Tag: United Nations

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Study, EPA Spotlight Methane Emissions from Oil and Gas Industry

The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University
The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University

Last week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released an updated draft of its Greenhouse Gas Inventory, finding that total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2014 were 6.8 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent—1 percent higher than in 2013, but 8 percent lower than the 2007 peak. The most revelatory revision: methane emissions figures for the oil and gas sector were 27 times higher than previous estimates. Over 20 years, that difference, says the Environmental Defense Fund, represents a climate impact equivalent to 200 coal-fired power plants.

News of the upward revision came amid a study from the University of California at Irvine (UCI) published in the journal Science that finds more than 100,000 tons of methane entered the atmosphere during a four-month natural gas leak in Southern California’s Aliso Canyon. Before it was plugged in February, the leak doubled methane emissions in the Los Angeles region. It is the largest methane leak in U.S. history, and it is likely to keep California from meeting its 2016 greenhouse gas emissions targets.

Methane emissions, a potent greenhouse gas with a long-term global warming potential thought to be many times that of carbon dioxide, are currently unregulated.

At the annual IHS CERAWEEK conference last week, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy alluded to her agency’s proposal, last year, of methane leak detection and repair requirements for new oil wells. Methane emissions related to the oil and natural gas industry are “much larger than we ever anticipated,” she said. “The data confirm that we can and must do more on methane. By tackling methane emissions, we can unlock an amazing opportunity to better protect our environment for the future.”

Study Revises Carbon Budget Downward

A new study in the journal Nature Climate Change warns that the global carbon budget has been over-estimated and should be cut by at least half. In the abstract of their research, the authors state that for a greater than 66 percent chance of limiting warming below the internationally agreed temperature limit of 2 degrees Celsius relative to pre-industrial levels, “the most appropriate carbon budget estimate is 590–1,240 GtCO2 from 2015 onwards.” They conclude that global CO2 emissions must be cut quickly to keep within a 2°C-compatible budget.

“At current rates, the carbon budget would thus be exhausted in about 15 to 30 years,” said lead author Joeri Rogelj, a research scholar at the Energy Program of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria. “These numbers definitely indicate that we should not just sit and wait, because then the window for staying within the budget would become vanishingly small within decades.”

The study analyzes differences among widely varying estimates for a carbon budget consistent with the 2°C target, finding that a major reason for the range is due to assumptions and methodologies in previous studies. Its own estimate differs from many previous estimates in part because it accounts for methane and other greenhouse gases and not only for carbon dioxide.

Despite COP21 Deal, No Increase Expected for European Union Emissions Targets

The Paris Climate Agreement, signed at the United Nations Climate Conference last year, calls for a review of countries’ climate reduction goals in 2018, but a new document suggests the European Union (EU) may not be following that timeline (subscription).

As reported by Reuters, text prepared ahead of a Friday meeting of EU environment ministers on the Paris climate deal says the existing target—cutting emissions by at least 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2030—“is based on global projections that are in line with the medium-term ambition of the Paris Agreement.”

“We have the deal,” said EU Climate and Energy Commissioner Miguel Arias Canete. “Now we need to make it real. For the EU, this means completing the 2030 climate and energy legislation without delay, signing and ratifying the agreement as soon as possible, and continuing our leadership in the global transition to a low-carbon future.”

This calculation is based on keeping emissions levels to 2 degrees Celsius—but the agreement signed in Paris aspires to hold nations to a global temperature increase of well below this level and to pursuit of an increase limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius. In Euractiv, former chief negotiator for the Netherlands and European Union, Bert Mertz, examines whether a sub-2 degrees Celsius goal is feasible and what might be needed for the EU to meet a more aggressive 1.5 degree Celsius goal. He finds that although the current goal is derived from a long-term target of 80 percent emissions reduction compared with 1990 levels, the EU would need to strengthen that target to 95 percent emissions reductions.

The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

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Supreme Court Events Leave Fate of Clean Power Plan Uncertain

The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University
The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University

The outlook for U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Clean Power Plan, a rule intended to limit greenhouse gas emissions from the existing fleet of fossil fuel-fired power plants, is the subject of debate after two key Supreme Court events last week.

First, on Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court in a 5–4 decision issued a stay, delaying the execution of the plan, pending the outcome of legal challenges. The New York Times called the decision “unprecedented,” because the Supreme Court had never before granted a request to halt a regulation before review by a federal appeals court. At a minimum, the ruling will allow states to skip the September deadline to submit compliance plans to the EPA.

A new twist on the fate of the Clean Power Plan came Saturday with the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia—leaving the Supreme Court with eight justices split evenly between conservatives and liberals, and evenly split on the question of that week’s stay. Whether the White House or the Senate will confirm a new justice before the November 2016 Presidential election remains unclear, although political cynicism about any nominee’s chances has dominated commentary. President Obama announced plans to nominate a new justice, and Senate Republican leadership has indicated that it does not intend to confirm Obama’s candidate.

