Chevron CEO David O’Reilly believes the US has set its energy targets too high, and said without a significant change in energy infrastructure, the goals to cut carbon emissions by 80% by 2050 were unrealistic.
Highlighting the scale of the task, O’Reilly said making every U.S. vehicle carbon free would only cut out 34% of greenhouse gases, while a completely zero-emission power generation system would only eliminate 40%.
"We’ll be lucky if we can get 20% or 25% by 2050," O’Reilly said in a largely cordial debate on Wednesday night with Carl Pope, executive director of environmental group Sierra Club. "I hope I’m wrong about it, but I’m just looking at capital stock turnover."
Both men agreed that moving away from coal toward natural gas in power plants would be one of the quickest ways to reduce carbon output, and promised to talk privately about potentially lobbying together in Washington D.C. about a perceived congressional bias toward coal. Pope was particularly critical of the current climate bill in Congress for not making coal share more of the burden. "The coal industry sent oil and gas its share of the dinner bill," he said, though he later added that he wanted the bill to move forward through Congress so it could be improved.