From the National Legal and Policy Center Podcast: The NLPC Report
For years, the National Legal and Policy Center has been shouting from the rooftops: Stop dumping shareholder cash into “green” projects that collapse the second government subsidies dry up.
ExxonMobil didn’t listen. They jumped headfirst into the climate virtue-signaling pool, promising the moon on hydrogen production and carbon capture. These were supposed to be the crown jewels of Exxon’s “net zero” dreams — all while the company’s leadership cozied up to the Paris Agreement crowd and tied executive pay to fuzzy “emissions targets.”
Now? The market reality we warned about has caught up with them.
According to Bloomberg, Exxon’s CEO Darren Woods just told investors their much-hyped, “world’s largest” low-carbon hydrogen plant in Texas may never get built. Why? Because Congress, under President Trump’s tax and spending plan, yanked the Biden-era subsidies keeping it on life support. Woods finally admitted, “If we can’t see an eventual path to a market-driven business, we won’t move forward with the project.”
Translation: Without taxpayer money, this whole scheme makes no sense.
This is exactly what we told Exxon’s board in our 2024 shareholder proposal. We said, don’t chain executive pay to climate gimmicks. Don’t throw money at projects that can vanish with the stroke of a politician’s pen. We even called for Woods to be shown the door when he embraced the Paris Agreement — because real leadership means protecting shareholder value, not chasing applause from climate activists.
The numbers tell the story: with the subsidies gone, Exxon is suddenly “concerned about the development of a broader market” and is heading back to projects that make money without government crutches. You know — the kind of disciplined investments that built Exxon into an energy powerhouse in the first place.
It’s taken years, but Darren Woods has finally changed his tune. And make no mistake: NLPC isn’t done. We’ll keep pushing corporate boards to focus on what works for owners — not what flatters policymakers.
And if you want more of these stories the media won’t touch, subscribe to The NLPC Report podcast. This is what real shareholder activism looks like.
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