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Exxon Stops Pretending to Care About Algae and Cuts its Flagship Greenwashing Project [1]

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Date: 2023-02-15  

ExxonMobil is cutting funding for the algae biofuel programs that it has used to greenwash its image for over ten years.

Bloomberg reported last week that Exxon “has slashed its support for Viridos Inc., a biotech company… that operated as the oil giant’s key technical partner since it began its algae push in 2009.” The oil and gas company also “halted funding for a multi-million-dollar algae project at the Colorado School of Mines at the end of last year, after supporting the work for eight years,” and plans to end a joint effort with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

Exxon previously produced numerous television ads and splashy sponsored content about its algae projects in an attempt to convince the public that the oil giant, which has known about the climate risks of its product since at least the 1970s, actually cares about solving the climate crisis.

Outlets like E&E News and The Wall Street Journal have previously named Exxon’s algae research for what it is: greenwashing. “Exxon said it has spent more than $300 million on algae research since 2009, less than 3% of its annual research budget,” The WSJ explained in 2021, “By contrast, Exxon spent more than $500 million on advertising between 2009 and 2015, according to a 2019 study in the journal Climatic Change.” Exxon certainly tried its best to look like it’s doing something to address climate change, while actually continuing to invest in new oil and gas extraction projects.

Algae biofuels were always a longshot as a renewable energy option. It would be incredibly challenging to produce algae biofuels at scale, and experts have found that while solar and wind energy projects continue to be implemented successfully, algae biofuels technology still needs significantly more research and development investment. Despite the fact that Exxon and Viridos boasted in 2017 that they had made significant breakthroughs in their research, Exxon internally admitted in 2018 that the algae technology was “still decades away from the scale we need.” It is no wonder that companies like Shell abandoned algae biofuels research over a decade ago!

The termination of Exxon’s algae programs is certainly not the end of the company’s greenwashing efforts, though! Exxon is now trying to launder its oil-stained reputation by spending billions of dollars on things like carbon capture and hydrogen , which are also longshot, last-ditch efforts that are more useful as greenwash than as green solutions.

After all, research has shown that even though evidence of carbon capture effectiveness remains tenuous at best, the mere presence of a carbon capture policy option decreases Republicans’ support for renewable energy policies.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/15/2153103/-Exxon-Stops-Pretending-to-Care-About-Algae-and-Cuts-its-Flagship-Greenwashing-Project

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