5 ms·

It sounds more like an excuse to continue to output oil while doing absolutely nothing to stop the further degradation of out environment.

azinman2 3y ago
It shouldn’t be a surprise. They’re an oil and gas company, with gigantic investments in that space, a culture that supports it, knowledge to do it, politics solved for it, and a crap ton of inertia. The expectation that they’d pivot is far less likely than likely. This isn’t a sector known for disruption outside of new ways to extract.
- csnover 3y ago
  The insane thing about this is to me that Exxon did seem to have ideas about pivoting away from oil and gas in the 1970s[0]. They funded research that brought down the cost of solar panels five-fold and started manufacturing and selling their own panels[1], they developed the lithium-ion battery[2], and they created subsidiaries for servicing the nuclear power industry[3], among other things. I’ve never understood the obstructionist position of these oil execs. If you want to make a shitload of money, why not push for development of some emerging industry like renewables where all the infrastructure has to be built up from nothing? That could be money you are getting paid to build it. Instead, now it’s money going to some other company. [0] https://www.desmog.com/s1ep1-bell-labs-energy/ https://www.desmog.com/s1ep1-bell-labs-energy/ [1] https://www.npr.org/2019/09/30/763844598/how-big-oil-of-the-past-helped-launch-the-solar-industry-of-today https://www.npr.org/2019/09/30/763844598/how-big-oil-of-the-... [2] https://www.bupipedream.com/news/49390/prof-whittingham/ https://www.bupipedream.com/news/49390/prof-whittingham/ [3] https://www.nytimes.com/1976/03/14/archives/exxons-innovative-little-offshoots-the-offshoots-of-exxon.html https://www.nytimes.com/1976/03/14/archives/exxons-innovativ...
  - teddyh 3y ago
    The first digital camera was (AFAIK) made by Kodak. The modern desktop computer was largely invented by Xerox. Both companies failed to follow through.
  - brmgb 3y ago
    It’s not an either/or situation. Most of the Big Oil companies have significant investments in renewable power. It’s just that oil is insanely profitable, to a point which is hard to grasp so it dwarfs whatever else they do.
  - nsriv 3y ago
    The idea is to become so big by selling oil that you are essentially paid/begged to create the new industry that solves the problem, thereby giving you first-mover advantage in the new era. The obstructionist stuff is a little bit performative for shareholders, but there will be an inflection point in their public attitudes. Unfortunately it'll be past the inflection point for favorable living conditions.
  - Bluestrike2 3y ago
    Despite having all sorts of advantages (a head start and patents for batteries and renewable energy tech, robust research capabilities, etc.) and a literal roadmap of how climate change would play out, they realized that it was easier and less risky--for them, at least--to maintain the status quo. After all, once you've started a revolution, there's no guarantee that you'll keep control of it. A long, slow transition that started in the 70s would have been, if not painless, then close enough to it that the pain was easily managed. Worries about stranded assets? By the time the transition was over, they'd have been near the end of their expected lifespans anyways. New, more nimble competitors popping up? They could just acquire them. Lost revenue? Please. They convinced the world not to take action on climate change, and even managed to hoodwink one of the two major political parties in the US that climate change didn't even exist in the first place. Persuading politicians and the public to support mindbogglingly massive federal subsidies to fund the transition away from fossil fuels would have been easy in comparison. And probably cheaper, for that matter. I mean, my god. I can just imagine the marketing and PR angle: The industry that