Keynote: Guyana International Conference and Expo

Good morning, everyone. My name is Jennifer Wilcox, and I am the Acting Assistant Secretary for the Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management at the U.S. Department of Energy. 

I want to thank the government of Guyana for the invitation to speak today. These are very important times in the growing relationship between our two countries, so I want to thank the organizers for this great event.

The Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management within the U.S. Department of Energy is one of the U.S. government’s main agencies in charge of supporting investments in technology that will lead to a sustainable transition to a net-zero emissions future.

As all of you know, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has reported that – absent deep cuts in carbon dioxide emissions – average global temperatures will exceed 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels in the coming decades. 

The Biden Administration has taken very strong action toward decarbonizing the U.S. fossil economy, setting a goal to cut U.S. emissions by 50% by 2030, to produce 100% clean electricity by 2035, and ultimately to reach a net-zero carbon economy by mid-century by 2050.

Last November, at the Glasgow climate summit, the United States announced its largest-ever commitment to reduce climate impacts on countries that are the most vulnerable to climate change.

In order to meet our net-zero climate goals, both carbon capture and carbon removal from the atmosphere will be required.

And it’s important to distinguish between these two tools, these two approaches. Retrofitting a power plant, or an industrial facility like a cement plant, with carbon capture, when coupled with dedicated and reliable geologic storage – these approaches avoid the C02 from ever entering the atmosphere.

But we are at point that avoiding emissions alone, is no longer enough to meet our climate goals.

There are sectors today that are very hard to decarbonize. Like the agriculture sector, some parts of the transportation sector, like aviation and shipping.

In order to achieve net-zero we’ll also need to do carbon dioxide removal.

This is the separation of CO2 from the atmosphere directly, this is hundreds of times more dilute than point sources like power plants and some industrial facilities.

In fact, IPCC modeling shows that only emissions scenarios that include carbon dioxide removal achieve net-zero globally by 2050.

Investments

The Department of Energy is investing in all of these approaches: point source carbon capture, dedicated and reliable carbon storage and carbon removal technologies.

We’re investing in their development and first of a kind demonstrations. The first of a kind demonstrations are always more costly, but by learning by doing, we

Just recently, the United States Congress passed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law that will spend $62 billion to fund 16 demonstration and 32 deployment programs.

Last year, we selected 12 Engineering Design projects to advance point-source CCS technologies that can capture at least 95 percent of CO₂ emissions generated from natural gas power and industrial facilities.

And once CO₂ is captured, it can be stored deep underground in geologic formations. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law targets $2.5 billion for carbon storage validation and testing. 

With strategic thinking and a lot of hard work, many successful CCS technologies can be put into use in the next several years. We are happy to be working with Guyana in their efforts to deploy CCS and CDR.

As your government plans to design critical infrastructure, it is vital to recognized understand that as the transition to net-zero emissions expands, hydrocarbon producers with the lowest carbon footprint will have the greatest value.

This includes a leak-tight supply chain to minimize methane emissions. It is also critical to keep in mind that there will continue to be options for decarbonized the energy that we extract from fossil fuels.

Our office focuses on investing in solutions that minimize both environmental and climate impacts from the production all the way to the use of fossil fuels.

In addition to point-source carbon capture, carbon storage, and carbon dioxide removal, our office’s work on climate emphasizes CO2 conversion, so looking for other ways to manage C02, converting it to useful feed stocks or chemicals.

• Clean hydrogen
• Critical minerals production, and
• Methane emissions reduction

In addition to decarbonization, we all must work with private industry to reduce methane emissions associated with fossil fuel production and its transport, and ultimately its use. It’s a huge challenge in the United States, which has a significant job ahead of it eliminating methane emissions from fossil fuel supply chains.

Guyana has a chance to build new infrastructure with state-of-the-art leak mitigation technology that will put its industry at the leading edge of the world’s fossil energy infrastructure transition to net-zero.

Direct Air Capture

And I want turn back to the topic of direct air capture and carbon dioxide removal.

As I mentioned previously – both carbon capture and carbon removal from the accumulated pool in the atmosphere – will be required to meet climate goals.

Recent studies from the U.S. National Academy of Sciences to the International Energy Agency show that by 2050, humanity will have to remove on the order of gigatons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year through carbon removal approaches to achieve net-zero goals.

We are quite far from these targets today at just 1000s of tons of removal each year. And I want to be clear, that globally we emit roughly 40 gigatons of CO2 and that we have natural sinks, like oceans, and the terrestrial biosphere like forests, that actually take care already of 50 percent of those emissions.

But the key is, for carbon removal and having this impact on the order of gigatons, we need to increase those natural sinks; not rely on just how they are operating today.

There’s are lot of ways we can remove CO2 from the atmosphere. The portfolio is broad, every region globally has something to offer to this space.

The Department of Energy currently leads an interagency task force, an all-of-government approach, pursuing the advancement of Carbon Dioxide Removal technologies.

Some of these involve direct air capture. In direct air capture, you use chemicals, minerals or biological feedstocks to directly react with CO2 in the atmosphere.

There is also soil carbon sequestration. So through advanced agricultural practices like cover crops or low tillage; this can lead to increased carbon storage in soil.

Afforestation and Reforestation: Storing CO2 in newly grown or regrown forests.

Improved forest management is another approach. Again, we rely on forests today to serve as carbon sinks. But with increasing warming and climate change advancing, we can also see that they can become sources.

Certain regions have increased risk of forest fires were these sinks are reversing and becoming sources today.

So improving their management, to lead to additionality, to lead to increased carbon removal, is also an important tool.

And because Guyana’s tropical forests and coastal ecosystems are high-quality carbon sinks, your country is in a great position to develop afforestation and biological capture technologies that would be a great addition to point-source capture and reliable storage.

And for our part, the U.S. Department of Energy in general – and the Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management, more specifically, stands ready to support critical technology R&D&D, and partnerships with industry to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

My message to you today is that we all have a unique opportunity, a moral responsibility, and a compelling vision – to help tackle the climate crisis and advance to a net-zero, clean energy future.

This is a big responsibility, and it is one we are prepared to meet head-on.

I want to again thank the government of Guyana again for this invitation to speak and thank everyone in the audience attending this convention for their time today.