President-elect Donald Trump should keep the U.S. involved in global efforts to address climate change, Exxon Mobil CEO Darren Woods said Tuesday.
Trump should try to bring a “common sense” approach to the annual U.N. Climate Change Conference and “continue to have the U.S. influence policy around the world,” Woods told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Tuesday. Woods spoke from the climate conference, which kicked off this week in Baku, Azerbaijan.
Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement in 2017 and is expected to do so again in his second term. President Joe Biden signed an order to rejoin the agreement on his first day in office in 2021, a decision that Exxon supported.
Trump slammed the Paris Agreement as “horribly unfair to the U.S.” and vowed to rescind all unspent funds under the Inflation Reduction Act in an address to the Economic Club of New York in September. He made energy policy a central part of his campaign platform, calling for unconstrained fossil fuel production.
Exxon has plans to invest $20 billion through 2027 in carbon capture and storage technology, hydrogen fuel, and lithium mining in the U.S. for electric vehicle batteries.
Woods told CNBC on Tuesday that Exxon’s investments in technologies to lower emissions depend on federal tax credits that were established or expanded under the IRA. He warned that the company’s investments in these technologies would change if the incentives are weakened or repealed.
“There needs to be an incentive to reward those investments and generate a return,” Woods said. “If we find that those incentives dissipate or go away entirely, then that would definitely change our investment plans.”
Wood previously said Exxon’s oil and gas production levels will not change, at least in the short term, in response to the outcome of the U.S. presidential election.
“I’m not sure how ‘drill, baby, drill’ translates into policy,” Woods told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Nov. 1, referencing one of Trump’s campaign slogans.
The CEO said Exxon has not faced constraints on its shale production under the Biden administration. Exxon’s production levels are based on how much money the company can return to shareholders, not which political party is on office, he said.
Exxon shares have risen more than 20% since the start of the year,