“The first step is to stop making the problem worse: stop building new unabated coal power plants,” Kerry says at COP28 summit.
Joe Biden’s Special Envoy for Climate John Kerry on Saturday pledged to halt the building of coal power plants and shut down existing ones in America to fight climate change.
Kerry made the remarks at the annual United Nations summit known as COP28, held in Dubai.
“We will be working to accelerate unabated coal phase-out across the world, building stronger economies and more resilient communities,” Kerry said in a statement.
“The first step is to stop making the problem worse: stop building new unabated coal power plants.”
Kerry said America would be joining the Powering Past Coal Alliance, a coalition of 60 countries that promised to accelerate the phasing out of coal power plants in a bid to limit global warming to 1.5 Celsius.
Biden last year declared coal plants “all across America” will be shut down and replaced with wind and solar power.
Joe Biden celebrates coal plant workers losing their jobs.
“We’re going to be shutting these plants down all across America.” pic.twitter.com/0DZk0MZHa8
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) November 4, 2022
Coal accounts for about 20% of America’s power generation, according to the Department of Energy, half of what it was in 2008.
Meanwhile, China which dispatched its own envoys to virtue signal at the COP28 summit, massively expanded its coal power plant development last year.
“China continues to be the glaring exception to the ongoing global decline in coal plant development,” Global Energy Monitor analyst Flora Champenois said in a statement. “The speed at which projects progressed through permitting to construction in 2022 was extraordinary, with many projects sprouting up, gaining permits, obtaining financing and breaking ground apparently in a matter of months.”
Watch Kerry’s full remarks:
