Energy Secretary Rick Perry hailed the Trump administration’s efforts to make fossil fuels cleaner as a key part of the U.S. transition to an energy system that’s more reliant on renewable sources.
“As we progress to a zero emission as goal, we can still reduce emissions without draining the growth of our developing nations,” Perry said during a speech Wednesday at the CERAWeek energy conference in Houston. “Let us unleash innovation, let us invest in emission-free resources like nuclear and hydro [power] while at the same time making fossil fuels cleaner.”
Perry’s remarks are his latest attempt to straddle the line between supporting increasing fossil fuel development, allowed by the Trump administration’s relaxation of regulations on carbon emissions, and encouraging the deployment of more wind and solar.
“We support those renewables,” Perry said. “Not only are they ultimate clean fuel, but they are inexhaustible by definition.”
But Perry emphasized that the world is expected to depend on fossil fuels into 2040, especially developing countries looking to bring electricity to their citizens.
“What are we supposed to do in the meantime?” Perry said. “What are the people without electricity supposed to do?”
His answer: “We would welcome and help lead a global alliance of countries willing to make fossil fuels cleaner rather than abandoning them.”
To achieve that goal, Perry mentioned the administration’s effort to invest in expensive carbon capture and storage technology that allows coal and natural gas plants to collect and bury carbon emissions.
Technologies such as carbon capture and storage, known as CCS, will be key to fulfilling the goal of the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, a change that many scientists say would create irreversible climate change effects.
But Perry’s proposed Energy Department budget for 2019 reduces funding for carbon capture by 80 percent from the $196.3 million budgeted by Congress last year.
Perry also highlighted the Energy Department’s emphasis on exporting liquefied natural gas, which is cleaner than coal. And finally, he said the Energy Department’s national labs are making “great progress” researching ways to better deploy battery storage technology.
Energy storage is an emerging technology that can solve renewable energy’s most persistent problem, lengthening the availability of wind or solar by allowing collected energy to be used when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing.
“My prophecy for today is we will attain that technology sooner rather than later,” Perry said.
Installations of energy storage grew 27 percent last year and are expected to more than double in 2018, according to a report released Tuesday by GTM Research and the Energy Storage Association.
“Due to a cascade of technology breakthroughs driven by innovation, America is producing abundant energy from a wider range of sources than we ever thought possible, and we are using that energy more cleanly and efficiently than ever before,” Perry said.
“The lesson is we don’t need to choose between growing the economy and caring for our environment,” Perry added. “That is at the heart of the new energy realism.”
