President-elect Donald Trump must keep the United States engaged in global efforts to address climate change. Exxon Mobil CEO Darren Woods said Tuesday.
Woods told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Tuesday that Trump should try to apply a “common sense” approach at the annual UN climate change conference and “continue America’s policy of influence around the world.” Woods spoke at the climate conference that kicked off this week in Baku, Azerbaijan.
Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement in 2017, and is expected to do so again in his second term. President Joe Biden signed an order to rejoin the agreement on his first day in office in 2021, a decision that… Exxon supported.
Trump criticized the Paris Agreement as “terribly unfair to the United States” and pledged to cancel all unspent money under the inflation-reducing law in a speech to the Economic Club of New York in September. He has made energy policy a central part of his campaign platform, calling for unrestricted fossil fuel production.
Exxon plans to invest $20 billion through 2027 in carbon capture and storage technology, hydrogen fuel, and lithium mining in the United States for electric vehicle batteries.
Woods told CNBC on Tuesday that Exxon’s investments in emissions-reducing technologies depend on federal tax credits created or expanded under the IRA. He warned that the company’s investments in these technologies would change if incentives were weakened or eliminated.
“There has to be an incentive to reward those investments and generate a return,” Woods said. “If we find that those incentives dissipate or disappear completely, that will certainly change our investment plans.”
Wood previously said that Exxon’s oil and gas production levels would not change, at least in the short term, in response to the outcome of the US presidential election.
“I’m not sure how ‘drill, baby, drill’ translates into policy,” Woods told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Nov. 1, referring to one of Trump’s campaign slogans.
The CEO said Exxon has not faced restrictions on its shale production under the Biden administration. He said Exxon’s production levels depend on how much money the company can return to shareholders, not on which political party is in power.
Exxon shares have risen more than 20% since the beginning of the year.
