September 2022

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This paper outlines priorities for the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance (BOGA) and its members that were identified by civil society groups to turn what has remained a largely aspirational diplomatic initiative into a force for increased climate action in line with equity, justice, and science.

In this newly released paper, endorsed by 17 organizations, civil society is outlining 11 key recommendations to ensure the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance lives up to its potential.  Some of the key recommendations include:

  • For countries to fully implement their commitment to end new oil and gas exploration and to fully align with limiting warming to 1.5°C by halting approval for any new or planned oil and gas projects as recommended by the International Energy Agency (3), and for Global North members to accelerate their phase out timelines (4).
  • To establish a clear timeline after which second tier members will need to meet the requirements of full membership or no longer be members.
  • For the alliance to catalyze technical and financial support to Global South producing countries that wish to explore fossil free development pathways
  • For countries to build coherence between their domestic commitments to phase out fossil fuel production and their international action by not promoting additional oil and gas production abroad through their diplomacy and investments.

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One Comment

  • I’ve worked on the topic of energy for decades and my conclusion is that society must transition to alcohol fuels, which would be the “bridge fuel” between our current fossil fuel centered society to a presumably electrified centered society. The reason being this issue, which shouldn’t be ignored: What will we do with all of the existing petroleum powered vehicles and machinery and all of the production facilities that produce such vehicles and machinery? The fact is that it will take decades until vehicles and machinery that’s newly manufactured to complete their serviceable life. By then it will be too late. If, however, society embraced clean, renewable alcohol fuels to power vehicles and machinery (using flex-fuels tech) we could power existing vehicles and machinery very rapidly and that would cripple or even destroy the fossil hydrocarbon industry. Using renewable alcohol fuels could carry society from our rather primitive reliance on hydrocarbons through to more advanced clean energy technologies, like nuclear fusion, which could be developed by that time. Thus, we could use the same vehicles, machinery, factories, and infrastructure that’s in current use, making for a seamless transition between fossil hydrocarbons and a clean energy future. I like to say this approach changes everything without changing anything (regarding people changing their behaviors, such as choice of vehicle and fueling vehicles.) Sure, EVs are presumably useful for this necessary transition but they do not address consumer preferences, fueling infrastructure, machinery like construction machinery and generators, and the factories that build it all. A transition to alcohol fuels will allow time to complete the transition. Alcohol fuels includes methanol, ethanol, propranol, butanol, and mixtures of them. It’s been found that mixtures of various alcohols results in better fuels than single alcohol fuels and better than petroleum fuels as well. Please consider. Here’s a list of references that I share for general audiences: http://www.biorootenergy.com https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_alcohol_fuel https://www.chemistryviews.org/details/book/11108450/Beyond_Oil_and_Gas_The_Methanol_Economy_3rd_Edition.html and http://energyvictory.net/ https://www.carbonrecycling.is/
    https://cen.acs.org/articles/84/i49/Alcohol-fuels-engines.html
    https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://afdc.energy.gov/files/pdfs/mit_methanol_white_paper.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjVjNnksLzuAhWoFFkFHZj9DwkQFjAAegQIAxAB&usg=AOvVaw2AKWw-FPEx1YinORvTHnBi
    https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-geely-press-with-methanol-vehicles-chairman-says-2021-06-13/
    As I implied, I’ve been studying this for several decades on my own time. Otherwise I worked and retired as a life scientist with the U.S.EPA. I’ve been disappointed that environmental orgs have yet to pick up the torch and run with the renewable alcohol solution.
    In fact, synthetic renewable alcohol production is in my view the start of not the alcohol, or methanol, economy but the start of the hydrogen economy. The reason is that hydrogen cannot be easily stored or dispensed and so must be chemically bound to another element, such as carbon and nitrogen. If bonded to nitrogen, you produce ammonia, which is very toxic and corrosive. So that leaves carbon. But if the carbon comes from a renewable source, and not fossil hydrocarbons, then all society is doing is cycling carbon, no different than Nature’s carbon cycle that has existed for over 3-billion years.
    I beg you to consider all I’ve written for the sake of the children of all species for all time. Thank you.

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