Renewable energy..what IS going on?

So..let's get this straight...

• Peak oil is arriving any time soon, we are told..
• Crude oil prices last summer were briefly at $150 a barrel before the demise of Lehmann Brothers pushed the world financial markets into meltdown and the economy into recession...
• Scientists are issuing ever-more dire warnings about the rate of global warming and the likelihood of "non-linear" climate change
• The UK government has committed to a target of 20% of our energy being generated from renewable sources by 2020
  
• Domestic energy bills in the UK remain at historically high levels despite the recent retreat in oil prices and yet....

Shell and BP have both recently announced major cutbacks in their renewable energy investment plans and manufacturing capacity, in Shell's case stating that they think the only forms of renewables they see as being commercially viable are biomass and carbon sequestration.

What is going on here? Normally, companies will invest in new technologies and products they see as having a long term future even if the initial investment costs are high and they know that it will take some time to reap the full benefits through building up economies of scale as the market for the products develops.

So..are two of the three largest global energy companies really saying that they think wind power, solar and hydro have no part to play in meeting the world's energy needs over the coming decades? If so..why? Do they think that the technologies to produce energy from these sources are so constrained by physical and social limitations that they will never be technically efficient? And if so...are the government and the renewable energy sector deluding themselves and the rest of us in claiming that they CAN be an important part of the solution?

Or are the energy majors just the wrong companies to be looking to to take renewables forwards, unable to make an effective transition from a world in which "big oil" has powered decades of unprecedented global economic growth to a world in which big may no longer be beautiful and culturally incapable of the sort of imaginative and creative innovations which could make renewables viable even on a domestic scale?

I think we should be told!