left half of England officially in ‘exceptionally serious’ drought. Since mid-July, wildfires have swept across France, Spain and Portugal, forcing more than 300,000 people to evacuate.

Scientists have concluded that the extreme temperatures experienced across the UK and Europe this summer would have been virtually impossible without human-caused climate change driven primarily by the burning of fossil fuels. Despite this, the oil and gas industry continues to lobby the Burnham government to approve new North Sea oil and gas developments, including the controversial Rosebank and Jackdaw fields.

Schulkind added:

“Andy Burnham’s Labour government has a choice. It can continue shielding the extraordinary profits of oil and gas giants, or it can make polluters pay by strengthening oil and gas taxation and using the revenue to help households with the cost of living, strengthen our resilience against extreme weather, and supercharge the transition to clean, affordable energy. A government that claims to be on the side of working people cannot credibly do both.”

ENDS

Notes to Editors

How each figure was calculated (all at £7.4 billion):

• Shell earns an average UK annual salary every 37 seconds.
  Based on Shell’s reported Q2 2026 profit of £7.4 billion over a 91-day quarter (7,862,400 seconds), the company earned approximately £934 in profit every second. Using an average UK full-time annual salary of £35,000, this equates to the average worker’s annual salary every 37.5 seconds, rounded to 37 seconds.
• 210,000 years / 5,300 working lifetimes.
  Based on an average UK full-time annual salary of £35,000, it would take an average worker approximately 211,428 years to earn £7.4 billion, rounded to 210,000 years. Assuming a 40-year working career, this is equivalent to approximately 5,286 working lifetimes, rounded to 5,300 lifetimes.
• Enough to generate electricity for 5.8 million homes:
  Using Arup’s central capital expenditure estimate of £1,588 per kW for UK onshore wind (DESNZ, July 2025), £7.4 billion could fund approximately 4.66GW of new onshore wind capacity. Applying Arup’s central 38.1% load factor, this would generate around 15.6TWh of electricity annually. Based on the DESNZ/Ofgem medium annual household electricity consumption of 2,700kWh, this is enough to power approximately 5.77 million UK homes, rounded to 5.8 million.
• Enough to cover the annual energy bills of nearly 4.5 million households: Using Ofgem’s energy price cap for 1 July–30 September 2026 of £1,663 per year for a typical dual-fuel direct debit household, £7.4 billion would cover the annual energy bills of approximately 4,449,789 households, rounded to nearly 4.5 million households. For comparison, this is more than the total number of households in London.
• £9,900 every day since the birth of Jesus. Someone earning £9,900 every day from the birth of Jesus until today (calculated using 2,026 years × 365.25 days) would have earned approximately £7.33 billion – still around £73 million less than Shell’s £7.4 billion profit in Q2 2026 alone. This figure is converted from the original dollar comparison using an exchange rate of US$1.334 to £1 and rounded down to ensure the comparison remains accurate.