I know I’m late on this, but the Wall Street Journal had a report on the 11th about Exxon backing off their position on climate change and perhaps engaging with emissions regulation:
In one of the strongest signs yet that U.S. industry anticipates government curbs on global-warming emissions, Exxon Mobil Corp., long a leading opponent of such rules, is starting to talk about how it would like them to be structured.
Here’s the meat of the article:
Exxon says important questions remain about the degree to which fossil-fuel emissions are contributing to global warming. But “the modeling has gotten better” analyzing the probabilities of how rising greenhouse-gas emissions will affect global temperatures, Mr. Cohen said. Exxon continues to stress the modeling is imperfect; it is “helpful to an analysis, but it’s not a predictor,” he said. But he added, “we know enough now — or, society knows enough now — that the risk is serious and action should be taken.”
Well that makes for an interesting start to the new year! We’ll see how this plays out, but I like where it’s heading:
Exxon wants any regulation to be applied across “the broadest possible base” of the economy, said Jaime Spellings, Exxon’s general manager for corporate planning. Exxon says avoiding a ton of carbon-dioxide emissions is, with certain exceptions, less expensive in the power industry than in the transportation sector. Though solar energy remains expensive, reducing a ton of emissions by generating electricity from essentially carbon-free sources such as nuclear or wind energy is cheaper than reducing a ton of emissions through low-carbon transportation fuels such as ethanol.
