Earth Protect Blog

By Ellen Knickmeyer

The Associated Press

WASHINGTON>> 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.”

Oil producers have spent hundreds of millions of dollars in public campaigns portraying themselves as climate-friendly.

“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.