A Power Lunch of Algae, Exxon and me on CNBC
Posted July 14, 2009 in Moving Beyond Oil, Solving Global Warming
So Exxon announced a $600 million investment in algae biofuels today. The company reported profits over $45 billion last year, and this investment will be spread out over 5 or 6 years. Furthermore, half of it will go for in house research. So it's safe to say that this one annoucement may just be greenwashing and certainly doesn't change Exxon's reputation as the most polluting company on earth.
Given that, why did I tell CNBS's Power Lunch that it was a good type of investment for Exxon to make and the right direction for energy companies to be heading? Check out the video clip below to hear my answer.
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Comments
Nathan Mueller — Jul 15 2009 12:05 AM
Good points in the clip - even the co-announcer thought you were right! I doubt Exxon is going away any time soon, and it is better that they get involved renewables sooner rather than later ...
John Valente — Jul 15 2009 08:31 AM
Nice Debate. Sounds like greenwashing by Exxon but to be fair they are just following the lead of BP and Shell and others. Interestingly, Exxon sold its distribution assets for $826 million last year to an SUGARCANE ethanol producer (http://bit.ly/1VIqD). So, they pocket a quarter of a billion and promise to invest $600 million in a yet-to-be-proven technology. The debate continues.
john
PS: Did you intentionally misspell CNBC... CNBS would be more accurate at times.
lisa mccrummen — Jul 15 2009 02:36 PM
At the end of the day, this is really business 101. The business community needs to understand your bigger point - Exxon and all 'oil companies' ARE energy companies... in a new policy era where the world recognizes that climate matters. They can make lots of money as well as support a sustainable economy/do no wrong if they choose to. However, should Exxon and the business commmunity pigeonhole the company as only an oil company vs. the bigger opportunity of an energy company, it puts them on a collision course with both climate and their real, future profits. I.E., to use the Powerlunch person's own analogy, if your company started out in the whaling business, and didn't UNDERSTAND that you were really in the energy business, by ADAPTING A NEW BUSINESS STRATEGY, then that business ended up dying.
Dr. James Singmaster — Jul 15 2009 08:15 PM
When will NRDC staff wake up to the fact that we have environmentally damaging overload of GHGs, mainly carbon dioxide, already in the biosphere, so that most biofuels just, at best, keep recycling carbon dioxide not removing on balance one molecule of that gas from the biosphere. One type of biofuel has some great benefits and that is derived from pyrolyzing the massive ever-expanding messes of organic wastes and sewage. This process converts about 50% of the carbon in the messes into inert charcoal that can be buried permanently stopping the natural biodegrading of the messes to be needlessly reemitting GHGs. The other 50% of the carbon gets expelled as a distillate of various organic chemicals in messy mix that can be collected and refined to get fuel or possible feed stocks for making drugs, soaps, etc. free of oil.
The big benefit in pyrolyzing those messes is the destroying of all the germs, drugs and most toxics in the messes(A few are in the distillate but can be cleaned out in refining). That will mean greatly reduced costs in maintaining dumps and no costly problems from those hazards due to seepage or washouts. I have detailed this process on several other Switchboard postings and have many comments on GreenInc NYTimes blog(search my name there) about this one biofuel process that actually will remove some of that gas from the overload.
This ploy by Exxon smells of being a distraction from developing the pyrolysis of those messes over which they have very little
control as government programs are what handle the messes. And a distraction from developing hydrogen as a fuel as getting that by using a catalyst(7 reported in last 2 years) and sunlight to split water has nothing that Exxon can buy up and control.
No wonder that a lot of hype from oil and energy companies for hydrogen programs just about dropped dead at start of 2008 after the second report on such catalyst got made.
Dr. J. Singmaster