Chevron CEO Sees Growing Potential In Biofuels And Geothermal Energy

Chevron Corporation CEO Mike Wirth outlined the oil-and-gas company’s hopes for everything from carbon capture to hydrogen.

WASHINGTON — The head of one of the biggest oil companies in the world has his eye on expanding a variety of alternative energy sources.

“We worked on things that leveraged our capabilities, our customers, our value chains,” said Wirth, highlighting projects for hydrogen, carbon capture and storage, as well as geothermal and biofuels. Wirth, who was speaking at the WSJ CEO Council on Tuesday, discussed the company’s low-carbon plans alongside the expansion of its traditional oil-and-gas business.

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“We start with things where we have some reason to believe we can create shareholder value, where we’ve got skills and competency, so we didn’t go into wind or solar because we’re not a turbine manufacturer installing wind and solar,” he said.

Wirth said another core criterion was being able to compete and meet customer needs without relying on long-term subsidies. Subsidies for renewable energy such as wind and solar were cut this year as political tides changed in the U.S.

“There’s certainly a case for subsidies or other forms of government policy to help technologies get established and bring down the cost, but over time we need to invest in things that can compete and deliver return on capital without relying on subsidies,” he said.

The Chevron CEO said he has hope for biofuels in particular because they are the most established of alternative energy sources, while hydrogen “is proving to be very difficult” because “you’re fighting the laws of thermodynamics.”

But the company is no stranger to hydrogen: Chevron says on its website that it produces about 1 million metric tons a year of hydrogen and has retailed the element since 2005.

Geothermal energy, meanwhile, “offers some real promise,” Wirth said, even though it is early days for many novel methods of harnessing heat from the earth.

The company has said it is leveraging its subsurface and drilling experience “to advance and scale novel geothermal energy, which can potentially allow access to a widespread baseload, nonintermittent resource that can complement and add capacity to meet the world’s growing renewable-power demand.”

Chevron’s Gorgon liquefied natural gas and carbon capture and storage facility in Australia was also referenced, where the CEO discussed CCS and alternative energy sources at the WSJ CEO Council.

Wirth also pointed to the current momentum around nuclear power, adding that the U.S. and the rest of the world “need more support for nuclear,” which he described as the ultimate low-carbon technology.

Chevron has venture investments in companies that are working on nuclear fusion. The fusion process creates energy by joining atoms together, while nuclear fission creates energy when atoms are split apart.

The company says in its 2024 sustainability report that it aims “to grow our oil-and-gas business, lower the carbon intensity of our operations and grow new businesses in renewable fuels, carbon capture and offsets, hydrogen, power generation for data centers, and emerging technologies.”