MARRAKESH, MOROCCO — In his address to the UN climate conference in Marrakesh, Morocco on Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry indicated time was running out to stop uncontrolled global warming. This is the “COP of action,” he told attendees.
Of course, President-elect Donald Trump’s climate denial is the elephant in every room at the conference. So while talks continue, without a guarantee of participation by the second-largest emitter and largest economy in the world, there is an added focus on what kind of role the private sector will play in the fight against climate change.
“Last year investments in renewable energy were at an all-time high, nearly $350 billion,” Kerry said. He noted it was the first time that investment in solar, wind, geothermal, and other types of non-fossil fuel energy outpaced fossil fuel investment.
But, investment in fossil fuels is not completely dying down — even when it looks like it is moving toward a carbon neutral future.
Ten oil and gas companies will dedicate $1 billion over the next 10 years for researching technologies that reduce carbon emissions, they announced in London late last month. The Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI) will direct funds go to four key areas, all within the oil and gas sector: carbon capture and storage (CCS), natural gas, industrial energy efficiency, and transportation energy efficiency.
At least 50 percent of the funding will be dedicated to CCS. And that is a potentially large problem — one that is keeping the initiative from being as enthusiastically received as the OGCI, which includes giants such as Shell, Saudi Aramco, Total, and Eni, may have hoped.
CCS is controversial because rather than transitioning away from fossil fuels, it allows companies to continue to burn and extract them. The CO2 emissions are “captured” before they reach the atmosphere, and then stored somehow. The research funded by OGCI will likely investigate how to store the emissions, one of the biggest challenges of the technology at the moment, which is, so far, unproven at scale or in the current economy.
In its best light, CCS is portrayed as a bridge between our current situation and a a carbon-neutral world. But in years past, participants at the UN climate talks have railed against CCS.
Kathy Mulvey, a campaign manager with the Union of Concerned Scientists said that though the investment is an “encouraging sign…it’s not clear how $1 billion in climate investments will be sufficient to catalyze the swift and deep reductions in heat-trapping emissions that are necessary, and the omission of renewable energy from the investment priorities is noteworthy.”
Regardless of the bulk of the initial investment going to CCS, companies such as French oil and gas giant Total actually tout themselves as a solar power company. Yet, the combined efforts of the 10 companies will not be put towards any technology development that does not involve further mining or drilling for a fossil fuel. The initiative could be seen as a snake eating its own tail. It feeds the companies’ own businesses, but it could also be their ruin as the Paris Agreement boosts investor confidence in the renewables sector.
Part of the underlying problem some have with the OGCI is that “fossil fuels are mentioned nowhere in the Paris Agreement because of Big Oil’s undue influence on world governments,” said Jean Su, a staff attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity. Su also said the effort by the oil and gas majors was welcomed but that “we can’t trust Big Oil to best efforts into renewable energy development.”
Saphina Waters, a spokesperson for the OGCI, told ThinkProgress that the group may increase investment after they “review the success and impacts of the investments over time and consider future options,” but a specific timeline was not given. The decision will be based on performance and market factors that will impact the investment fund that will provide the $1 billion. As the world’s glaciers melt — and each consecutive year becomes the hottest on record, the OGCI’s timeline may be too long.
Burning oil and gas accounts for 32 percent of the total global carbon emissions — and the oil and gas industry accounts for another 5 percent of emissions themselves.
Still, despite the surge in renewables and an overwhelming sense of urgency from scientists, as well as from some politicians and business leaders, the world will not get rid of carbon-intensive industries overnight. So, overall, the oil and gas companies’ fund is seen as a step in the right direction by many, including Su and Mulvaney, albeit a small one that comes too late.
And though the OGCI trying to reduce the industry’s emissions, the group may be wholly unaware of where the rest of the business world is heading. Given that renewables investment has outpaced fossil fuel investment, corporations across the world have taken notice and getting on the solar, wind, and geothermal bandwagon.
Of course, the oil and gas industry isn’t the only group looking at CCS technology. The White House recently issued a list of renewable energy projects and actions, including the Carbon Capture Innovation Challenge. Led by Energy Sec. Ernest Moniz, the Challenge will bring together experts to discuss “near-zero” carbon emissions from fossil fuels. Still the challenge is a tiny portion of the government’s investment in clean energy.
But in Marrakesh this week, Kerry’s main emphasis was that the Paris Climate Agreement sent a “strong signal” to the investor marketplace, reflected in the $350 billion in renewable energy investment this past year. He noted that “business is asking for even stronger signals” to inspire more confidence in the market.
More global commitments to clean energy would encourage private sector investment and, in turn, “ratchet up ambitions [of countries] as technology develops and and clean energy costs are lowered,” Kerry said.
According to Kerry, the clean energy market will eventually be in the trillions, “the largest market the world has ever known,” he said.
More than 365 businesses —including at least a dozen Fortune 500 companies, such as DuPont, Gap, Hilton, and Nike — officially called for stronger signals from the United States and other high-emitter countries this week, signing a letter of support of the Paris Agreement and its targets, encouraging “an acceleration towards a low carbon economy.”
There were no oil and gas companies among the signatories.
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Correction: An earlier version of this piece misspelled the name of Kathy Mulvey, campaign manager with the Union of Concerned Scientists. ThinkProgress regrets the error.