Kerry warns against natural gas without emission-control technology
U.S. climate envoy John Kerry on Thursday put natural gas on notice, saying the world’s reliance on the fossil fuel should be limited to potentially a decade, unless its greenhouse gas emissions are fully captured.
Though natural gas burns cleaner than coal when used to generate electricity, it should not be part of a long-term climate strategy without emission-control technology, Kerry said in an interview Thursday with Bloomberg Television.
“If you can capture the emissions — literally, genuinely — then you’re reducing the problem,” said Kerry, the U.S. special presidential envoy for climate. “We have to put the industry on notice: You’ve got six years, eight years, no more than 10 years or so, within which you’ve got to come up with a means by which you’re going to capture, and if you’re not capturing, then we have to deploy alternative sources of energy.”
Kerry’s comments come as the world’s climate goals are overshadowed by a short-term push to steer natural gas to European countries and help wean them off Russian energy. Inside the U.S., many policy initiatives that are meant to help fulfill the nation’s Paris agreement pledge to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 remain stalled in Congress, months before an election that could cost President Joe Biden’s Democratic Party control of the House and Senate.
[Jennifer Dlouhy and Janet Wu]
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