John Kerry urges oil and gas chiefs to bring climate change plans to UN summit

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US climate envoy John Kerry has been meeting global oil and gas industry leaders to urge them to bring concrete plans to boost renewable energy and cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 to the upcoming UN climate summit.

Climate experts and campaigners are concerned 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.

Kerry told the FT 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.

“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.

Kerry said 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.

He also 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.”

The UAE leadership of COP28 has been marshalling an alliance led by oil and gas companies that would set a goal of reaching net zero in their scope one and two emissions by 2050, as previously reported by the FT.

The former secretary of state also said 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. This follows discussions with other oil and gas company chief executives, including BP’s Bernard Looney, about climate change plans, as they scale back earlier plans to reduce the amount of oil and gas produced by 2030.

At the most recent G20 energy and climate meetings, ministers from the world’s largest economies have failed to strike agreement on targets to cut dangerous emissions, with Saudi Arabia and China identified by other country negotiators for obstructing any progress.

The private sector’s going to do this because there’s money to be made, a lot of money. This is the new industrial revolution

Saudi Arabia is China‘s biggest oil supplier, and was last week invited to join the expanded Brics bloc of emerging markets. The US has recently restarted climate discussions with China, but the fraught international backdrop including tensions over Taiwan and trade have stymied progress.

While the US remains the world’s biggest oil and gas producer, Kerry emphasised its rapid shift towards renewable energy through flagship legislation offering $369bn in subsidies for green technology and manufacturing.

He said this had triggered a wave of investment in the US that could not be undone by any future Republican administration, even though the majority of the party’s presidential candidates have failed to acknowledge climate change.

“No politician can undo what is happening now,” said Kerry. “Why? Because the marketplace has made its decision. You think those CEOs are going to rebuild factories that produce [the] internal combustion [engine]? No.”

“The private sector’s going to do this because there’s money to be made, a lot of money. This is the new industrial revolution,” he added.

On the UK decision to award hundreds of new North Sea oil and gas licences with a stated strategy by the Rishi government to “max out” production, Kerry said: “That is not our policy.”

“We’re not going to do the ‘last drop’,” he added. “We’re trying to make the transition.”