John Kerry, US climate envoy has been holding several meetings with global oil and gas industry leaders, urging them to come along with concrete plans that will enhance renewable energy as well as cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 to the upcoming UN climate summit.
Climate experts and campaigners have expressed deep concerns that the COP28 gathering taking place in the petrostate of the United Arab Emirates in three months will become an “oil COP”, with the industry being given an outsized role in discussions to tackle climate change.
During an interview, Kerry said that he believed it was vital that the oil and gas industry be involved in the UN climate talks and be held to account for its involvement in global warming. He was quoted as saying that he had asked the oil and gas executives to come with plans to COP28 to reduce their direct emissions and emissions derived from energy that they purchase, known as scope one and two emissions, by 2030.
“We have to get the fossil fuel industry at the table. We have to bring them to this effort, and they have to join in by being responsible,” he said in an interview, adding that industry targets set for 2050 were not enough and a commitment to reach net zero carbon emissions was required.
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Kerry further called on them to set out capital allocation commitments for renewable energy by 2030, as well as establishing a standard for carbon capture, utilisation and storage technology, which aims to capture carbon dioxide emissions.
“This would ensure “we’re actually reducing emissions and not simply extending this process,” he said. “The question is, can you bring it to scale? Can you get this [CCUS] to work well enough and big enough so that you are in effect staying on the Paris [agreement] curve [for a temperature rise of 1.5C]? That has to get down to net zero by 2050 or better. And that, I think, is very much at issue now.”
Kerry, a former secretary of state also said that he had spoken to Saudi Arabia’s minister of energy, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, in recent days and would soon meet the chief executive of the Saudi Aramco.
Story was adapted from FT.
