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SAN FRANCISCO -(Dow Jones)- Chevron Corp.’s (CVX) top executive said Wednesday that while he agrees emissions of heat-trapping gases need to be cut to protect the environment, the U.S. is unlikely to cut such emissions by more than 25% in the next 40 years - much less than the 80% proposed by President Barack Obama.
Chevron Chief Executive Dave O’Reilly said he believes there’s a need to cut greenhouse gas emissions to fight climate change. But he added that doing so would be more challenging than many scientists, environmentalists and lawmakers realize.
“Even with the best of intentions, we’re only going to get part of the way there,” O’Reilly said, speaking in San Francisco in a conversation with Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope.
O’Reilly said that while Chevron has invested in renewable energy and supports a gradual transition from fossil fuels to renewable and alternative fuels with smaller carbon footprints, it’ll take more than a few decades to make the transition.
“The sheer scale of our energy needs are far more than our capacity to replace it,” he said.
He agreed with Pope that replacing coal with natural gas as a feedstock for power plants would be the “speediest way” to cut greenhouse gas emissions, both in the U.S. and worldwide. He added that the coal industry was lobbying in Washington against any requirements to cut coal use as part of a proposal to cut U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions to fight climate change.
O’Reilly and Pope agreed that U.S. climate change legislation should include a fee for emitting carbon dioxide, whether in the form of a flat tax or by some other mechanism.
“Where the American people are going to have a challenge is if whatever system being developed is not transparent,” O’Reilly said. The current proposed greenhouse-gas emissions-reduction legislation “is unnecessarily complex,” he said, referring to a proposal in Congress by U.S. Reps. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and Edward Markey, D-Mass.
The Sierra Club’s Pope has called for the U.S. to cut greenhouse-gas emissions by 90% by 2040. The U.S. could cut emissions by 25% simply by increasing energy efficiency and phasing out coal use, with more reductions achievable by replacing fossil fuels with low-carbon electricity and biofuels, he said.
“We still have an energy infrastructure and policy structure that goes back to the 1920s,” Pope said.
U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions were 7.1 billion tons of CO2 equivalent in 2007, the most recent year for which data were available, with about one-third of that coming from transportation, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The U.S. is the world’s second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, behind China.
-By Cassandra Sweet, Dow Jones Newswires; 415-269-4446; cassandra.sweet@ dowjones.com
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I totally agree with Mr O’Reilly. Setting unrealistic targets are counter productive. Moving from one source of energy to another will reduce CO2 emissions but the heat produced will not change. Wind, nuclear, gas, clean coal, solar all at the end produce heat. The earth can only lose heat by radiation. CO2 inhibits this loss but the real problem is the heat generated by human activity. With a world human population approaching 6.8 Billion, each with aspirations for the same lifestyle developed countrys enjoy. We must cut energy use or mankind will go the way of the dinosaurs. The world will recover. Are we trying to save the earth or mankind?
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