No arm-twisting: Kerry says corporates back plan to cut CO2

U_S_ climate envoy John Kerry says a new project trumpeted by U_S_ President Joe Biden in which companies underpin development of low-carbon technologies through their buying power amounts to a “big transformation.”

GENEVA -- A new project trumpeted by U.S. President Joe Biden in which companies underpin development of low-carbon technologies through their buying power amounts to a “big transformation,” U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said Thursday.

The “ First Movers Coalition ”, spearheaded by the U.S. government and the World Economic Forum, aims to help meet an increasingly difficult target laid out in the 2015 Paris climate accord to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. So far, almost three dozen global companies in many sectors have committed to changing their purchasing practices to favor development of zero-emission technologies by 2030.

The idea is to jumpstart budding or not-yet-existent technologies that can reduce how much CO2 is spewed into the atmosphere by leveraging the market — specifically the purchasing power of the companies — to encourage their suppliers to clean up, so they can too. Biden spoke of the project as the U.N.-backed climate conference in Glasgow known as COP26 got under way.

“This is a big transformation. It’s a big deal,” Kerry told many corporate leaders behind the project in Glasgow on Thursday. “Everybody I’ve talked to when they learn about it, they say: ‘Wow, that makes sense. That’s great.' And all of you understood that instinctively, and without an arm-twisting.”