The D.C. Circuit is set to begin hearing oral arguments challenging the Clean Power Plan in June. Any ruling may be reviewed by the Supreme Court.

ClimateWire suggests three potential scenarios. For Clean Power Plan opponents, the best turn of events would be appointment of a new conservative-leaning justice, which would be made possible if the Senate successfully blocks an Obama appointee and a Republican takes the White House. Those in favor of the plan would benefit from appointment of a new liberal-leaning justice or from the court’s consideration of the plan before a new justice is confirmed.

Politics surrounding the nomination of the new justice are complicated, writes Tom Goldstein of the SCOTUS blog.

Study: More Aggressive Emissions Reductions Needed to Curb Air-Pollution-Related Deaths

A new study undertaken by the World Health Organization and presented last week at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science shows that 5.5 million die prematurely every year from air pollution. The authors—a team of U.S., Canadian, Chinese, and Indian scientists—said that most of the fatalities are in India and in China, where coal burning alone led to 366,000 deaths in 2013.

Researcher Qiao Ma from Tsinghua University in Beijing said coal burned for electricity was the largest polluter in China and that the country’s new targets to reduce emissions, agreed at last year’s Paris climate talks, are not sufficiently ambitious to end those deaths.

“Even in the most clean scenario in 2030,” Ma said, China’s growing and aging population will still suffer as many as 1.3 million deaths a year. “Our study highlights the urgent need for even more aggressive strategies to reduce emissions from coal and from other sectors.”

Although China halted approval of new coal mines for three years at the end of 2015 and has issued stringent requirements similar to those recently proposed in the United States for new coal-fired power plants, these and other measures may not halt increases in mortality, reported Time.

“Air pollution is the fourth highest risk factor for death globally and by far the leading environmental risk factor for disease,” said Michael Brauer of the University of British Columbia. “Reducing air pollution is an incredibly efficient way to improve the health of a population.”

Agreements Made to Expand Renewables, Reduce Emissions

Governors from 17 U.S. states signed an accord to diversify energy generation with clean energy sources, modernize their energy infrastructure and encourage clean transportation options. Home to about 40 percent of the country’s population, states signing the Governors’ Accord for a New Energy Future are California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Nevada, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Washington.

“With this agreement, governors from both parties have joined together and committed themselves to a clean energy future,” said California Gov. Jerry Brown. “Our goal is to clean up the air and protect our natural resources.”

As part of the agreement, states will cooperate on planning and policies—pooling buying power to get cheaper clean-energy vehicles for state fleets and to build more energy-efficient regional electrical grids.

Also preparing for a cleaner-energy future is Fiji, which on Friday became the first country to formally approve the United Nations climate deal reached in Paris when its parliament ratified the agreement. Under its national climate action plan, the archipelago, which is vulnerable to flooding and strong tropical storms as a result of climate change, pledged to generate all its electricity from renewable sources by 2030 and to reduce its overall energy-sector emissions by 30 percent by 2030—if it receives climate finance from industrialized nations.

The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

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Nations Strike Deal to Curb Carbon Emissions

The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University
The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University

Editor’s Note: The Climate Post will not circulate the remainder of 2015. It will return January 7.

The first pact to commit all countries to cut carbon emissions—the Paris Agreement—was signed by 195 countries in LeBourget, France, on Saturday. Some aspects of the agreement, which will go into effect in 2020, will be legally binding, such as submission of emissions reduction targets and regular review of progress toward them. However, the targets themselves will not be binding.

The agreement contains these key points:

  • To keep global temperatures “well below” 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) compared to pre-industrial levels through the year 2100 and to “endeavour to limit” them to 1.5 degrees Celsius
  • To balance carbon source and carbon sinks in the second half of this century
  • To review each country’s emissions reduction contribution every five years so that it can be scaled up
  • For rich countries to help poor countries by providing “climate finance” to adapt to climate change.

Previous United Nations talks had called on developed economies but not developing ones to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. The new accord, in the works for nine years, requires action in some form from every country, rich or poor. But it imposes no sanctions on countries that fail to reduce and eventually eliminate greenhouse gas pollution.

In a televised statement, President Barack Obama praised world leaders for agreeing on a deal that “offers the best chance to save the one planet we have,” while conceding that “no agreement is perfect, including this one.”

Critics say the pact is vague and aspirational and does not do enough to avert serious damage. It lacks a timescale for phasing out fossil fuels, and critics describe the language on monitoring and verifying emissions reductions as weak.

Nevertheless, the agreement was hailed by many world leaders.

“When historians look back on this day, they will say that global cooperation to secure a future safe from climate change took a dramatic new turn here in Paris,” said United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who added that “markets now have the clear signal to unleash the full force of human ingenuity.”

