From: Douglas Grandt answerthecall@icloud.

com
Subject: "Much ado about ... oil" Wm. Shakesfear
Date: February 6, 2017 at 9:08 PM
To: Darren W. Woods Darren.W.Woods@ExxonMobil.com, William (Bill) M. Colton William.M.Colton@ExxonMobil.com
Cc: Suzanne M. McCarron Suzanne.M.McCarron@ExxonMobil.com, Max Schulz max.schulz@exxonmobil.com

Dear Messrs. Woods and Colton,

.
Over the weekend, I read the Vox article Were probably underestimating how quickly
electric vehicles will disrupt the oil market which shakes the foundation of your 2017
Energy Outlook, with a final comment I fear you may attempt to obfuscate:
.
Yet, according to the studys authors, virtually none of big fossil fuel companies are
taking the possibility seriously, or planning for it.
.
You would be well advised to reassess your 2017 Energy Outlook and salvage your
severely damaged credibility. At some point, the SEC and Senate will investigate you.
.
Following, for your convenience, is the germane section. Of course, the entire piece is
just as poignant. ExxonMobil had better align its business plans with COP21/22, or else!
The final thought is one that should guide ExxonMobils Corporate Strategic Planning:
.
Experience shows that markets at the center of this kind of interest and activity do
not continue to grow on a steady, linear path. They take off, lurching into
exponential growth. That shift is impossible to predict in advance with any
precision, but at this point, we ought to know that its coming.
.
By now, we need not be neutral toward this range of projections. History has taught
us that for new, distributed, consumer-focused technologies, unexpected explosive
growth is to be expected. Big oil companies and investors would do well to
prepare.
.
Your failure to investigate a range of plausible scenarios is a disservice to not only
ExxonMobil investors, but your progeny and yet unborn generations, all of humanity.
.
Sincerely yours,
Doug Grandt
.

Were probably underestimating how quickly

electric vehicles will disrupt the oil market
 Unpredictably rapid growth happens pretty predictably.
By David Roberts | @drvoxdavid@vox.com | Feb 2, 2017 | Bit.ly/Vox2Feb17

New study says oil and coal are Fd

Today saw the release of a new study from the Grantham Institute for Imperial
College London and the Carbon Tracker Initiative. It argues that solar
photovoltaics (PV) and EVs together will kick fossil fuels ass, quickly.
Falling costs of electric vehicle and solar technology, they conclude, could halt growth
in global demand for oil and coal from 2020. That would be a pretty big deal.

The business as usual (BAU) scenarios that typically dominate these discussions are
outdated, the researchers argue. New baseline scenarios should take into account
updated information on PV, EV, and battery costs. (The EIA doesnt expect inflation-
adjusted prices of EVs to fall to $30,000 until 2030, even as multiple automakers say
theyll hit that within a few years.)

And baseline scenarios should take into account the commitments made in the Paris
climate agreement, they say.

(All the data and assumptions are available along with the study, and there is an
interactive dashboard that allows you to fiddle around with scenario results, if you want
to dig in.)

Using that new baseline produces some pretty eye-popping numbers. To wit: EVs could
make up a third of the road transport market by 2035, more than half the market by 2040,
and more than two thirds of market share by 2050.

And also: Oil demand could be flat from 2020 to 2030 then fall steadily to 2050.

Again, that would be a very big deal! Most big forecasters, and big energy companies,
expect coal to rise at least through 2030 and oil to rise basically forever.

These new scenarios do not reflect hippie idealism, they just take seriously a) the cost
curves demonstrated by PV, EVs, and batteries so far, and b) what countries said they
would do in Paris. They assume that all this talk about climate change is not a bunch of
BS that its a real problem and were really going to try to solve it. (Admittedly, Trump
has complicated that picture, but he cant stop the rest of the world.)

If these forecasts play out, fossil fuels could lose 10 percent market share to PV and EVs
within a decade. A 10 percent loss in market share was enough to send the US coal
industry spiraling, enough to cause Europes utilities to hemorrhage money. It could
seriously disrupt life for the oil majors. Growth in EVs alone could lead to 2 million
barrels of oil per day being displaced by 2025, the study says, the same volume that
caused the oil price collapse in 2014-15.

Yet, according to the studys authors, virtually none of big fossil fuel companies are taking
the possibility seriously, or planning for it.

###