Prediction: ExxonMobil's Low-Carbon Bets Finally Show Up in Guidance by 2027

ExxonMobil's (NYSE: XOM) management said it plans to invest roughly $20 billion in lower-emission projects between 2025 and 2030. So far, that business segment remains relatively small compared with the company's oil and natural gas operations. That starts changing in 2027.

ExxonMobil says newer business segments, including carbon capture and storage (CCS), lithium, carbon materials, and Proxxima products, could generate more than $1 billion in annual earnings by 2030. Over the longer term, management sees roughly $13 billion in potential annual earnings by 2040, assuming supportive policies and sufficient market development.

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Carbon capture is moving fast

ExxonMobil already has contracts covering roughly 9 million metric tons of CO2 annually from industrial customers, and its first commercial CCS projects are now operating. By 2027, that should give management enough commercial activity to give investors better visibility into what CCS can actually contribute financially.

To be sure, carbon capture is not a particularly compelling long-term solution to the world's carbon problem. If solar, wind, nuclear, battery storage, geothermal, and other low-carbon technologies eventually become cheap and ubiquitous enough to replace a substantial portion of fossil-fuel consumption, capturing carbon from fossil fuels becomes far less relevant. You can't capture carbon if it isn't produced in the first place.

Electric vehicles (EVs) are already providing an early look at what that transition could mean for oil companies. More than 20 million electric cars were sold globally in 2025, representing about one-quarter of all new-car sales. The International Energy Agency expects EVs to approach 29% of global car sales in 2026. That's not particularly good news for oil companies.

Road transportation accounts for a huge portion of global oil consumption, and the IEA estimates the existing EV fleet displaced roughly 1.7 million barrels of oil demand per day in 2025. By 2030, EVs could displace around 5 million barrels per day. Every EV replacing a gasoline-powered vehicle represents another vehicle that won't be pulling up to the pump.

A bridge business could still be valuable

None of this means oil demand disappears anytime soon. Hundreds of millions of internal combustion vehicles are still on the road, and oil and natural gas remain deeply embedded in aviation, shipping, petrochemicals, manufacturing, and electricity generation.

Truth is, we're probably at least 10 to 15 years away from low-carbon technologies becoming widespread enough to seriously challenge fossil fuels across many of those applications. And that's why carbon capture could still prove quite valuable to ExxonMobil.

It doesn't need to be a 50-year business. If companies continue to consume enormous amounts of fossil fuels while facing increasing pressure to reduce emissions, ExxonMobil could make plenty of money by transporting and storing this CO2 during the transition. There's also an artificial intelligence angle. ExxonMobil is developing CCS-enabled data center projects that would use natural gas to generate electricity while capturing the resulting emissions. That's not trivial.

By 2027, ExxonMobil's CCS projects should have enough operating history for management to provide more concrete financial expectations. That's my prediction: 2027 is when ExxonMobil's low-carbon investments start showing up more clearly in guidance. While carbon capture probably isn't the endgame for low-carbon energy, over the next 10 to 15 years, it could still be a very profitable bridge to whatever comes next.

Jeff Siegel has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.