Energy Efficiency & Climate Change Law : Energy Law Insights & Commentary : David R. Frenkil : Climate Policy, Carbon Intensity

Although Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said that his country would not commit to a greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation plan by the deadline of January 31st, as set in last month's Copenhagen Accord, Delhi, India's second largest city, has announced plans to switch its three coal-generated power plants to a cleaner fuel: natural gas.

With a population of over 12 million inhabitants, which increased by a third this past decade, the city of Delhi's energy needs continues to rise.  Therefore, Delhi's leaders decided to substitute natural gas for coal over the next four years because a failure to mitigate the rapid increase in GHGs from the city's coal-fired power plants would only further exacerbate the city's air pollution problem.   

Currently, consumers in Delhi pay 2 rupees per unit cost of power ($0.04) generated by coal, but  that figure will increase to 3.5 rupees ($0.07) when their energy is generated using natural gas.  While this move will make energy nearly two-times more expensive for consumers, Rakesh Mehta, Delhi's Chief Secretary, explained that his constituents "would be willing to pay more for [a] cleaner atmosphere."

It is certainly encouraging that leaders from the world's 4th largest city (which is 50% larger than New York City) prioritize a clean atmosphere over the cost of energy.  Perhaps leaders in the United States should take note, considering that progress on the proposed U.S. climate bill has been slow, at best, since the summer when the Congressional Budget Office released a study showing that the cost of the plan to mitigate U.S. GHGs would increase the price of energy for U.S. households by $175 in 2020, which translates to the cost of a stamp per day.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, power plants using natural gas produce half as much carbon dioxide, less than a third of the nitrogen oxides, and one percent of the sulphur oxides as coal-fired power plants.  Even if the four-year timeline for switching all power plants from coal to natural gas is unrealistic due to the legal and economic hurdles associated with building the natural gas pipelines necessary to support the plan, the rapidly growing city will significantly reduce its GHGs by the end of this new decade.

It is important now, more than ever, for cities, states and regions to follow Delhi's lead, considering that a new international climate deal remains uncertain and members of the U.S. Congress continue to hold-up both legislative and executive efforts to mitigate GHGs.

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Last month's United Nations climate meetings in Copenhagen yielded an agreement referred to as the "Copenhagen Accord," which included a pledge by developing countries (listed in Annex I of the Kyoto Protocol) such as the United States to outline a range of emission reductions targets up to 2020 by January 31, 2010.  Developing countries also promised to submit action plans to mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by this date. 

Although U.S. Climate Envoy Todd Stern explained earlier this month the importance of meeting this deadline, Yvo De Boer, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), stated in a January 20th webcast that “I think you could describe it as a soft deadline."

The deadline's downgrade from "hard" to "soft," which comes less than two weeks before the target date of January 31st that has thus far been met by only nine out of 192 countries, is a critical misstep by the lead climate change official at the UN.  Given the nature of the Accord (not a legally-binding document) and the disastrous negotiating process in which it was created, it is crucial that world leaders encourage the fulfillment of deadlines set out in the agreement because a "soft" deadline can amount to no action at all. 

The so-called "BASIC" developing countries - Brazil, India, China and South Africa - initially indicated that they would jointly release their mitigation plans by the deadline.  However, following Mr. de Boer's comments, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recanted on that position, saying that he would wait to release his country's mitigation plans until receiving clarification on the legal status of "certain issues" in the Copenhagen Accord.

On December 29, 2009, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva signed a law requiring Brazil to cut GHG emissions by 39 percent by 2020.  Although the law is subject to several decrees setting out responsibilities and regulations for the farming, industrial, energy, and environmental sectors, President Lula vetoed three of the bill's provisions, including a reference to “promoting the development of clean energy sources and the gradual phasing out of energy from fossil fuels.”  The release of Brazil's mitigation plan - hopefully by the January 31st deadline - will provide a much clearer picture of how the developing nation will fulfill its goal of reducing GHG emissions by 39 percent before the end of this new decade.

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"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.

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The Copenhagen Accord is a legally non-binding agreement made at the U.N. climate meetings in Copenhagen on December 19th.  

The text of the Copenhagen Accord, which can be downloaded by clicking here, is also copied below.

The Copenhagen Accord is referred to in the text as the "decision x/CP.15 on the Ad hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action and decision x/CMP.5."

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The White House initially announced that President Obama would be traveling to the U.N. climate meetings in Copenhagen on December 9th, the day before he accepts his Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway.  However, this evening, the President changed his plans to travel to Copenhagen not until December 18th - the last day of the negotiations.  

In a statement, the White House asserted, "continued U.S. leadership can be most productive through his participation at the end of the Copenhagen conference on December 18 rather than on December 9."  Danish Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen called President Obama's decision to attend the conference on December 18th, which is when other world leaders will also be in attendance, "an expression of the growing political momentum toward sealing an ambitious climate deal in Copenhagen."  

