雅虎香港財經 ExxonMobil chief Woods calls for 'consistency' in US climate policy
ExxonMobil (XOM) CEO Darren Woods says the key to US climate policy hinges on the one thing politicians struggle most to deliver: consistency.
"I think this back-and-forth as one administration or one party comes into power and the other one comes back, and flip-flopping, is not good for making progress in the space, is not good for business; it's not good for society as a whole. We need consistency in this space," Woods told Yahoo Finance on the sidelines of CERAWeek by S&P Global conference in Houston, Texas.
Woods said the oil giant has been building its emissions-mitigation business with the help of the Inflation Reduction Act. The law, Woods said, "started to open the aperture on other opportunities to reduce emissions above and beyond what wind and solar can do."
"Our view is if the society wants to decarbonize, the way to do that is to focus on the source of the issue, which is emissions, and to focus on looking at carbon intensity and setting standards for carbon intensity, which the IRA did," Woods said. "And so it basically is technology-agnostic."
The IRA, signed into law in 2022, raised the tax credit per ton of carbon captured and sequestered, a process that involves burying the emissions underground in an effort to mitigate climate change. The increase gave a boost to energy companies that had been building out such businesses.
Reports indicate former President Trump would seek to scrap or restrict many of the law's climate-related policies should he win reelection in November.
'Need to stay focused'
Exxon has set a goal of making its Permian shale operations achieve net zero emissions by 2030.
The company is also building out facilities to capture and store carbon dioxide for other companies — including an industrial gas producer, a steelmaker, and a fertilizer manufacturer — that will begin to come online in the next two years.
Amid these efforts, Woods notably pushed back against the idea that carbon capture is not a viable part of a climate solution in an appearance at the United Nations-sponsored COP28 conference late last year.
Since then, he's doubled down on that approach, and Exxon filed a recent lawsuit to block climate proposals by shareholder activists.
"I think one of the challenges is the way the problem has been stated in the past, [which] is: 'We need to get rid of fossil fuels and natural gas [and] crude [oil] and coal,'" Woods told Yahoo Finance. "And I think what we should stay focused on is: 'We need to get rid of the emissions associated with the combustion of those things.'"
To be sure, climate activists have questioned carbon capture's economic viability and scalability. But Woods and other executives at CERAWeek said it's still early and that carbon capture will be a necessary part of the energy transition.
"Carbon capture and storage allows you to continue to use existing energy systems but capture the emissions associated with the combustion in those energy systems," Woods said.
"That will be a very important part of the solution."
Julie Hyman is the co-anchor of the Yahoo Finance show 'Market Domination,' which airs weekdays 3 p.m.-4 p.m. ET. Follow her on X @juleshyman, and read her other stories.
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