US climate envoy John Kerry boldly predicted Tuesday that the US will not rely on coal for power at all nine years from now.
'By 2030 in the United States, we won't have coal,' Kerry said in an interview with Bloomberg at the United Nation's COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland.
'We will not have coal plants,' he said.
The US has been trending away from coal as a fuel source in recent years, in favor of cheaper forms of power such as natural gas, wind and solar, but still relies on the fossil fuel for roughly a fifth of its electricity. The share of US electricity generation from coal is expected to rise from 20% in 2020 to 23% in 2021 due to higher expected natural gas prices, according to the Energy Department's data agency.
Many of the nation's largest energy companies do not have plans to phase out emissions from fossil fuels until 2050, though President Biden has a plan to make the US power grid carbon-free by 2035.
'We're saying we are going to be carbon free in the power sector by 2035,' Kerry said. 'I think that's leadership. I think that's indicative of what we can do.'
'Over 500 coal plants in the US have shut in the last few years, another 58 are going to shut this year,' the climate envoy said.
Over 40 nations pledged at the COP26 last week to phase out coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, but the US did not sign the pledge. Neither did China or India, which burn two-thirds of the world's coal, or Australia, a major coal exporter.
'We're saying we are going to be carbon free in the power sector by 2035,' Kerry said. 'I think that's leadership. I think that's indicative of what we can do'
The US has been trending away from coal as a fuel source in recent years, in favor of cheaper forms of power such as natural gas, wind
