“There are no greater opportunities to make this kind of shortening in the time frame we are talking about,” Woods said in an interview. “Society does not have many opportunities to reduce CO2 emissions in the time frame.”
But the Biden government is not considering Exxon’s idea, as it is preparing for its own climate plans. people who are familiar with the thinking of the White House. Meanwhile, environmental groups and many Democrats have voiced the proposal for carbon capture as a climate strategy, saying the only way to permanently reduce greenhouse gas pollution is a major shutdown of fossil fuels.
The White House is expected to introduce a new national target by 2030 that should reduce U.S. carbon dioxide emissions by about half of 2005 levels. The US must reach its own climate goal – which Biden will reveal as he prepares to host world leaders as part of his two-day virtual climate summit starting on Thursday – as part of his return to the Paris climate agreement, the international treaty that according to Exxon be said.
Woods said the project would not only remove millions of tons of planetary warming gases from the atmosphere, but also establish a technology that the company expects to play a critical role in the U.S. climate strategy.
Exxon and other oil producers accept carbon capture as a technology that will enable their oil and gas companies to continue operating in a carbon-restricted environment. But it has suffered a strong setback from green groups, many of which Exxon singled out for blaming what they call the oil and gas industry’s decades of efforts to disguise the reality of man-made climate change.
Unlike European competitors such as Shell and BP, Exxon did not promise to switch from fossil fuels, arguing that oil and gas would be the key to the world economy for decades as building blocks for plastics and the global expansion of electricity. to awaken. Instead, the company plans to pay attention to the capture and storage of the carbon released from oil and gas, and to capitalize on the enormous new business opportunity.
Exxon announced in February that it would establish ExxonMobil Low Carbon Solutions, a new business division focusing on the capture of carbon emissions from various industries. The company gave the idea of a pilot program in Houston to the White House, including Republican Senator John Cornyn and Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, Woods said.
A spokesman for Turner’s office declined to comment.
The company has decades of experience in technology development and demands tax cuts, known as 45Q credits, which give companies $ 50 for every tonne of carbon captured and sequestered, or $ 35 for a tonne reused in oil production, a process that oil producers have. long used to increase production from aging wells. According to Oil Change International, an environmental group, Exxon used the tax credit to claim $ 240 million by 2015.
But in the absence of new direct financial incentives, a price of $ 100 per tonne of carbon would be needed to make large-scale carbon capture industry profitable, Woods said.
‘We want to be part of that conversation, help [lawmakers] think of how they can implement policies to encourage a very large investment as we are talking here, ‘Woods said. ‘So there are tax incentives, which can be 45Q, an extension of it, tax credits, low interest rate loans. There are a variety of mechanisms out there, and I think the challenge is to find the right one to spur something so great. ‘
Biden has so far avoided proposing a price on carbon, either through a cap-and-trade system or an economy-tax carbon tax, and instead advocates the introduction of a “clean energy standard” under its infrastructure plan to to accelerate the growth of carbon. free energy sources such as renewable energy and nuclear power and carbon capture technology.
Reducing the Houston Ship Channel’s carbon footprint would be a major undertaking. The 50-kilometer-long waterway that connects Houston to the Gulf of Mexico is littered with petrochemical facilities and several of the country’s largest fuel refineries, including industrial sites.
Exxon said it intends to create a development zone for carbon capture technology in the area, “similar to other public-private initiatives set up to facilitate economic growth or address other broad-based social challenges.” If successful, by 2040 about 100 million tonnes of carbon per year could be collected from the industrial area and thousands of feet below the seabed along the Gulf Coast could be led into rock formations. This could then be repeated in the Middle East and other areas, Exxon said.