It was a deceptively low-key occasion on Capitol Hill: an older man in a dark suit, talking into a TV camera about an energy report.
According to his firm’s 362-page analysis, the fastest path to California’s climate goals included continuing to rely on fossil fuels. The analysis was funded by gas companies and groups related to them, but he wasn’t a lobbyist or industry consultant. Quite the opposite, he was the Obama administration’s well-respected energy secretary, Ernest Moniz.
“We certainly have to get beyond … the climate deniers,” he said in the April 2019 interview with C-SPAN. “But we also have to get beyond what we think are often completely unrealistic proposals for the pace at which we can decarbonize.” Fighting climate change at the pace needed would require a “broad coalition,” he said – one that included the oil and gas industry.
Moniz was wading into a dispute that will define how the new Biden administration tackles the crisis: can oil and gas companies be part of the solution? Or have they proven, with years of disinformation campaigns and efforts to slow climate action, that they will always stand in the way?
As the Biden transition team wrestles with this question, it is already facing pressure from activists not to hire more people with fossil fuel ties, like Louisiana congressman Cedric Richmond, who will join Biden’s White House as a top adviser.
In Moniz’s case:
Moniz is on the board of one of the most polluting power companies in America, the Georgia-based Southern Company.
His firm Energy Futures Initiative (EFI) conducted research paid for by Southern California Gas (SoCalGas), which a state consumer advocate has since argued should be fined for using customer money to oppose climate progress.
Moniz presented the results at an event sponsored by Stanford University’s Natural Gas Initiative, which SoCalGas and other fossil fuel companies help fund as affiliate members. The initiative offers corporate members access to research “from inception to outcome”.
EFI also partnered with Stanford researchers on a report that explored opportunities to capture climate emissions from fossil fuel operations. One of the funders was the industry group the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative.
EFI’s advisory board is chaired by the former chief executive of British oil company BP, although it also includes distinguished climate experts and environmentalists.
EFI’s California analysis neatly aligned with what SoCalGas had been arguing as the state tightened its climate goals. It found that gas power plants with technologies to capture their emissions would reduce climate pollution more than any other option, including renewable power. It suggested an all-of-the-above approach.
While gas has helped the US cut its planet-heating emissions by replacing dirtier coal, it remains a major climate polluter that is linked with significant health problems.
Collin Rees, a senior campaigner for Oil Change International said Moniz’s links to fossil fuels aren’t “a blip on his resume”.
“It is his entire professional career for the last couple decades, which is deeply concerning,” Rees said.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
