NorthAmOil: Kerry challenges oil industry to prove carbon capture and storage

US climate envoy John Kerry has challenged the oil industry to show that it can use carbon capture and storage (CCS) within enough time to help ward off climate change.

Kerry, Barack Obama's former Secretary of State and a key aide to President Bill Clinton, told Associated Press (AP) in an interview that he has “serious questions” that the technology can be ramped up to commercial scale, affordably and quickly enough to contribute significantly to Biden’s key policy of fighting climate change.

In CCS, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions – specifically carbon dioxide – from the industry of burning fossil fuels are captured and stored long term.

Kerry told AP that ideally renewable energy should be deployed quickly, but that oil and gas states and companies have a right to try to implement a technological fix.

“If you’re able to abate the emissions, capture it,” he told AP. “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.”

CCS is controversial. Proponents say that it will allow them to continue drilling and processing and burning fossil fuels, which they say are necessary to provide energy and economic stability. Critics say the technology has been around for about 50 years, and is still not ready to deploy.