Oil giant Exxon (NYSE: XOM) announced recently that it will invest over $15bn to reduce emissions from greenhouse gases across all of its operations. The sum is a fivefold increase on a previous commitment from their Low Carbon Solutions business which announced in February that it will invest $3bn in this initiative.
“Aggressive” is the word they chose to describe their decarbozation plans with, as not only carbon dioxide will be target, but also methane.
The latter has been identified as a higher short-term priority for government and Exxon is formally announcing it will do its part for the US Methane Emissions Reduction Plan to work.
Still, carbon capture will be the main technology that will be used to achieve net zero for Exxon low carbon operations.
Exxon have already been active in the carbon capture and storage (CCS) area with projects in Europe and Asia announced earlier this year.
Relevant: ExxonMobil Preparing For Mammoth Carbon Capture Project In Houston?
A CCS hub is also in the works in Houston and has the lofty goal of capturing 100m metric tonnes of carbon dioxide from the emissions heavy industry in the area.
Imperial Oil, Exxon’s Canadian affiliate is also moving forward in another direction Big Oil is looking to invest – renewable diesel that requires 70% less hydrocarbons to produce compared to regular diesel.
Hydrogen is another pillar in Exxon’s plans, though perhaps the smallest.
The current annual production is 1.3m metric tonnes, but this number could grow rapidly as a budding partnership with FuelCell Energy could lead to more scalability.
Read more: FuelCell Energy And ExxonMobil Extend Carbon Capture Agreement
