Kerry is bullish on investments in clean energy
The recent shift by global industries toward clean energy represents “an unprecedented level of interest,” which shows little sign of slowing down, John Kerry, the U.S. special presidential envoy for climate, said Tuesday.
“The marketplace is making the decison for people, not government, not regulation,” said Kerry, the former secretary of state, speaking at the CERAWeek by IHS Markit conference. “It's the market of the future, and you're already seeing massive allocations. I think this is going to race ahead.”
Kerry’s comments came amid increasing warnings from the United Nations that governments are not moving fast enough to enact policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and keep their pledge to limit the planet to no more than a 1.5-degrees Celsius increase in temperature.
But corporations are showing less lag,
with U.S. auto giant GM recently announcing it would stop producing gasoline and diesel powered vehicles by 2035 and BP pledging to be net zero emissions by 2050 — including the carbon emissions from the oil and gas products it sells.
Kerry highlighted hydrogen energy, which can be made from natural gas, as a new line of business for oil and gas companies.
“The fossil fuel industry could clearly do a lot more into being full-fledged energy companies that are embracing these new technologies,” he said. “I don't object to fossil fuels. I object to the byproducts, namely carbon dioxide and methane.”
But private sector's ability to address climate is limited. In a discussion with former energy secretary Ernest Moniz at CERAWeek, Kerry mentioned the dire need to modernize the U.S. power grid to enable the movement of electricity over long distances, pointing to the recent blackouts in Texas as a “prime example.”
“We have a gaping hole in the middle of our country,” he said of the power grid. “We can't afford that anymore. We need a smart grid.”
Asked by Moniz whether he saw Republicans and Democrats in Congress coming together to provide aid to modernizing the grid, Kerry said only, they “should.”
“Congress is more unpredictable today than any time historically,” he said.
CERAWeek, the annual conference usually held in Houston, is being conducted virtually this year because of the COVID-19 pandemic. CERAWeek gets its name from Cambridge Energy Research Associates, the consulting firm cofounded by Daniel Yergin, now vice chairman of IHS Markit and host of the global energy conference.