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Darren Woods tells Fortune consumers are unwilling to pay for the clean energy transition, prompting backlash from climate experts

Darren Woods, chief executive of oil giant ExxonMobil, claimed the world is on the wrong track towards meeting its climate goals and that the public is to blame – prompting a backlash from climate experts.

As the world's largest investor-owned oil company, Exxon is a leading contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions that are heating the planet. But in an interview published Tuesday, Woods argued that big oil companies are not primarily responsible for the climate crisis.

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The real problem, Woods said, is that switching to clean energy may prove too expensive for consumers' tastes.

“The dirty secret that no one is talking about is how much this is all going to cost and who is willing to pay for it,” he told Fortune last week. “The people who cause these emissions must be aware and pay the price. That’s ultimately how you solve the problem.”

Woods said the world is “not on track” to cut its greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050, which scientists say is essential to avoid catastrophic effects of global warming. “When will people be willing to pay for carbon reductions?” said Woods, who has been CEO of Exxon since 2017.

“We have the opportunity to produce lower carbon fuels, but people are not willing to spend the money on it.”

Experts say Woods' rhetoric is part of a larger attempt to avoid responsibility for climate change. No new major oil and gas infrastructure can be built if the world wants to avoid exceeding agreed temperature limits, but Exxon is pushing ahead with aggressive fossil fuel expansion plans along with other major oil companies currently making record profits.

“It's like a drug lord blaming everyone but himself for drug problems,” said Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at Columbia Business School.

“I hate to break it to you, but you are the CEO of the largest publicly traded oil company, you have influence, you make decisions that matter. Exxon is at the mercy of the markets, but they also shape them, they shape politics. So no, you can’t blame the public for failing to get climate change under control.”

Numerous internal documents and analyzes over the past decade have shown that Exxon knew about the dangers of global warming as early as the 1970s, but worked vigorously and successfully to sow doubt about the climate crisis and prevent action to curb the use of fossil fuels . The revelations have led to legal battles against Exxon across the United States.

“What they're really trying to do is whitewash their own history, make it invisible,” said Robert Brulle, an environmental policy expert at Brown University who has researched climate disinformation spread by the fossil fuel industry.

A 2021 analysis also showed that Exxon had downplayed its own role in the climate crisis in public messaging for decades.

“The playbook is this: Sell consumers a product that you know is dangerous and publicly deny or downplay those dangers. Then, when the dangers become undeniable, deny responsibility and blame the consumer,” said Naomi Oreskes, a Harvard science historian and co-author of the 2021 paper.

Last year, another study co-authored by Oreskes found that Exxon scientists “accurately and skillfully” predicted the trajectory of global warming and then spent decades sowing doubt about climate science and policy in order to undermine its business model protect.

But in Tuesday's interview, Woods said the world has “waited too long” to develop carbon-free technologies. He said Exxon has “recognized the need to decarbonize” and that a carbon tax would help achieve that, while defending the oil giant's comparatively low investment in renewable energy and pointing out that it is moving toward newer technologies such as carbon capture and will concentrate hydrogen fuels.

Exxon sees “no opportunity to generate superior returns for investors” by using established clean energy generation such as wind and solar, Woods said.

“We recognize the need for this. We simply do not see this as an appropriate use of ExxonMobil’s capabilities,” he added.

Woods does not mention that his company lobbied to defeat provisions in an earlier version of the bill that would have imposed high taxes on polluting companies to fund climate efforts, or that a top Exxon lobbyist was filmed saying that the company supported carbon emissions. The tax was a PR strategy intended to prevent more serious climate policy.

“For decades they told us that the science was too uncertain to justify action, that it was premature to act, and that we could and should wait and see how things turned out,” Oreskes said. “Now the CEO says: Oh dear, we waited too long. If that’s not gaslighting, I don’t know what is.”

Wagner said Exxon has announced its ambition to reduce emissions from its own operations while betting that the rest of the world won't do the same to keep selling oil.

“He can't claim both ways by saying 'We're an energy company' and then essentially ignoring the cheapest source of electricity in history as something Exxon should invest in,” he said.

The video interview comes as Exxon launches a lawsuit against activist shareholders seeking to pressure Exxon to adopt stricter environmental standards. Those shareholders, Woods said, are trying to stop Exxon's core business model of selling oil and gas, which the company won't agree to.

“We want to reach out to shareholders who are real investors and have an interest in seeing this company successfully generate a return on their investment,” he said. “We feel no responsibility to activists who hijack this process … and, frankly, abuse it to advance an ideology.”

Exxon received subsidies to expand its clean energy business from the Inflation Reduction Act 2022, Fortune boss Alan Murray emphasized in the interview. But Woods argued that “building a business with government subsidies is not a long-term sustainable strategy.”

“The way the government is incentivizing and trying to catalyze investment in this area is through subsidies,” he said. “Pushing forward significant investments on a scale that even comes close to faltering will cost a lot of money.”

But the majority of Exxon's own investments are still directed toward fossil fuel expansion, Brulle said.

“That's what they're doing: They're basically going to blame the victim, the American public,” he said.

“They spend money on fossil fuels and spend billions to influence public opinion, but we are supposed to pay for the damage.”

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