$100 billion for carbon capture?

The Houston Ship Channel is home to petrochemical plants, power companies and heavy industries, all of which release climate-harming emissions. But in a process called “carbon capture and storage” (CCS), some industrial facilities are capturing carbon dioxide before it leaves their plants and using it to develop products or storing it underground. Exxon Mobil wants to turn the 50-mile-long Houston Ship Channel into a hub for CCS. The oil and gas giant called on industry and government to raise $100 billion to capture carbon dioxide at industrial plants and inject it under the Gulf of Mexico. Joe Blommaert, President of Low Carbon Solutions at Exxon, told The Associated Press CCS is essential to meeting the goals of the Paris agreement while also meeting the growing energy needs of the world.

How would that $100 billion be spent?

Obviously, the scale is unprecedented. When you look into the details, it is many capture facilities and storage facilities. What is important is this collaboration of the whole industry, the whole of government and the whole of society. And it is actually addressing climate change, which technically is a very complicated issue. It needs all of the solutions, it is not one or the other.

What percentage of the costs would Exxon contribute?

I will not give you the percentage, it’s obviously too early. A meeting is scheduled in the next few days to talk about how to get organized, do governance, and so on. And then each company is looking at its own capture project and the specific details. So more to come on that. I’m not giving you a specific number, but stay tuned.

Was this plan created in response to investor concerns about climate change?

We started this CCS venture about three years ago and actually that is now included in my business. This was actually already quite quite well progressed, culminating in the creation of a (carbon capture) business that is now 30 this year. It’s just the right time for us.

If Exxon believes this is important, then why not dramatically reduce oil and gas production and invest more in renewable energy?

I fully appreciate this perspective and I would come back to what I said earlier in terms of meeting the goals of the Paris accord and meeting energy and product demands that modern life requires, particularly when you think about the growth of society. That energy mix will change, but that will still require energy sources from fossil fuels. That’s why it is actually so important to have technologies like CCS so that you can meet the energy supplies that the world needs, you can do that in a way that from a climate change point of view, the emissions are being abated, and you can do that at the lowest cost possible to society. And you can do that now.