ExxonMobil’s Algae Waste: An Update
By Robert Bradley Jr. -- October 2, 2026Collin Eaton, “Exxon Touted Algae Biofuels as Some Scientists Lost Faith” Wall Street Journal (April 2, 2026). Quotations follow:
Exxon Mobil ’s scientists delivered a grim message to one of the oil company’s strategic planning executives in February 2020: Its much-heralded algae biofuels program was falling well short of its stated goals.
Their presentation was one of multiple communications to Exxon’s top leadership that even the most promising strains of algae were struggling to produce much oil outside the lab, documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal show.
A week later, Exxon told investors algae could become a more prolific source of biofuel in the near term than agricultural products such as sugarcane and palm. That alarmed the scientists who didn’t agree with the way the data were presented to investors, according to people familiar with the matter.
The Journal reviewed an internal presentation made in early 2020 by Exxon’s scientists and examined other documents related to Exxon’s efforts on algae. Some of the documents show executives knew the $500 million algae research project wasn’t meet-ing its goals outside the lab, even as they continued to promote it to investors.
Members of Exxon’s investor- relations team and leading researchers exchanged a flurry of communications discussing algae’s low productivity outside the lab and how to highlight the program to investors in the days ahead of the presentation, the documents show.
“Our algae research was driven by the pursuit of innovation,” an Exxon spokesman said.
“Our communications reflected the science as it was understood at the time, and when it became clear the technology would not scale commercially, we ended the program. Any suggestion otherwise is a lie.”
Exxon had told shareholders for years that algae had the potential to change America’s energy future. One of the most abundant organisms on Earth, algae capture carbon dioxide through photosynthesis and yield oil that theoretically could be used to make transportation fuel. The promise of a more climate-friendly alternative to fossil fuels was alluring to Exxon.
Exxon began pursuing its algae research in 2009, about two years after first publicly acknowledging that burning fossil fuels contributes to climate change.
When Darren Woods took over as chief executive in 2017, he continued to tout algae as a potential fuel source that could help Exxon play a bigger role in a cleaner energy future.
Exxon spent $150 million in advertising its algae program over a decade. Starting in the late 2000s, the company ran television commercials touting the potential to produce a biofuel from algae that could one day fuel “trucks, buses, boats, cars, even airplanes.”
“Scientists recognize its potential to change our energy future,” a voiceover says in one of the commercials that began airing in 2017. “By 2025, Exxon Mobil is aiming to have the technical ability to produce over 10,000 barrels of algaebased biofuel per day.”
Exxon’s algae work was done in conjunction with Synthetic Genomics, which later operated under the name Viridos. The oil giant paid the smaller company $320 million over a decade to tinker with the genetic makeup of algae to try to distill enough oil to make the venture technically viable. It spent more money constructing ponds to conduct the research.
Exxon made algae the cornerstone of its clean-energy initiatives for years and pressed on even after a lack of progress led other big oil companies to abandon similar resear ch.
By 2020, Exxon scientists were struggling to replicate promising lab results in outdoor ponds.
Exxon scientists made their February 2020 presentation to T.J. Wojnar, who was the company’s vice president of corporate strategic planning.
The scientists explained to Wojnar that the best strains of algae, when grown in large outdoor ponds, were producing oil at roughly 6% of Exxon’s stated goal.
They further concluded that even if geneticists were able to speed oil production, it would be uneconomical. To produce 10,000 barrels of algae-based biofuel a day, they estimated Exxon would need to build 35 square miles of ponds.
The scientists said the cost of the project would be at least $9.4 billion—an unprofitable investment that would well surpass the value of the biofuels extracted.
A week after the scientists made their presentation, Exxon provided an update to investors describing algae’s prospects that left the scientists concerned, people familiar with their thinking say.
Andrew Swiger, a former senior vice president, told investors that the company was aiming to be technically ready to “scale algae biofuels” to 10,000 barrels a day by 2025, according to a transcript of the event.
A chart in the March 2020 investor pres e n t a t i o n showed Exxon’s “ e x p e c t e d ” near-term
Advertising for the project went on even after experts voiced their doubts.
Algae was grown in lab conditions as part of the project. ARIANA DREHSLER FOR WSJ
Scientists worked on the project for Exxon partner Synthetic Genomics, later known as Viridos, which went bankrupt in 2023. ARIANA DREHSLER FOR WSJ
fuel output from outdoor ponds to be more than three times higher than the re s e a rc h e r s found.
“The productivity of our genetically engineered algae is already more than double that of the next most productive source,” Swiger said.
In outdoor settings, sugar–cane and palm were more prolific than algae in the results that Exxon researchers shared with Wojnar, while corn was about on par, the internal documents show.
Exxon executives were careful to speak about algae’s technical readiness, rather than its commercial viability, people close to the company say. Oliver Fetzer, a former CEO of Viridos, said the scientists’ cost estimate, in combination with the low productivity seen in algae’s first year of outdoor testing, “was a shocker for everybody.”
“Some of the Exxon scientists lost confidence in what we could do,” he said.
Fetzer said his company later calculated its own estimate for a commercial algae facility: about $5 billion for a 25-square-mile pond installation., a figure validated by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory that Fetzer said could become economic after many years. He also said productivity results greatly improved in the months and years after Exxon’s investor presentation.
Exxon continued advertising the algae program in the months after the scientists voiced their concerns. In late 2020, the company ran an ad in the New York Times claiming the future of energy “may come from where you least expect it.”
Exxon never formally announced that it was walking away from its algae research. It terminated its work with Viridos in March 2023, according to documents filed as part of the smaller company’s chapter 11 bankruptcy case. Viridos was ordered in September to dissolve.