President Obama’s administration often has been accused of pushing clean energy and limiting fossil fuel use while espousing an “all of the above” energy strategy.
However, Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz says fossil fuels must be considered a part of the world’s energy future, albeit with technology to capture carbon dioxide emissions before they enter the atmosphere.
“We need to advance research for all fuels for a low-carbon world,” Moniz said Friday. “For coal, that means carbon capture.”
The Obama administration came under fire from Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., during the fourth Republican presidential debate on Tuesday when he implied the administration has tried to eliminate coal power as a form of energy while publicly saying it supports an “all of the above” strategy.
In his remarks Friday, Moniz echoed Paul’s support for a true “all of the above” energy strategy. That strategy includes fossil fuel, because one energy strategy will not solve climate change. Many scientists blame the greenhouse gases emitted from burning fossil fuels for causing manmade climate change.
Natural gas, petroleum-based fuel and coal will continue to be a part of the globe’s energy future, he said.
“The reality is there is no higher density per cubic feet than in petroleum-based fuel,” he said. “That’s just a fact of life.”
Moniz decried the amount of politics that can get in the way of an all-of-the-above energy strategy, both domestically and internationally.
Moniz agreed with a statement from The Atlantic’s Steve Clemons that, for some people, an all-of-the-above energy strategy can quickly become a some-of-the-above approach.
“There are too many people who like the some-of the-above approach and, by the way, ‘some’ means my favorite technology as a silver bullet,” he said.
That also can mean ruling out some forms of energy, he said.
Moniz pointed to Germany as an example of a country deciding to rule out a clean energy source after it decided to phase out zero-emission nuclear power by 2022. Each country and region will make their own decisions, he said, but those types of decisions can narrow the scope of a future global energy solution.
“As far as I’m concerned, different countries and different regions will make their own decisions and their own choices,” he said. “If Germany wants to rule out nuclear, fine, but I don’t want to rule out nuclear for anybody. That’s what ‘all of the above’ means.”
Moniz pointed to natural gas as a fossil fuel that will play a role in lowering carbon dioxide emissions in the immediate future, though what role it plays decades from now remains to be seen.
Natural gas burns much cleaner than coal and is becoming a preferred type of energy for power plants, especially as its price remains at historic lows. Moniz said the electricity sector would likely be decarbonized the quickest in the United States thanks to the proliferation of natural gas.
“Is natural gas part of the answer or part of the solution? Yes,” Moniz said, chuckling. Right now it’s part of the solution, but as we go to a trajectory of ever lower carbon emissions then natural gas will … need carbon capture.”
