Exxon predicted global warming with remarkable accuracy years ago, study shows
Gas prices are displayed at an Exxon gas station on July 29, 2022 in Houston, Texas.
Brandon Bell | Getty Images
Three academics from Harvard and the University of Potsdam in Germany published a study in the journal Science on Thursday providing evidence that Exxon Mobil, the oil and gas behemoth with a current market capitalization of $466 billion, predicted global warming with incredible accuracy in a series of internal reports and messages starting in the 1970s.
“Specifically, what’s new here is that we put a number on – and paint a picture of – what Exxon knew and when,” said study co-author Geoffrey Supran, who worked as a research associate at Harvard when he did this work.
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“We now have airtight, unimpeachable evidence that ExxonMobil accurately predicted global warming years before it turned around and publicly attacked climate science and scientists. Our findings show that ExxonMobil’s public denial of climate science contradicted its own scientists’ data,” Supran told CNBC. “This corroborates and adds statistical precision to the prior conclusions of scholars, journalists, lawyers, and politicians.”
The phrase and hashtag “ExxonKnew” have become a rallying cry after previous reporting from Inside Climate News and others showing that Exxon publicly contradicted its own understanding of climate science.
Exxon Mobil says the “ExxonKnew” movement is a “coordinated campaign” working to “stigmatize” the oil company, “creating the false appearance that ExxonMobil has misrepresented its company research and investor disclosures on climate change to the public.”
Climate activists protest on the first day of the Exxon Mobil trial outside the New York State Supreme Court building on October 22, 2019 in New York City.
Angela Weiss | AFP | Getty Images
It all started with a tweet
The catalyst for the research was a viral tweet, Supran told CNBC.
Stefan Rahmstorf, a physics professor at the University of Potsdam, saw a global warming predictive chart from Exxon Mobil that Supran and Harvard professor Naomi Oreskes had previously discovered, and overlaid actual historical data on top of Exxon’s.
“The overlap was startling,” Supran said and when Rahmstorf blogged and tweeted about it, the results got a lot of attention, “by the standards of climate science on Twitter anyway,” Supran told CNBC.
The three academics then realized that the accuracy of Exxon’s climate’s projections hadn’t been formally studied, and teamed up to write this report. They were surprised to discover is the extent and accuracy of Exxon’s knowledge of climate science.
“It was startling to plot all of the company’s projections onto one graph and find them all line up so tightly around the real-world temperature rise that has ensued since their reports. That gave me pause, seeing quantitatively that Exxon didn’t just know some climate science, they helped advance it,” Supran told CNBC. “They didn’t just vaguely know ‘something’ about global warming decades ago, they knew as much as independent academic and government scientists did. Arguably, they knew all they needed to know.”
According to their research, the academics found that between 63% and 83% of the climate projections Exxon made were accurate in predicting future climate change and global warming. Exxon predicted that climate change would cause global warming of 0.20° ± 0.04 degrees Celsius per decade, which is the same as academic and governmental predictions that came out between 1970 and 2007.
The study in Science builds on work done by investigative journalists at Inside Climate News back in 2015 and Democratic lawmakers at the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, among many others.
Exxon continues to deny its wrongdoing.
“This issue has come up several times in recent years and, in each case, our answer is the same: those who talk about how ‘Exxon Knew’ are wrong in their conclusions,” Todd Spitler, spokesperson for Exxon Mobil, told CNBC.
Spitler pointed to the results of a 2019 case heard before the New York State Supreme Court by Judge Barry Ostrager which did not find the oil and gas company guilty of fraud in its climate change regulation accounting.
“What the evidence at trial revealed is that ExxonMobil executives and employees were uniformly committed to rigorously discharging their duties in the most comprehensive and meticulous manner possible,” Ostrager wrote, and Spitler passed along to CNBC. “The testimony of these witnesses demonstrated that ExxonMobil has a culture of disciplined analysis, planning, accounting, and reporting.”
Tesla appears to be doubling down on its new “Oasis” Supercharger station concept, which consists of larger stations powered by solar and a microgrid battery system.
Although, this new one is a bit less ambitious.
Last month, Tesla announced its “project Oasis” (pictured above), which should become one of Tesla’s largest Supercharger stations with several pull-through stalls for trucks and trailers, but the real differentiating factor is a large solar array and battery system that enables the charging station to operate off-grid mostly.
CEO Elon Musk has been saying that the goal of the Supercharger network is to be powered by solar and batteries and mostly off-grid since 2016, but Tesla has yet to make this common.
The announcement of the Project Oasis gave us some hope that it might finally happen, and now it looks like Tesla is planning a mini Oasis.
Marco RP, who tracks Supercharger projects, reported on the new construction plans submitted for the Coalinga, California station:
https://twitter.com/MarcoRPi1/status/1852794833154535719
The project is about 50 miles north of Project Oasis – also on Interstate 5 between Los Angeles and the Bay Area.
