Riding on reputation
ExxonMobil puts energy into finding new fuels
When
you hear “ExxonMobil,” the words still
conjure the Exxon Valdez. The tanker ran aground a little
more than 15 years ago in Prince William Sound, Alaska, spilling
11 million gallons of crude oil into the state’s coastal
waters.
In his “Energy Outlook 2030” presentation Nov. 4 at the Donald
P. Jacobs Center, ExxonMobil President Steve Simon acknowledged that the catastrophe
isn’t the only reason his company has been “painted as anti-environmental.”
“We’ve done a poor job in the past of conveying what we stand for,
and we’ve let others define us,” Simon told an attentive audience
of Kellogg School students. But no more. Today, ExxonMobil is speaking loud and
clear about its efforts to find and develop environmentally friendly energy sources.
To counter
emissions growth — which Simon said is twice as bad in developing
countries than in other nations — ExxonMobil has signed on as the biggest
contributor to the Global Climate and Energy Project (GCEP) at Stanford University.
The 10-year, $225 million project brings together the world's leading scientists
from universities, research institutions and private industry to foster the
development of a global energy system with low greenhouse emissions. Other
sponsors are Toyota, GE and Schlumberger, a global technology services company.
ExxonMobil has pledged an investment of up to $100 million for GCEP.
Simon
said his firm is also conducting its own research on harnessing
plentiful “frontier
resources”— extra heavy oil, oil sands and oil shale — and
on producing hydrogen from gasoline on board a fuel-cell automobile, which
is safer than transporting the hydrogen.
ExxonMobil’s emphasis, Simon noted, is on making “a significant
impact” in finding new energy resources. That sits well with Sam Mehta,
a co-chair of the Kellogg School’s Energy Management Club, which helped
bring Simon to Evanston.
“The insight that renewable fuels will account for only 12 percent of the
overall energy supply sources by 2030 is pretty astounding and very worrying,” Mehta
said.
The
other student-led clubs at Kellogg that sponsored Simon’s
visit were Energy Management, Operations Management, General
Management and Business Leadership.
— Deborah
Leigh Wood
|
