HOUSTON — Former Secretary of State John Kerry said Wednesday that world leaders are looking to the private sector to slash climate-warming emissions, but he questioned the viability of carbon capture projects often touted by oil and gas companies.
Kerry’s comments — at the Gastech energy conference — came a day after oil and gas executives argued that using natural gas is the practical path forward as the shift to lower carbon energy sources takes longer than many people hoped.
“I mean, 10 years ago, five years ago, maybe two years ago, someone would be up here just railing against fossil fuel and saying, ‘Oh, we’ve got to end it tomorrow, fossil fuels, oh, blah, blah, blah,’” Kerry told Gastech attendees. “And the reality is that now people have accepted a transitional understanding and that transitional understanding requires new technology.”
But Kerry stressed that new and lower carbon energy technologies need to be scalable and affordable in order to be part of the energy mix going forward — a concept of which he said global leaders now have a “newer level of understanding.”