We call it a “mini Oasis” not because it has fewer charging stations than Oasis; it actually has the same number of planned stalls, 168 stalls, but because it doesn’t have as much solar and batteries to enable off-grid use.
Oasis has 11 MW of planned solar power and 39 MWh of energy storage.
This new project in Coalinga has less than 1 MW of solar and 15.5 MWh of energy storage. In the case of Oasis, the grid complements Tesla’s microgrid, and in this new project, it’s Tesla’s microgrid that complements the grid connection.
But Tesla could eventually expand its solar array and battery storage system at the new station.
This new station also includes restrooms, which Tesla has sometimes deployed at bigger stations.
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Home to luxury automakers like Porsche and BWM, Lucid Motors (LCID) is making a name for itself in Germany. Lucid just had its second consecutive month of record EV registrations in Europe’s largest auto market.
Lucid is taking on Europe with its luxury EVs
According to new data released Tuesday from Germany’s Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA), Lucid had 129 new registrations in October.
Although it may not seem like much, it’s a considerable jump from the 41 registrations Lucid had in September. Lucid sold more cars in Germany last month than it did in the entire third quarter. The luxury EV maker has 256 registrations in Germany through the first ten months.
Lucid’s growth comes despite overall EV registrations in Germany slipping nearly 5% YOY to 35,491 units in October.
After opening its newest studio in Hamburg last month, Lucid declared its “expansion in Europe continues.” The new studio comes just a month after opening one in Frankfurt.
Lucid now has four showrooms in Germany and eight in Europe as it expands overseas. Last month, the EV maker also signed a deal with SIXT to add its luxury Air sedan to its fleet in Germany.
Following the deal, former CEO Peter Rawlinson said more customers will be able to “experience the only EV in the world which is equally at home on the Autobahn as on city streets.”
Lucid’s mobile service network covers 15 European markets, including Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Austria, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Denmark, Poland, and the Czech Republic.
The Lucid Air Pure starts at about $93,000 (€85,000) in Germany and has up to 464 miles (747 km) of WLTP range. Lucid’s Air Touring and Air Grand Touring models start at $108,200 (€99,000) and $141,000 (€129,000), respectively.
| Starting Price | WLTP Range | |
| Lucid Air Pure | $93,000 (€85,000) | 464 miles (747 km) |
| Lucid Air Touring | $108,200 (€99,000) | 451 miles (725 km) |
| Lucid Air Grand Touring | $141,000 (€129,000) | 521 miles (839 km) |
Lucid said it plans to continue expanding in Europe with its newly opened service and delivery centers in Munich and Zurich.
In the US, the company is gearing up to launch its first electric SUV, the Gravity. Lucid will begin taking Gravity SUV orders for US buyers on November 7, 2024.
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Renewables developer Exus Renewables North America is giving a $200 million upgrade to Somerset County, Pennsylvania’s 139 megawatt (MW) Twin Ridges Wind Farm – here’s why repowering projects like this are the future of the wind industry.
Wind energy repowering is all about breathing new life into older turbines or entire wind farms. By swapping out aging parts like turbines, blades, and nacelles for the latest tech, wind farms can see significant boosts in efficiency, power capacity, and overall lifespan. Other infrastructure and control systems can also get a second life, too.
Adding new components to existing infrastructure and grid connections mean it’s less expensive to extend the life of the wind farm with fewer resources. New components make the turbines less prone to breakdowns which means less maintenance, so there are fewer operational costs. Plus, a wind farm’s debt is usually paid off at around 10 years, and it qualifies for new tax credits and new financing at around that time. Existing wind farms often have power purchase agreements in place, and data companies are increasingly chasing power sources as demand grows.
Repowering Twin Ridges meant keeping all 68 towers and foundations while swapping out the nacelles and blades. Vestas, which has identified the repower market as a huge opportunity and engineered a solution that’s compatible with most turbines, supplied US-made nacelles, hubs, blades, and tower adaptors for the project. (Twin Ridges’ original supplier, RES, is no longer in business.)
Jim Spencer, CEO of Exus Renewables North America, said of Twin Ridges, “This upgrade will increase the power generation by 30%, which is a lot more power going into the grid. Repowering will allow it to use more of its allotted grid capacity since wind farms don’t operate at maximum capacity 100% of the time.”
Unlike a new wind farm, which comes online all at once, a repowered wind farm sees refurbished turbines turned on one at a time since the infrastructure is already in place. Out of its 68 upgraded turbines, Twin Ridges has brought 40 repowered turbines online, and a 41st turbine will soon follow.
Industry estimates suggest that up to 50 GW of US onshore wind capacity will be assessed for repowering in the next few years.
Read more: Renewables now make up 30% of US utility-scale generating capacity
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