While President Obama's attendance on the last day of the conference may raise expectations for an agreement in Copenhagen, the change to his itinerary, and the rationale volunteered by the White House, is disappointing.  

Although the United States will be represented throughout the entirety of the meetings in Copenhagen by an impressive array of talented and proven leaders, as argued in a previous post, significant progress in Copenhagen would require the very diplomatic skills for which President Obama will be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.  Given the significant risks at stake in forming a global agreement to address climate change, coupled with President Obama's great talents and celebrity status, by waiting to travel to Copenhagen until the final moments of the 12-day conference he will squander the opportunity to actively help broker a deal.

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More than 400 negotiators, business leaders, environmental activists and journalists will board the carbon-free "Climate Express" train on December 5th to join approximately 15,000 attendees from 192 countries at the U.N. conference in Copenhagen, beginning December 7th, where leaders will discuss proposals for a successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol.  The Copenhagen meetings, which are expected to establish a framework that should lead to a global climate deal in 2010, is the culmination of months of negotiations between countries to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

As the Copenhagen meetings approached in recent weeks, and media attention began to focus on the Danish capital, it appeared that deniers of human-induced climate change were losing ground. However, on November 19th, a computer hacker allowed these nay-sayers to die another day.  The anonymous hacker breached a server used by the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia (UEA) in Norwich, England.  The CRU, one of the world's leading research bodies on natural and human-induced climate change, played a key role in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report, which is considered to be the most authoritative report on the science of climate change.

The hacker disseminated a number of e-mails obtained in the breach, which include, among other things, discussion of how data was truncated to stop an apparent cooling trend that showed up in a report and encouragement to delete other information.  A poll released December 3rd, conducted less than two weeks after reports of the CRU e-mails first surfaced, shows that a majority of Americans now question climate science.  Two of these Americans, who are also conservative members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, asked the Academy to rescind Al Gore's Oscar, which he won for “An Inconvenient Truth,” a movie about climate change.  

The scandal has also offered Comedian Jon Stewart a chance to quip on The Daily Show, "Poor Al Gore, global warming completely debunked via the very internet you invented."  While "Climategate" has offered such material to comedians, it is no laughing matter because this scandal of sorts has grabbed the spotlight away from the build-up to the Copenhagen meetings - a pivotal moment in the brief history of efforts to mitigate climate change.  

The e-mails that were unveiled during this scandal show that a select few scientists chose to deviate from what was right.  Perhaps it might even warrant new analysis regarding the reliability, and oversight, of climate science in general.  However eager one might be to deny that climate change is human-induced in order to maintain the status quo, the fact remains that the last time carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere were today's levels of 387 parts per million (up from around 280 parts per million just 200 years ago), was 15 million years ago.

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With just 22 days remaining and important issues still unresolved, world leaders announced today that only a politically-binding framework will be developed in Copenhagen where the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP-15) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are scheduled to meet from December 7-18. Representatives from 192 countries were originally expected to negotiate on a legally-binding successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol (commonly referred to as the “post-Kyoto treaty”) at the Copenhagen meetings.

While this “framework” will not include all the details of a legally-binding treaty, it is expected to provide specifics regarding the commitments that countries will make for mitigating climate change and related financing. Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said that the result of the Copenhagen meetings should be a five-to-eight page text with "precise language" committing developed countries to reductions of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, with provisions on adapting to warmer temperatures, financing adaptation and combating climate change in poor countries, and technological development and diffusion.

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF), an environmental group, criticized the announcement as a "missed opportunity." The WWF may be right because international climate negotiations can end with unexpected results, particularly when the extreme pressure of an approaching deadline persuades countries to make concessions in order to reach a deal. For example, at the 2007 UNFCCC meeting in Bali, all signs pointed to failure until key players worked through the final night of the meetings to reach an agreement which launched the process leading to Copenhagen.

On the other hand, while today's announcement was disappointing, the decision to slow the negotiating process was also practical.  Had the meetings commenced on December 7th with the expectation that a post-Kyoto treaty would be signed, a failure to reach consensus by December 18th would have left the negotiation process at a standstill.

Such a delay would be catastrophic.  According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), each year that the world delays implementing a global climate agreement, $500 billion will be added to the $10.5 trillion needed between 2010 and 2030 to reduce GHG emissions such that the global temperature increase will be limited to 2 degrees Celsius.   Further, failure to reach agreement on a post-Kyoto treaty could result in the need for sea-walls to defend coastal cities, additional suffering of drought, floods and famine for the world's poor and increasingly volatile weather conditions.

Given recent reports that a deal in Copenhagen was unlikely, perhaps treating a preliminary agreement in Copenhagen as a stepping-stone to a future agreement within the next year or two would provide world leaders with the chance to realistically reach a fair, ambitious and legally-binding post-Kyoto treaty.  

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