chose to end itself to save humanity's future. We'd have shoveled money at them, and thanked them for the privilege. Had they been willing, they could have pushed for an energy transition that, in the end, would have likely been as profitable or even more profitable than what they managed since they first understood just how catastrophic climate change would be. Instead, they chose to merely delay the inevitable. They'll still face the very consequences that scared them off of acting on climate change, only they'll be worse due to the shortened window of action. The only difference is that the executives who first made that decision will likely not be around for it.
- fwungy 3y ago
  Private oil companies like Exxon are only about 10% of oil production. The biggies are the state oil companies, on which state wealth depends. They aren't going to give that up.
jimlongton 3y ago
Related: Revealed: Exxon made ‘breathtakingly’ accurate climate predictions in 1970s and 80s https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jan/12/exxon-climate-change-global-warming-research https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jan/12/exxon-clima...
- cutemonster 3y ago
  Interesting (I think I've seen here at HN before?) And replace this: > while doing absolutely nothing to stop the further degradation of out environment with: > doing something to profit from the further degradation of our environment Eat the cake and have it too
  - Dylan16807 3y ago
    > Eat the cake and have it too I don't understand how you're using this metaphor here. What's the cake? WRT the environment, they're just eating it.
    - cutemonster 3y ago
      The environment yes, and after they've eaten it they can continue making money from it, by partly reversing a bit of the damage they did.
      - nashashmi 3y ago
        We call that recycling.
PaulHoule 3y ago
Funny but Exxon could become a ‘net zero’ company without fundamentally changing its business. You see, companies get charged for the carbon they emit, not the carbon that their customers emit. An oil refinery is an ideal place to implement carbon capture because it is a concentrated source of emissions and is already using technology such as amine strippers that one would use for carbon capture. Refineries burn a lot of fuel to produce hydrogen and process heat and those could be replaced with green hydrogen or pink hydrogen, heat could be derived from resistive heating, nuclear HTGR or adiabatic compression in turbines. What CO2 is produced can be pumped underground into saline aquifers. The Biden administration is interested in subsidizing such development in the ‘Refinery Row” of the U.S. South and it is something they are equipped to succeed at because they have the geology, industrial concentration, skills and attitude to pull it off. A net-zero Exxon would still have to decarbonize production and that is harder than the refinery but they could buy some offsets (or themselves implement with direct carbon capture, BECCS, etc.) It would be a lot cheaper than buying offsets for their customers but who knows they might sell those too.
- mullingitover 3y ago
  The idea of Exxon becoming “net zero” is a howler and we can’t let them get away with it. We need to price the carbon emissions at the source. If they want to pass on the external carbon costs to their customers, so be it.
  - plagiarist 3y ago
    Stop making destruction of the ecosystem an economic externality? What's next, pricing human rights abuses to prevent US companies from profiting off of foreign slave labor?
    - dathos 3y ago
      I think you fail to realize how the profitability of this industry subsidizes a lot of issues that look to be crisises on their own. Plastics being too cheap to make so we don’t really do recycling or reducing to name one.
pfdietz 3y ago
Why would Exxon need an excuse?
NikkiA 3y ago
"We're not extracting oil, we're making space for future captured CO2"

