Exxon Mobil CEO rejects IEA criticism of carbon capture strategy By Reuters

DUBAI (Reuters) – Exxon Mobile (NYSE:) CEO Darren Woods on Saturday rejected the International Energy Agency's recent claim that using large-scale carbon capture to fight climate change was a far-fetched “wishful thinking,” saying the same could be said of electric vehicles and solar energy.

“There is no solution proposed today that is at the scale to solve the problem,” Woods told Reuters on the sidelines of the COP28 climate summit in Dubai.

“So you could say the same thing about carbon capture today, you could say the same thing about electric vehicles, you could say the same thing about wind energy, you could say the same thing about solar energy. I think the criticism is legitimate for anything to begin with. that we're trying to do,” he said.

While there are few commercially viable carbon capture projects due to high costs, electric vehicles now account for about 13% of the global new vehicle market, and solar and wind deployments have expanded rapidly.

Woods' appearance marked the first time a CEO of fossil fuel giant Exxon attended one of the annual U.N.-sponsored climate summits, and reflected a growing effort among oil and gas companies around the world to reframe themselves. as part of the solution to global warming, as opposed to a cause.

The future role of carbon capture technology and fossil fuels is a key topic at the conference.

The IEA, the West's energy watchdog, issued a report on Nov. 27, just before the COP28 meeting, that said the fossil fuel industry was facing a “moment of truth” in which producers They had to choose between deepening the climate crisis or moving to clean energy. energy.

He sharply criticized oil and gas companies that argue that drilling can continue indefinitely as long as its combustion emissions are cleaned up, saying the industry maintained an “illusion that the solution is captures of implausibly large amounts of carbon.”

Exxon has announced a $17 billion investment in its low-carbon business, which includes carbon capture, and has argued that greenhouse gas emissions are the problem causing climate change, not fuels. fossils themselves.

He said he believed oil and gas would play an “important role” in the world until 2050, but declined to provide an estimate of demand levels.

As part of Exxon's low-carbon strategy, it announced in July the $4.9 billion acquisition of Denbury and its 1,300-mile (2,100-kilometer) carbon dioxide pipeline network, which will be connected to offshore blocks in the Gulf of Mexico, where Exxon plans to bury coal.

So far, Exxon has convinced the largest U.S. ammonia maker, an industrial gas company and a large steel company to sign long-term contracts for carbon reduction services that would cover about 5 million tons of carbon dioxide. carbon per year.

Currently, energy and industry produce around 37 billion tons of CO2 per year globally.

Woods declined to provide details of the contracts, but said U.S. subsidies in last year's Inflation Reduction Act of up to $85 per ton for carbon capture and sequestration would make the investments profitable.

“Basically, we're helping customers decarbonize and take advantage of that tax credit,” Woods said.

He added that making money from the deals is “probably a few years away.”

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