Darren Woods, the chief executive of Exxon Mobil, cautioned President-elect Donald J. Trump against withdrawing from the Paris agreement to curb climate-warming emissions, saying Mr. Trump risked leaving a void at the negotiating table.
Mr. Woods, speaking at an annual U.N. climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, described climate negotiations as opportunities for Mr. Trump to pursue common-sense policymaking.
“We need a global system for managing global emissions,” Mr. Woods said in an interview with The New York Times in Baku. “Trump and his administrations have talked about coming back into government and bringing common sense back into government. I think he could take the same approach in this space.”
Mr. Woods also urged government officials to create incentives for companies to transition to cleaner forms of energy in a profitable way.
“The government role is extremely important and one that they haven’t been successfully fulfilling, quite frankly,” he said.
Mr. Woods’s presence in a stadium teeming with diplomats is all the more noteworthy because of who is not here in Azerbaijan, a petrostate on the Caspian Sea that was once part of the Soviet Union. Many heads of state, including President Biden, have taken a pass, as have the leaders of several big oil companies like Shell and Chevron.
Hanging over this year’s negotiations is the election of Mr. Trump, who has falsely called global warming a hoax, encouraged oil companies to “drill, baby, drill” and vowed to withdraw from the Paris climate treaty — again.
Mr. Woods, who supports the climate accord, warned that pulling out would “leave a void with respect to what the Trump administration could bring to this process.”
Mr. Trump’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Wall Street Journal first reported that Mr. Woods didn’t want Mr. Trump to withdraw the United States from the Paris agreement.
Earlier Tuesday, during the live taping of a Bloomberg podcast episode, Mr. Woods sought to ease concerns about the effect Mr. Trump might have on efforts to address climate change.
“I’m not sure that any one administration is going to significantly advance the pace of the transition or conversely significantly slow the pace,” Mr. Woods said, calling the energy transition “a long-term investment.”
The Exxon chief also called for global standards to account for carbon dioxide emissions, a system that would serve as the basis for governments to set regulatory standards.
At last year’s climate talks in Dubai, Mr. Woods told The Financial Times that the world should think beyond renewables. He said Exxon, the largest U.S. oil company, could help stem climate change by producing biofuels, capturing carbon dioxide and investing in cleaner sources of energy. Exxon also joined dozens of producers in signing a pledge to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions effectively to zero.
Instead of developing wind or solar farms, Exxon is pursuing technologies that are similar to the company’s existing business of drilling and processing oil and gas. Those include harvesting lithium from briny water and using natural gas to make hydrogen.
Exxon is poised to spend around $3 billion this year on projects meant to provide alternatives to fossil fuels or reduce emissions, the Swiss bank UBS estimates. That amounts to about 11 percent of the company’s planned capital outlay for the year, a smaller share than many other large oil companies are spending on similar efforts, according to the bank.
Exxon’s spending on projects related to the energy transition is poised to rise in the coming years, totaling more than $20 billion from 2022 through 2027.
Oil and gas companies’ participation in annual U.N. climate talks rankles some environmentalists who worry that executives and lobbyists will press negotiators to preserve too big a role for fossil fuels in the energy industry.
For years, Exxon’s executives expressed doubt about whether greenhouse gas emissions were causing temperatures to rise, even though company’s scientists accurately predicted how much burning fossil fuels would warm the climate.
Mr. Woods, for his part, has defended the company, saying Exxon’s position has evolved with the scientific consensus. He has acknowledged the relationship between emissions from humanity’s use of fossil fuels and climate change. On Tuesday, he said that Exxon brought an important perspective to climate discussions.
“Some people can sit around and talk about it,” Mr. Woods said. “There are other people who are actually involved in doing it, and I think the perspective changes.”
The company has backed the Paris climate accord’s goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels and committed to reducing its own emissions to net zero by 2050.
Yet that goal does not extend to the greenhouse gases that are released when people burn Exxon’s fuels. The company also expects demand for oil and gas to remain more robust than most scientists believe is consistent with meeting the Paris target.
U.S. demand for oil and gas is likely to rise if Mr. Trump succeeds in spurring economic growth, Mr. Woods said. If consumption patterns shift, Exxon is prepared to pivot.
“Our strategy is robust to any number of future scenarios,” he said.
The post Exxon Chief to Trump: Don’t Withdraw From Paris Climate Deal appeared first on New York Times.
