Energy Efficiency & Climate Change Law

"Mr. Premier, are you ready to see me? Are you ready?" In a dramatic moment, President Barack Obama entered the room uninvited, where a secret meeting was underway, organized by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao without notifying U.S. officials.   At the meeting along with Premier Jiabao, were Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and South African President Jacob Zuma.  

Prior to this meeting, in order to continue working on a deal with fellow world leaders, President Obama extended his trip in Copenhagen, at the risk of flying back to Washington, DC in the middle of a blizzard.  The Chinese Premier twice sent representatives on his behalf to meet with President Obama.  In the second meeting, the Chinese representative was an even lower-level official than during the first, thus prompting a typically calm President Obama to reveal his frustration to aides, “I don’t want to mess around with this anymore. I want to talk to Wen.” 

And so went 12 days in Copenhagen, which were marked by chaos and dissent.  Dubbed a "wild roller coaster ride" by a leading U.N. official, negotiators from 192 countries met to discuss a successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol.  Ultimately, this process came to an end after most countries voted in favor of a non-binding, three-page document called the "Copenhagen Accord," created at the secret meeting hosted by Chinese Premier Jiabao.

The Copenhagen Accord has been referred to as a "new beginning," a "modest step forward," and “grossly insufficient.” Although the meaning of Copenhagen is not yet clear, it is certain that the Accord, and the process leading up to it, were unprecedented both substantively and procedurally.

Substantive

Why the Copenhagen Accord is a “modest step forward”:

(1)  The Accord marks the first time that developing countries have made promises to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions from a business-as-usual scenario.

(2)  Developing countries (listed in Annex I of the Kyoto Protocol) such as the United States promised to outline a range of emission reductions targets up to 2020 by February 1, 2010. 

(3)  The Accord provides a system for monitoring and reporting progress toward these national pollution-reduction goals.

(4)  It outlines a scheme for transferring technology from Annex I to developing countries and creates a financial package aimed at assisting developing countries to begin mitigating, and adapting to, climate change.

The Copenhagen Green Climate Fund, created under the Accord, would provide immediate help to developing countries through an initial, “fast-start” fund worth $10 billion annually that would operate from 2010 to 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol expires. The European Union has pledged $3.6 billion annually to the fast-start fund.  Both Japan and the United States have also pledged to contribute to the fast-start fund.

Further, Annex I countries have agreed to support a goal of jointly mobilizing $100 billion a year by 2020 to address the needs of developing countries.  However, critics of the plan argue that it is under-funded by between $40 billion and $100 billion. 

Part of the plan for technology transfer would include the development of technologies and techniques to mitigate emissions from crop and livestock cultivation, and adapting agricultural systems to rising temperatures. This is important because the global population is projected to grow to 9 billion by 2050.  Although rising temperatures are expected to lower crop yields, the population growth will require a 70 percent increase in food production, which is already a major source of greenhouse gas emissions (14 percent) and is expected to rise at least two-fold. 

(5)  The process leading up to the U.N. climate meetings in Copenhagen concentrated minds on this challenge, which had previously been largely ignored by most countries. Copenhagen not only encouraged world leaders to ]discuss these difficult issues; it also raised awareness among their constituents that climate change must be addressed. 

For example, just two years ago, the U.S. had yet to take the official position that climate change is anthropogenic. We have certainly come a long way.

Downsides to the Copenhagen Accord:

(1) The Accord is merely a political statement and not a legally-binding treaty that establishes firm commitments by Annex I countries, nor developing countries, to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

This is important because it will take several years to implement a new global treaty on climate change. Since the Kyoto Protocol expires in just two years, time is no longer on our side.

(2) The emissions cuts tentatively agreed to in the Accord would lead to a global increase in average temperatures of 3 degrees Celsius, as opposed to the Accord’s goal of 2 degrees Celsius. 

A confidential UN document marked "do not distribute" and "initial draft" shows a gap of up to 4.2 gigatons of carbon emissions between the pledges made in Copenhagen and the required level of 44 gigatons that is necessary to stay below a 2 degree temperature rise.  The 2 degree target is linked by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to keeping the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere below 450 parts per million (ppm). Current levels are at 390 ppm, while they were 270 ppm prior to the industrial revolution. Cynthia Rosenzweig, a researcher on climate impacts at NASA explains, “[g]oing above 450 parts per million will change everything. There will be changes in water, food, ecosystems, health, and those changes also interact with each other.”

The Sudanese delegate at Copenhagen, Lumumba Di-Aping, expressed concern that the 2 degree target in the Accord demonstrates that “[t]he developed countries have decided that damage to developing countries is acceptable."  As an alternative, leaders from African and small island states that are vulnerable to rising sea levels will only agree to a treaty that has a target of 1.5 degrees Celsius or lower. 

(3) The Accord’s design of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) – which promotes the investment of clean energy projects in developed countries – does not include carbon capture and storage (CCS), often referred to as “clean coal technology,” which traps greenhouse gases from coal-generated power plants before they are emitted into the atmosphere, and stores them in underground geological formations. 

Countries such as Brazil have voiced opposition to the inclusion of CCS in the CDM because it would undermine funds for other clean energy projects, such as forest protection.

(4) The Copenhagen Green Climate Fund (discussed in item #4 above) may be inadequately funded, and new climate-related projects like flood defenses could end up diverting money from education and health care projects in developing countries.

The source of revenue for the fund will be, in part, private-sector activities such as taxes on trading in greenhouse gas emission allowances. However, given that the price of these allowances fluctuates, forecasting the precise amount of revenue for the fund could prove difficult.

Procedural

As discussed, only five countries were represented in the meeting in which the Copenhagen Accord was created.  This means that 187 countries were not at the negotiating table, which is certainly a departure from the negotiating process of previous U.N. climate meetings.

Speaking in Copenhagen on behalf of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (which includes, among other states, Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador and Nicaragua), Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez accused President Obama of behaving like an emperor “who comes in during the middle of the night” and for leading a conference that has “a real lack of transparency.” 

Offering a less extreme perspective, while referring to the closed-door meeting that produced the Accord and the bilateral negotiations preceding the Copenhagen meetings (e.g. between the U.S. and China and the U.S. and India), Michael Levi, Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, explains that the “climate treaty process isn’t going to die, but the real work of coordinating international efforts to reduce emissions will primarily occur elsewhere.” 

The next U.N. climate meeting will be held November 29 to December 4, 2010 in Mexico City.  It will be preceded by a major negotiating session in Bonn, Germany, scheduled for May 31 to June 11, 2010.