azinman2 3y ago

It shouldn’t be a surprise. They’re an oil and gas company, with gigantic investments in that space, a culture that supports it, knowledge to do it, politics solved for it, and a crap ton of inertia. The expectation that they’d pivot is far less likely than likely. This isn’t a sector known for disruption outside of new ways to extract.

csnover 3y ago
The insane thing about this is to me that Exxon did seem to have ideas about pivoting away from oil and gas in the 1970s[0]. They funded research that brought down the cost of solar panels five-fold and started manufacturing and selling their own panels[1], they developed the lithium-ion battery[2], and they created subsidiaries for servicing the nuclear power industry[3], among other things. I’ve never understood the obstructionist position of these oil execs. If you want to make a shitload of money, why not push for development of some emerging industry like renewables where all the infrastructure has to be built up from nothing? That could be money you are getting paid to build it. Instead, now it’s money going to some other company. [0] https://www.desmog.com/s1ep1-bell-labs-energy/ https://www.desmog.com/s1ep1-bell-labs-energy/ [1] https://www.npr.org/2019/09/30/763844598/how-big-oil-of-the-past-helped-launch-the-solar-industry-of-today https://www.npr.org/2019/09/30/763844598/how-big-oil-of-the-... [2] https://www.bupipedream.com/news/49390/prof-whittingham/ https://www.bupipedream.com/news/49390/prof-whittingham/ [3] https://www.nytimes.com/1976/03/14/archives/exxons-innovative-little-offshoots-the-offshoots-of-exxon.html https://www.nytimes.com/1976/03/14/archives/exxons-innovativ...
- teddyh 3y ago
  The first digital camera was (AFAIK) made by Kodak. The modern desktop computer was largely invented by Xerox. Both companies failed to follow through.
- brmgb 3y ago
  It’s not an either/or situation. Most of the Big Oil companies have significant investments in renewable power. It’s just that oil is insanely profitable, to a point which is hard to grasp so it dwarfs whatever else they do.
- nsriv 3y ago
  The idea is to become so big by selling oil that you are essentially paid/begged to create the new industry that solves the problem, thereby giving you first-mover advantage in the new era. The obstructionist stuff is a little bit performative for shareholders, but there will be an inflection point in their public attitudes. Unfortunately it'll be past the inflection point for favorable living conditions.
- Bluestrike2 3y ago
  Despite having all sorts of advantages (a head start and patents for batteries and renewable energy tech, robust research capabilities, etc.) and a literal roadmap of how climate change would play out, they realized that it was easier and less risky--for them, at least--to maintain the status quo. After all, once you've started a revolution, there's no guarantee that you'll keep control of it. A long, slow transition that started in the 70s would have been, if not painless, then close enough to it that the pain was easily managed. Worries about stranded assets? By the time the transition was over, they'd have been near the end of their expected lifespans anyways. New, more nimble competitors popping up? They could just acquire them. Lost revenue? Please. They convinced the world not to take action on climate change, and even managed to hoodwink one of the two major political parties in the US that climate change didn't even exist in the first place. Persuading politicians and the public to support mindbogglingly massive federal subsidies to fund the transition away from fossil fuels would have been easy in comparison. And probably cheaper, for that matter. I mean, my god. I can just imagine the marketing and PR angle: The industry that chose to end itself to save humanity's future. We'd have shoveled money at them, and thanked them for the privilege. Had they been willing, they could have pushed for an energy transition that, in the end, would have likely been as profitable or even more profitable than what they managed since they first understood just how catastrophic climate change would be. Instead, they chose to merely delay the inevitable. They'll still face the very consequences that scared them off of acting on climate change, only they'll be worse due to the shortened window of action. The only difference is that the executives who first made that decision will likely not be around for it.
fwungy 3y ago
Private oil companies like Exxon are only about 10% of oil production. The biggies are the state oil companies, on which state wealth depends. They aren't going to give that up.

jimlongton 3y ago

Related: Revealed: Exxon made ‘breathtakingly’ accurate climate predictions in 1970s and 80s https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jan/12/exxon-climate-change-global-warming-research https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jan/12/exxon-clima...

cutemonster 3y ago
Interesting (I think I've seen here at HN before?) And replace this: > while doing absolutely nothing to stop the further degradation of out environment with: > doing something to profit from the further degradation of our environment Eat the cake and have it too
- Dylan16807 3y ago
  > Eat the cake and have it too I don't understand how you're using this metaphor here. What's the cake? WRT the environment, they're just eating it.
  - cutemonster 3y ago
    The environment yes, and after they've eaten it they can continue making money from it, by partly reversing a bit of the damage they did.
    - nashashmi 3y ago
      We call that recycling.

PaulHoule 3y ago

Funny but Exxon could become a ‘net zero’ company without fundamentally changing its business. You see, companies get charged for the carbon they emit, not the carbon that their customers emit. An oil refinery is an ideal place to implement carbon capture because it is a concentrated source of emissions and is already using technology such as amine strippers that one would use for carbon capture. Refineries burn a lot of fuel to produce hydrogen and process heat and those could be replaced with green hydrogen or pink hydrogen, heat could be derived from resistive heating, nuclear HTGR or adiabatic compression in turbines. What CO2 is produced can be pumped underground into saline aquifers. The Biden administration is interested in subsidizing such development in the ‘Refinery Row” of the U.S. South and it is something they are equipped to succeed at because they have the geology, industrial concentration, skills and attitude to pull it off. A net-zero Exxon would still have to decarbonize production and that is harder than the refinery but they could buy some offsets (or themselves implement with direct carbon capture, BECCS, etc.) It would be a lot cheaper than buying offsets for their customers but who knows they might sell those too.

mullingitover 3y ago
The idea of Exxon becoming “net zero” is a howler and we can’t let them get away with it. We need to price the carbon emissions at the source. If they want to pass on the external carbon costs to their customers, so be it.
- plagiarist 3y ago
  Stop making destruction of the ecosystem an economic externality? What's next, pricing human rights abuses to prevent US companies from profiting off of foreign slave labor?
  - dathos 3y ago
    I think you fail to realize how the profitability of this industry subsidizes a lot of issues that look to be crisises on their own. Plastics being too cheap to make so we don’t really do recycling or reducing to name one.

pfdietz 3y ago

Why would Exxon need an excuse?

NikkiA 3y ago

"We're not extracting oil, we're making space for future captured CO2"