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Kerry challenges oil industry to prove its promised
tech rescue for climate-wrecking emissions
13
June 2023
By
ELLEN KNICKMEYER
WASHINGTON (AP) — Oil and gas producers
talk up technological breakthroughs they say will soon allow the world
to drill and burn fossil fuels without worsening global warming. U.S.
climate envoy John Kerry says the time is here for the industry to
prove it can make the technology happen — at scale, affordably and
quickly — to stave off climate disaster.
And Kerry says he has “serious questions” whether it can.
Kerry’s comments came in an interview with The Associated Press
on one of the most crucial topics in the fight to slow global warming:
the argument from oil and gas producers that they will soon have
technology in place to extract the climate-damaging gases that make
fossil fuels the main culprit in climate change, allowing companies to
keep pumping crude and natural gas worry-free.
Kerry said the ideal solution is a fast global switch to
renewable energy, but oil and gas states and companies have a right to
give their claim of technological rescue a try.
“If you’re able to abate the emissions, capture it,” Kerry said
this past week at his climate team’s offices at the State Department.
“But we don’t have that at-scale yet. And we can’t sit here and just
pretend we’re going to automatically have something we don’t have
today. Because we might not. It might not work.”
Globally, the point matters because oil and gas companies point
to the hope of technology that can one day scour away most of the
climate-wrecking carbon to stave off public and government pressure
for the world to pivot faster away from fossil fuels and to solar,
wind and other cleaner energy.
“What they’re banking on is that they’re going to be able to do
the emissions capture,” Kerry said of oil and gas companies. He ticked
off the stages of operations that would involve.
“If you can do those things, you may be able to make it
economically competitive,” he said, adding, “I have some serious
questions about whether it will be price-competitive.”
Especially since 2015, when the United States and nearly 200
other governments committed to cut emissions to avoid the most
disastrous scenarios of global warming, oil producers have spent
hundreds of millions of dollars in public campaigns portraying
themselves as climate-friendly. Industry ads and social media
campaigns often suggest the carbon-purging technology is already on
the job, extracting the climate-damaging gases from oil and gas
facilities’ around the world.
“CO2 capture and transportation technologies have been
operating safely across the globe and in the US for many years,” the
website of oil giant BP says.
“Technologies capture CO2 emissions at source or directly from
the air,” Saudi state oil giant Aramco says, describing the carbon
then being stored safely underground or turned into “useful products.”
In reality, the technology to capture one major
climate-damaging gas, methane, from oil and gas operations does exist,
and is awaiting investment to roll out at scale. But the technology to
capture the biggest climate agent, carbon dioxide, remains limited in
scale and costly, and often energy-intensive in its own right.
The International Energy Agency, some national governments
globally, and many climate scientists and advocates are adamant that
while carbon-capturing technology will play a role, oil and gas
production itself must be phased out.
“Actual experience has been that commercial-scale carbon
capture projects have fallen far, far short of the claims,” said David
Schlissel of the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis
research group.
“I just think it’s foolish to think that we can keep pumping
the stuff, CO2, methane, into the atmosphere, and that at some point
we’ll be able to capture it,” Schlissel said.
The American Petroleum Institute trade group declined comment
on whether the industry could show it was ready to bring
carbon-capture technology fully online quickly enough and affordably
enough.
In a statement, the group said “API supports federal policies
to achieve” commercial carbon capture efforts and bring them fully
online. It pointed to a 2019 industry-backed report calling for heavy
government funding to capture a quarter of current greenhouse gases
within 15 years.
The fight — fast production cuts versus technological rescue —
promises to come to a head this year.
Annual U.N.-sponsored climate talks meant to help keep
countries on track to meet their pledges to cut emissions are being
held this year in the United Arab Emirates.
The talks will be hosted by Sultan al-Jaber, the chief
executive officer of the Emirates’ state oil company. Like the U.S.
and several other countries, the Gulf nation is expanding drilling
even as it champions the climate cause.
Going into November’s climate talks, al-Jaber is calling for a
phase-out of ’’fossil fuel emissions,” leaving it ambiguous whether he
means a ramping up of technology or is open to some production cuts.
At the 2021 U.N. climate talks in Scotland, countries for the
first time agreed to phase down the global use of coal. Talks the next
year in Egypt saw a major push for a commitment to phase out oil and
gas, but it failed.
While nonbinding, any agreement out of this year’s climate
talks that the world should start phasing out oil and gas production
would be a first. It would put governments and the industry on the
spot to comply.
Kerry rejected the idea of putting a deadline on phasing out
oil and gas production. How fast that can happen depends partly on how
fast the world moves to electric vehicles and renewable-fueled power
grids, he said.
Instead, he said, this year’s climate talks will “quite
possibly” produce an international agreement to phase out the use of
“unabated” oil and natural gas, meaning oil and gas where the carbon
emissions are not captured. This could disappoint those calling for
fast cuts in oil and gas production.
Kerry said the deadline to watch is 2030. By then, the U.N.’s
top climate panel says, the world will need to have nearly halved
climate-damaging emissions to stave off the more devastating scenarios
of global warming.
“We can’t let the wish or the hope govern common sense here,”
Kerry said. “If we know that we can get the job done by deploying more
renewables and current technology, we ought to be doing that.”
__
This story was first published on
May 14, 2023. It was updated on May 17, 2023, to fix the position of
clarifying note that made clear the American Petroleum Institute was
declining comment on how quickly carbon capture technology would be
ready and to clarify its position on supporting federal policies.
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