I think today were continuing to lay out our plans, and my sense is they are aligned with the
direction that were heading, want to see us to continue to take a leadership role and help society transition to a lower carbon future. And some of the things weve been doing I think they recognize as steps in that direction, trying to
find ways to leverage what ExxonMobil can uniquely bring to this space to help society transition to a lower carbon future while building shareholder value.
And you know, we recently announced a new business, Low Carbon Solutions. We recently announced a concept of a very large scale carbon reduction opportunity
in Houston Ship Channel area, and I think, you know, people are interested in that.
Were going to need big steps and big reductions and companies
like ExxonMobil to help society make this transition successfully and at a low cost.
BECKY QUICK: Darren, I hadnt realized until very recently what
you guys have already been doing in carbon capture. I didnt realize it was something youve been working on for about 40 or 50 years at this point. Someone told me that Exxon is the largest entity for you can look at any country,
you can look at any company, and Exxon has actually captured more carbon over the last 40 or 50 years than just about anybody else. Explain how that works and what it is because I dont think a lot of people understand that.
MR. WOODS: So, yeah, weve been involved in that industry for a long, long time. And as youve stated, Becky, we you know, weve
captured more anthropogenic CO2 than any other entity in the world, a hundred million 120 million tons, which is equivalent to about 25 million cars on the road in one year, and so and operate that technology all around the
world.
Were doing a lot of work today to advance that technology and to lower the cost. One of the challenges with the existing technology is it
requires more concentrated sources of CO2, and so the attractiveness of that technology is limited to certain applications.
And of course, as you move
out further and further and try to reduce more and more CO2, you need lower cost technology to achieve that. And thats the work weve been doing over the last decade, investing in R&D to try to lower the cost of carbon capture and
storage so that we can deploy that more broadly.
And we in 2018 launched a carbon capture venture that looked at trying to deploy some of that technology
that were developing, looked for opportunities around the world to deploy carbon capture as a whole. Weve got 20 project concepts that were progressing and evaluating, and making some progress there in the Houston Ship Channel with
a hundred million tons per annum of CO2 reduction in 2040 is one of those projects that weve been talking about with governments both locally and at the federal level.
BECKY QUICK: Darren, when you talk about carbon capture it sounds great, but the reason youve been doing this for years is you can make money doing it.
Its something that you resell, the captured carbon, to companies like Coke and Pepsi, and in other cases you get government subsidies for it.
So
how does it work? If youre going to spend a hundred billion dollars building a plant like this in the Houston area, how does it work? How do you make money on that? Because nobody does things just out of the good of their hearts. Whats
the business model here?
MR. WOODS: Well, I think youve got to go back to, you know, foundations. If governments around the word and society as a
whole wants to reduce CO2, there needs to be an incentive to make that happen. And as you say, you know, a lot of the applications today capturing that CO2 and putting it to use with our existing industry can make money and justify those
investments.
As you move out, theres going to need to be some incentive to do that. And thats not a new concept, frankly. You see that today,
tax incentives you have for electric vehicles, the tax incentives for wind and solar. I think one of the big differences in those applications is there is an existing industry with an existing incentive and the government is aiding that incentive to
facilitate and grow those new businesses.