By Jason Bohrer

President-elect Joe Biden is beginning to publicly announce his Cabinet and closest advisors. One of the early names will be climate-related.  Former Senator/Secretary of State/Presidential Candidate John Kerry will be named as “Special Presidential Envoy for Climate” and sit on the National Security Council.

I’m curious to see where Mr. Kerry takes this job, which won’t require confirmation.  (I think he could get confirmed to just about any job in the Biden Cabinet, for whatever my opinion is worth.) Mr. Kerry’s background gives him a certain amount of expertise on the inter-relationship between the climate, energy and foreign relations, and Mr. Kerry has remained engaged in the world for the past several years.

John Kerry

What a lot of people miss is that the United States is among the leaders in reducing carbon dioxide emissions since the early 2000s.  Also interesting is that there are some who attempt to handwave away that fact by saying “cheap natural gas” is responsible as if that makes the accomplishment irrelevant.  That’s stopping the analysis at least one step too soon because the reason we have “cheap natural gas” is the same reason we could have cheap, carbon-dioxide free coal: research and development breakthroughs. So to thank “cheap natural gas” for lowering our carbon footprint while not supporting additional R&D to do more of the same seems shortsighted, and even political adversaries probably wouldn’t apply that description to John Kerry.

Kerry has previously supported—at least rhetorically—a significant investment in clean coal, and his Presidential campaign during 2004 gave him insight into the political importance of coal, although so much has changed since then that who knows how much of what he learned back then is still relevant.

Maybe even more important to the coal industry, John Kerry is a true believer in climate change.

Why does that matter? 

Before the pandemic, the world’s demand for coal was increasing, and projections for global energy demand decades into the future included significant contributions from traditional coal sources. 

Serious observers believe that without carbon capture technology, it will be impossible to meet the world’s energy needs and meet climate targets. Back in 2014, Wired had an informative article about it: https://www.wired.com/2014/03/clean-coal/ and coverage of the International Energy Agency’s work on the topic here: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/24/carbon-storage-technologies-critical-for-meeting-climate-targets-iea.

So my point with John Kerry is that he isn’t just playing politics—at least not at this stage of his career. If he truly believes that reducing CO2 emissions is necessary for our environment, he can stake out a leadership role in his party by reinforcing the IEA’s message that if CO2 is the problem, then carbon capture technologies must be part of the solution.

Mr. Bohrer is the President and CEO of the Lignite Energy Council