ExxonMobil’s annual foray into climate action cosplay is out, and this year’s “Advancing Climate Solutions” report once again dresses up propaganda as science, ignores history, and defies common sense.
This year’s review comes on the heels of a new report from UCS prominently featuring ExxonMobil titled Decades of Deceit. This collection of internal documents outlines how the fossil fuel industry knew about the harms of its products since the 1950s and carried out a highly deceptive public relations campaign to distract from the reality of climate change and delay climate action.
Unsurprisingly, ExxonMobil’s latest attempt to dust over this history is more of the same and continues that legacy of deception and greenwashing, manipulating scientific understanding to maintain a veneer of climate action. It’s both rhetorically confident and decidedly noncommittal, full of statements pledging up to billions of dollars in investments to support the transition to net zero, declarations of its rebrand as a “molecule transformation company”, and no acknowledgment of its role in driving climate change in the first place.
This is the third such report I’ve reviewed as part of my work at UCS. Last year, I explored how ExxonMobil’s graphs imparted an impression of scientific credibility to glossy yet meaningless graphs that again are a key feature. But here, we’ll be exploring this report as a masterclass in paltering, where facts are presented deceptively, in this case without key information required to properly contextualize them.
Who is this report for?
Before we dive into the content of the report, let’s be clear: this report is targeting shareholders and investors. Both of these groups may feel the need to either market themselves as green, requiring cover to continue investing in ExxonMobil. Alternatively, this report could also be deployed as a tactic to appease those who aspire to walk in the footsteps of Engine No. 1, an activist investor which in 2021 led a successful proxy fight to claim three seats on ExxonMobil’s board.
The report was published in the lead-up to ExxonMobil annual shareholders’ meeting—at which no climate-related shareholder proposals are on the agenda. Last year, the corporation took the extreme measure of filing suit against two investor groups that filed resolutions asking for deeper global warming emissions reductions, refusing to drop the suit even after the shareholders withdrew their proposal.
Climate report says what?
ExxonMobil’s report misrepresents conclusions from both the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and International Energy Agency (IEA) by denying the importance of a fossil fuel phaseout to meet climate goals and instead focusing on carbon capture and storage (CCS) as the essential solution to meeting climate targets. While both institutions recognize a potential role for CCS in specific sectors, ExxonMobil’s framing ignores the broader consensus that rapid emissions reductions through proven solutions, such as transitioning to renewable energy, are the cornerstone of any credible climate strategy.
The 2023 IPCC Synthesis Report presents multiple pathways to limit global warming, some of which include carbon capture and storage (CCS). However, all such pathways also require steep and immediate emission reductions. In this context, abatement refers to capturing at least 90 percent of emissions from a given source, a performance level that current CCS deployment has not consistently achieved. Notably, ExxonMobil supports its claims about CCS cost-effectiveness by citing outdated findings from a 2014 IPCC report, ignoring more recent assessments and real-world performance data.
The current limitations of CCS do not excuse inaction; rather, they underscore the urgent need for proven mitigation strategies and strong regulatory standards that do not rely on unproven or future technologies.
Carbon Capture and Storage
Let’s dig into carbon capture and storage (CCS), the largest portion of ExxonMobil’s low carbon solutions chapter, but one presented without some very important context.
Carbon capture was not developed as a climate mitigation strategy, although the fossil fuel industry has sought to rebrand it as such, touting applications to fossil fuel infrastructure and hard-to-abate sectors. In reality, and notably absent from the report is the fact that the majority of captured carbon is and has been used to extract more oil. This process, called enhanced oil recovery, has been happening since the 1970s.
The first examples of carbon capture come from fossil gas processing. Practically, CO2 needs to be separated from extracted raw gas to produce fossil gas, which is primarily methane. This would be required regardless of the fate of the separated CO2. That CO2 can be sold for EOR or storage instead of vented, creating an additional revenue stream from gas processing. However, even today, the majority of CO2 used in EOR comes from natural reservoirs of CO2.
ExxonMobil’s claims in this report also overstate the efficacy of carbon capture, particularly for power plants. A 2020 peer-reviewed study found that roughly 90% of proposed projects in the power sector were never built, and many that became operational missed their capture targets by between 15 and 50%.
In addition, little evidence exists that this technology can be scaled in time or at the level needed to deliver the deep emissions cuts required between now and 2030—especially in comparison to more mature, cost-effective solutions. Yet, this crucial context is absent from ExxonMobil’s report, which presents CCS as a silver bullet rather than one potential tool within a broader, science-based climate strategy.
Who needs history anyway?
One of the most frustrating parts of reading this report is the complete disregard of how we got to this place. It reads as if climate change is just a thing that happened without influence from industry, government, or the cooperation between both. What Decades of Deceit along with the 2015 UCS report, the Climate Deception Dossiers, make clear, is that arriving at this point, 422 ppm (parts per million) CO2 and rising, did not just happen but rather was the result of a long-running fossil fuel industry campaign to muddy the science of climate change, attack experts, and manipulate public discourse. To ignore this context is the biggest ruse of all.
Threat of liability is growing
This report was released into a domestic political situation that is hostile to the energy transition, and one where liabilities and litigation associated with ExxonMobil’s role in driving climate change continue to grow. The Trump administration has very publicly allied itself with not only fossil fuel industry and interests, but integrated industry into the administration itself (see Chris Wright, or Rex Tillerson). On top of that, we’ve seen the administration bludgeon not only research focused on climate change but mere mentions of it across federal websites and programs. This deep integration of industry and government increases the risk of an industry-wide liability waiver, one that could provide immunity to an industry that knowingly caused damage to our planet and communities, while profiting handsomely.
Meanwhile, litigation targeting the deceptive conduct of the fossil fuel industry and legislation seeking accountability marches ahead despite attempts by the administration to stymie these efforts. And the science connecting emissions traced to these companies to devastating climate impacts continues to strengthen, as does our ability to show the role of climate change in a growing number of extreme events.
Shareholders must demand an end to disinformation and greenwashing
ExxonMobil’s 2025 report is not a roadmap for climate action—it’s a distraction. While ExxonMobil’s strategy may have changed, this report illustrates that the corporation’s output of (highly produced) disinformation continues. From misrepresenting the conclusions of the IPCC to overstating the potential of its technologies, ExxonMobil continues to put significant effort and resources into creating the illusion that the company cares about climate change.
That’s why the Union of Concerned Scientists is urging shareholders and financiers to demand that ExxonMobil cease disinformation and greenwashing on climate science, public policy, and corporate actions.