At Gulf Energy Information’s ChemE Show 2026 powered by ACHEMA, Matt Reeves, Vice President, Low Carbon Solutions Technology, ExxonMobil, delivered the keynote presentation titled, “Decarbonizing Chemical Manufacturing.”

Many low-carbon technologies are more expensive than the already efficient incumbents, requiring additional capital for replacement. Reeves began the keynote by describing ExxonMobil’s low-carbon solutions and what is needed to grow the solutions, such as consistent government policies, technology development and innovation and the solutions must be scalable. According to Reeves, if all of these things are in place, capital will follow.

Reeves went on describe what is meant by sustainable policy. “We’ve been talking about GHG (greenhouse gas) and decarbonizing the world for close to 40 yrs,” Reeves said. “Back in the 1980s, people talked about a hole in Ozone layer. Do you know why people don’t talk about a whole in the Ozone a lot? Largely because it has been addressed.”

He went on to touch on acid rain and how it is not discussed as much anymore for the same reason. Acid rain is down 75% since the 1980s due to regulations in different sectors that produced sulfur, according to Reeves.

Reeves then described the role of technology, mentioning, for example, lab/research, pilot scale-up and process demos. ExxonMobil’s low-carbon solutions new technology developments include post combustion capture, direct air capture, methane pyrolysis, carbon storage and lithium (domestic lithium for EVs energy storage, electronics).

“New technology generally takes a period of time to develop,” Reeves said. “Sometimes there is a drive to skip some of these steps and deploy, but there is a process and there will be consequences if it is skipped.”

Reeves ended the presentation by giving the audience an example of scale in action via a carbon capture and storage (CCS) project. Leveraging their CCS expertise and complemented by partnerships, ExxonMobil has deployed carbon capture technology and advanced next-generation solutions. The company has captured approximately 120 metric MMt of carbon dioxide (CO₂), accounting for about 40% of all anthropogenic CO₂ that has ever been captured.

Story by: Tyler Campbell, Editor, Hydrocarbon Processing