John Kerry will leave his posting as the Biden administration’s climate envoy in late winter or early spring, multiple media sources have confirmed.
Kerry, 80, will transition out of government in support of Biden’s 2024 presidential campaign, Axios first reported Saturday.
The former US Senator and Secretary of State was appointed to the role in Nov. 2020 but has a long history of climate negotiations under previous administrations.
A successor has not yet been named, according to sources.
As Secretary of State in the Obama administration, Kerry supported negotiations of the Paris Agreement in 2015 and was recognised for his strong rapport with China’s climate envoy, Xie Zhenhua.
“Kerry helped restore US climate leadership at a critical moment, advancing the national interest in confronting a crisis that’s taking a mounting toll on families and communities in every corner of the globe,” said Jake Schmidt, senior strategic director for international climate with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
“He helped rally the world around a commitment to transition away from fossil fuels, speed the growth of clean energy and begin to mobilise resources to help the world’s most vulnerable nations cope with the consequences of the climate crisis. What’s important now is to build on this momentum, raise climate ambition, in the US and around the world, and confront this widening crisis with the urgency it demands.”
News of Kerry’s departure has emerged just a day after the Chinese government announced that Xie would step down from his post due to health reasons.
Ahead of COP28, the two representatives of the world’s largest GHG emitters met in Sunnylands, California to forge a new agreement to cooperate on climate action.
In Dubai, Kerry led the US delegation, announcing the launch of his pet project – the Energy Transition Accelerator – this coming April.
The jurisdictional carbon crediting mechanism to phase out coal is anticipated to mobilise up to $207 billion in carbon finance by 2035.
The US has also long pushed for the use of existing, domestic voluntary carbon market standards in the pursuit of international emissions trading under Paris’ Article 6, subject to much criticism from counterparts in the EU and elsewhere.
The tensions came to a head at COP28 with a breakdown in talks on key Article 6 negotiating texts, with many struggling to see consensus moving forward.
However, the culmination of the most recent round of UN climate talks saw Kerry praise the emergence of the summit’s key text, the Global Stocktake, which committed to a “transition away from fossil fuels” instead of the more ambitious ‘phaseout’ language sought by other governments and representatives from civil society.
By Allison Gacad – allison@carbon-pulse.com
