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Carbon capture is emerging as a key strategy for curbing greenhouse-gas emissions from heavy industry, according to U.S. climate envoy John Kerry.
“Industrial decarbonization is one of the critical challenges of the climate crisis,” Kerry said June 15 at a conference organized by BloombergNEF. “Carbon capture is obviously a key tool available today for reducing process emissions from industrial manufacturing.”
Kerry’s comments come days after a meeting of the Group of Seven nations, where leaders faced criticism for stopping short of setting concrete measures to limit global warming. Kerry’s focus on capturing carbon reflects concern that industrial processes such as making steel or cement present a bigger challenge for eliminating greenhouse-gas emissions than transportation or power generation.
Nations and businesses have made significant process in developing carbon-free electric vehicles and clean energy technologies, and both are necessary components of efforts to achieve net zero emissions. The next step in the fight will be addressing industry, according to Kwasi Kwarteng, the U.K.’s business secretary.
“We haven’t made as much progress in decarbonizing industrial processes as we have in electricity generation,” Kwarteng said during a panel discussion at the BNEF event.
Given the delays in cutting emissions over the past few decades, many scientists have said carbon-capture technologies will be needed to reach global climate goals. These technologies fall in two categories: trapping emissions from concentrated sources like power plants or factories and taking out the greenhouse gas directly from the atmosphere.
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