Exxon thinks it can count carbon better
Zero: The Climate Race
Bloomberg
4.7 • 219 Ratings
🗓️ 12 November 2025
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Most oil company CEOs have turned their back on COP30, but not ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods, who this year attended his third COP conference in a row.
This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi asks Woods why Exxon is backing a new carbon accounting idea, what his plan is now that the Inflation Reduction Act has been gutted, and why Exxon wanted the US to stay in the Paris Agreement.
Explore further:
- Zero’s 2024 interview with Darren Woods
- Sign up to the Bloomberg Green newsletter for daily coverage of COP30.
Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd. Special thanks to Eleanor Harrison Dengate, Siobhan Wagner, Sommer Saadi and Mohsis Andam. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | People are going to hate me. I won't move on with my life. And I was so petrified of being dragged across the coals for reporting them. And I still am. |
| 0:12.0 | My name is Laura Hughes. And for the past two years, I've been uncovering the United Kingdom's perplexing relationship with lead. |
| 0:20.5 | What I found has shocked me. |
| 0:24.3 | From the financial times, this is untold. |
| 0:27.9 | Toxic legacy. |
| 0:30.2 | Out now. |
| 0:31.5 | Welcome to Zero. I am Akshatrati. |
| 0:34.3 | Today, Exxon at COP 30. |
| 0:54.4 | Music Today, Exxon at COP 30. It's been a year of bad news for climate policies. |
| 1:00.4 | The biggest force has been Donald Trump, who in his second term as US president, |
| 1:07.5 | has systematically dismantled climate action at home and made concerted efforts to attack climate initiatives abroad. |
| 1:13.1 | He has championed fossil fuels and single-handedly slowed down the energy transition, |
| 1:20.8 | at least in the US. Trump's actions have also given license to many to ignore and deny climate change. But the CEO of ExxonMobil, Darren Woods, isn't quite following suit. Darren Spears, the CEOs of other |
| 1:30.1 | international oil companies, have stopped coming to COP Climate Summits. But Darren came to a side |
| 1:35.8 | event here at COP 30, his third cop in a row. For context, Exxon is one of the world's largest |
| 1:43.7 | oil and gas companies. |
| 1:45.0 | And Darren is in charge of overseeing its operations and what areas of the energy transition the company pursues or ignores. |
| 1:53.0 | Last year at COP29 in Baku, I got a chance to ask him questions about how Exxon, which has a long history of sowing doubt about climate science, |
| 2:02.0 | can be trusted to now be acting in good faith to tackle climate change. |
| 2:07.5 | I quizzed him on Exxon's lobbying efforts, on the oil industry's favorite climate solution, |
| 2:12.3 | carbon capture. |
| 2:13.5 | I also talked to him about the millions of dollars Exxon spent advertising LGBYF fuels |
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