Clean Technology Revolution Seen as Key to Climate Fix

04 December 2008

(Latest round of international climate change talks continues in Poland)

By Cheryl Pellerin
Staff Writer

Washington — Nearly 11,000 people are meeting in Poznan, Poland, December 1–12, during the United Nations Climate Change Conference to discuss long-term cooperative action, including mechanisms to help developing countries lower greenhouse gas emissions and cope with the effects of climate change.

The two-week meeting is the 14th Conference of 192 parties (COP-14) to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the fourth meeting of 183 parties to the Kyoto Protocol.

COP-14 comes halfway between COP-13, held December 3–15, 2007, in Bali, where negotiations were launched to strengthen international action on climate change, and COP-15, to be held November 30–December 11, 2009, when the negotiations are set to culminate in an international climate change agreement.

“The United States is fully committed to reaching agreement by 2009 to a post-2012 climate agreement that is environmentally effective and economically sustainable,” Paula Dobriansky, under secretary of state for democracy and global affairs, said during a December 3 telephone briefing in Washington.

“We expect that Poznan will highlight the importance of research and development in clean energy technologies to effectively address climate change,” she added. “We need nothing less than a clean technology revolution.”

Dobriansky heads the U.S. delegation in Poznan, along with Special Envoy to the UNFCCC Harlan Watson, who serves as alternate head of the delegation.

James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality and senior adviser to President Bush, will represent the United States at the ministerial portion of the conference December 11–12.

Delegation members include officials from the Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Treasury Department, the National Security Council, the White House Council on Environmental Quality and members of Congress and congressional staff.

Progress In Proznan

In 1994, the UNFCCC international treaty went into effect and representatives from 192 countries began to consider what could be done to reduce climate change and to cope with the inevitable temperature increases of global warming.

In 2005, an addition to the treaty — the Kyoto Protocol — went into force. To date, 183 parties to the treaty have ratified the protocol. Its major feature is that it sets binding targets for 37 industrialized countries and the European community for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 5 percent against 1990 levels over five years. The United States is not a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol.

The protocol’s first commitment period began in 2008 and ends in 2012. A strong multilateral framework must be in place by 2009 to ensure that there is no gap between the end of the Kyoto Protocol’s first commitment period in 2012 and the entry into force of a future regime.

In May 2007, President Bush announced an initiative to develop and contribute to a post-Kyoto framework on energy security and climate change by the end of 2008. This effort, the Major Economies Process on Energy Security and Climate Change, contributes to national, regional and international programs to address climate change. The group includes developed and developing nations. (See “Technology-based Policy on Climate Change Urged by Bush.”)

In July, 17 leaders of the major economies held a summit in Toyako, Japan, to discuss reducing greenhouse gas emissions, contributing to negotiations under the UNFCCC and identifying actions to be taken.

A declaration issued July 9 by leaders from Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, the European Union, France, Germany, Indonesia, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Republic of Korea, Russia, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States acknowledged that climate change, energy security and sustainable development are linked, recognized the leadership role of all major economies — developed and developing — in combating climate change and highlighted the contribution of the major economies meetings to the UNFCCC.

At COP-14 in Poznan, parties aim to do the following:

• agree on an action plan and work programs for the final year of negotiations;

• make progress on issues that will enhance implementation of the treaty and the Kyoto Protocol, including capacity building for developing countries, reducing emissions from deforestation, technology transfer and adaptation to climate change; and

• advance understanding and common views on a “shared vision” for a new climate change regime, as proposed at COP-13 in Bali.

Technology Revolution

Reducing emissions from the energy sector and other industrial processes, capturing and storing greenhouse gases and monitoring and measuring levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere all depend on technology and technology advances and on transferring such technologies from countries that have the technology to countries that do not.

Under the UNFCCC, industrialized countries are urged to take steps to promote, facilitate and finance the transfer of, or access to, environmentally sound technologies and the knowledge to use them to developing countries.

In Bali, the parties directed an expert group on technology transfer to study technology financing options, among other topics.

The United States has increased its budget for technology research and development from about $1.7 billion in 2001 to well in excess of $4 billion, Connaughton said during the briefing.

“But on top of that,” he added, “the U.S. now has about $67 billion in new loan authority and loan guarantee authority for low-carbon [dioxide] technologies. That is the most dramatic and the largest commitment to helping finance low-carbon technologies anywhere on earth.”

President Bush also committed $2 billion over the next three years to create a new international clean energy technology fund to accelerate the deployment of all forms of cleaner, more efficient technologies in developing nations like India and China.

“We are hoping to raise at least $10 billion for that fund to support international projects,” Connaughton said, “and we hope that will be a topic of discussion in Poznan.”