Smart money going 'green'

Many advocates of "green" technology hail hybrid cars as a way to reduce oil consumption and greenhouse-gas emissions. Many skeptics about the "green" cause mock hybrid cars as overpriced monuments to a misguided philosophy. But a highly successful corporation looking to diversify evidently sees enough growth potential to make a move into the hybrid-car business.

Tuesday's Wall Street Journal reported that Exxon Mobil Corp., the world's largest refiner of gasoline, is trying to develop a new form of battery for hybrid vehicles. Exxon's "separators," which prevent overheating, are already used in more than a third of those lithium-ion batteries found in computers, cell phones and other electronic devices. Coming soon from Exxon's chemical unit: A new $300 million manufacturing facility in South Korea to advance its hybrid-car power-source venture.

In other words, a potential remedy for what President Bush has called our "addiction to oil" could come from the "Big Oil" company that is routinely castigated for making so much money (last year's $40.6 billion profit for Exxon was the highest ever recorded by a U.S. company) as gas prices soar.

Why would Exxon invest in an evolving technology that could one day lower the demand for its core, petroleum-based products? Jim Harris, vice president of Exxon's chemical operation, told the Journal: "We are interested in good business opportunities, and that is what this is."

In other words, the awesome force of the marketplace, which helped create the problem of our costly dependence on oil, could eventually help solve it. After all, any enterprise that makes a $40.6 billion annual profit has demonstrated a knack for detecting "good business opportunities."