While Copenhagen talks, Exxon bets $41bn on low-carbon gas (Action on climate change is in Texas)

The Telegraph ^ | 12/15/2009 | Damian Reece

[SeekAndFind]

If you want action on climate change, don't go to Copenhagen – try Irving, Texas instead. Copenhagen is home, temporarily, to 192 countries trying to agree the environmental future on paper, but Irving is home to Exxon Mobil which has spent $41bn on its view of what constitutes a low carbon tomorrow.

What the world's energy giants do with their immense financial resources will be as important as what the world's politicians do.

Given the way Copenhagen is going, however, it will probably be what the politicians don't agree to do which will be the UN summit's legacy.

Anyway, while they bicker, business acts and Rex Tillerson, Exxon's chairman and chief executive, has placed a big bet on the future of energy and has chosen gas, by buying XTO Energy. Not just any gas but gas that counts as "unconventional resources" which is pumped out of shale, so called "tight gas" out of rock and coal bed methane.

Gas is not carbon free, but it is low carbon so addresses lower emission requirements. It's abundant and with technological advances, such as those developed by XTO, more can be pumped from the free world rather than rely on the collection of autocracies and kleptocracies that currently exert such control over the stuff.

That is important because the huge cost, in both time and money, of developing alternatives such as nuclear and wind power mean gas is in huge demand so relying on less than friendly suppliers is a big risk, as vulnerable economies such as the UK recognise. More gas investment can be expected not just from Exxon but from BP and Shell too. However, large scale acquisitions funded by shares or debt may be beyond the latter two if they want to maintain their dividend payouts.

[SeekAndFind]

An area rich in gas shale in the US state of Colorado

[The Wizard]

but wait...what about the carribue and the sand moneys and the trees and the fish....

[pallis]

How low must the carbon go to be reduced by 50 percent and then 90 percent? How does a population of 300 million return to the carbon use levels of 1875? That’s the goal for 2050. Buy a bicycle. Eat like a bird, and fart like a flea. Do it while dealing with a prolonged cooling cycle.

[saganite]

There’s some interesting technology that can burn natural gas more efficiently than anything out there now. Fuel cells are about to hit the market in a big way. Google solid oxide fuel cells.