Exxon working on direct air capture but costs must come down

Exxon Mobile is working on technology to directly remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in an effort to cut exorbitant costs in half, CEO Darren Woods said Friday.

Woods said direct air capture technology holds enormous long-term potential as a tool to combat climate change. But this solution is currently unaffordable on a large scale, with the removal of atmospheric emissions costing between $600 and $1,000 per ton.

“If you try to apply that to the entire emissions challenge facing the planet, the world is not going to be able to pay for it,” the CEO said during the company’s quarterly earnings conference call. Exxon. “We are focused on how we can make this technology widely applicable at an affordable cost to society.”

The oil major has launched a pilot project in Baytown, Texas, to test the feasibility of its proprietary direct air capture process. Woods acknowledged that the technology would still be too expensive to scale globally even if Exxon reduced its current cost by 50 percent, but achieving that goal would demonstrate the value of the concept and spur its development.

The price needs to come down to around $100 per ton of carbon captured for the technology to become a viable tool for fighting climate change, Woods said. He added that air emissions are extremely dilute and require processing a massive amount of air to remove a single ton of carbon dioxide.

“It’s a tough challenge and I’m not pretending we’re the ones who are going to solve it,” Woods said. “But I am confident that we will give our best, applying our abilities.”

Dozens of universities and companies besides Exxon are working to make direct air capture scalable, the CEO said. Whoever breaks through, Exxon will play a major role in the market, he said.

“Once we have technology that hits the right cost level, you’re going to need large-scale global deployment,” Woods said. “I suspect that the technology that will be needed in the future, lower cost direct air capture, will be different from what we have today and will require some of the technical capabilities that we have.”

Exxon is also a major player in efforts to accelerate carbon capture and storage technology, a different process that eliminates higher-concentration emissions streams from industrial processes. The oil major is building a pipeline and storage network along the Gulf Coast, with three contracts signed to eliminate emissions from the operations of CF Industries, Nucor and Linde.

Carbon capture and direct air capture are controversial tools to combat climate change. Technologies are expensive and difficult to scale; so far, very few projects have reached the final investment stage.

Some activists accuse the oil industry of investing in technology to extend the life of fossil fuels. The International Energy Agency called carbon capture “critical” to reaching net zero emissions globally by 2050, but said the oil and gas industry must prove the technology can work in large scale. The IEA also warned the industry against over-reliance on the technology as a solution to climate change.