The agreement won’t enter into force until 55 countries representing 55 percent of the world’s emissions have ratified it.

Deal Details: Finance and Temperature

Some of the biggest crunch issues in the lead up to the climate agreement in Paris were money and temperature goals. So what does the deal say about these issues?

Finance: According to an agreement made at the talks in Copenhagen in 2009, developed countries will aid developing countries with $100 billion a year in climate finance by 2020 to aid in the transition to sustainable forms of energy. It’s an agreement they opted to continue through 2025. Prior to 2025, a new goal will be adopted—exactly when or who is responsible for meeting it is unclear. The fund, so far, isn’t quite up to that $100 billion goal. There is no legally binding language about it.

Temperature: To keep temperatures below 2 degrees Celsius, the agreement calls for parties to “reach global peaking of greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible, recognizing that peaking will take longer for developing country parties, and to undertake rapid reductions thereafter in accordance with best available science, so as to achieve a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases in the second half of this century.” According to The New York Times, the passage implies that at least some fossil fuels can continue to burn, as long as the greenhouse gas emissions are absorbed by a larger number of “greenhouse sinks,” like new forests.

One environmental organization has already suggested that if commitments pledged before and during the talks in Paris are met, a critical mass of countries could reach emissions peaks by 2030.

Arctic Temperatures Reach Record High

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released its Arctic Report Card, which finds that the average annual air temperature over land in the region was 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit above the long-term average (between October 2014 and September 2015). That’s the highest since modern records began in 1900, reports Fortune.

“Warming is happening more than twice as fast in the Arctic than anywhere else in the world,” said NOAA Chief Scientist Richard Spinrad. “We know this is due to climate change.

This warmer air, the report suggests, is affecting sea temperatures and melting ice—expanding oceans and causing sea-level rise. Just how bad is it? In the 80s, about 20 percent of the sea ice in the region was old and about 45 percent had formed that year. By contrast, in 2015, about 70 percent had formed in the previous year; only about three percent was considered “old” ice.

“The conclusion that comes to my mind is these report cards are trailing indicators of what’s happening in the Arctic,” Spinrad said. “They can turn out to be leading indicators for the rest of the globe.”

Jim Overland, a NOAA oceanographer and one of the more than 70 co-authors of the report, suggested that even the newly inked Paris deal may not be enough—at least in the short term—to turn things around.

“Unfortunately, we passed some critical points on that,” Overland said. “If the globe goes to a 2-degree warming, we’re looking at a 4- or 5-degree warming for the winter in the Arctic by 2040, 2050. That’s based upon the CO2 that we’ve already put into the atmosphere and will be putting for the next 20 years.”

 The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

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Paris Climate Talks Will Continue Past Deadline

The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University
The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University

Editor’s Note: This is the fourth in a series of special issues, this week, of The Climate Post that focus on the climate talks in Paris.

Late yesterday, French leadership at the United Nations climate talks in Paris produced a new draft text of a global agreement calling on countries to keep temperature rise “well below” 2 degrees Celsius by 2100 but recognizing a maximum temperature rise of below 1.5 Celsius as an ideal goal. Although the talks will continue past the Friday deadline—a final draft is expected 0800 GMT Saturday—progress appears to have been made: the number of brackets, which contain contested language, dropped from 300 in Wednesday’s draft to 48 in yesterday’s draft.

Christiana Figueres, the United Nations climate chief, argued that a possible settlement “is already pointing towards an agreement that is ambitious, that is fair and has the transparency of implementation over the few decades that the agreement will last.”

Negotiators worked through the night on what Figueres referred to as “political crunch issues,” including climate finance for developing countries, transparency, and, most divisive, differentiation of mitigation responsibility between developed countries, which historically have been the largest emitters, and developing countries, which today are the largest emitters.

Draft Details, As of Friday

Billy Pizer, faculty fellow with the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions and professor in the Sanford School of Public Policy, discusses where negotiations stand on these issues and what it all means.

As the negotiators head into (hopefully) the final night of negotiation, now is a good time to review what a Paris agreement really means and how some of these crunch issues will likely affect that outcome.

At its core, the Paris agreement is about achieving specific, near-term, national mitigation targets that cover the vast majority of global emissions along, with provisions to regularly review, update, and strengthen those targets. We need specific targets for accountability. These targets need to cover the vast majority of emissions in order to make meaningful progress. And there needs to be regular review, updating, and strengthening in order to deal with the fact that this is but one, modest step in a multiple-step process.

If one considers the long arc of climate change negotiations, from 1992 to the present, the Paris agreement is a significant achievement. In 1992, there were only vague references to near-term targets, and only for developed countries in aggregate. In 1997, there were specific near-term targets and provisions for review and updating, but again only for developed countries. In 2009/2010, there were specific near-term targets for most major countries, but without provisions to review and update them. Now, finally in 2015, we have both participation from countries representing 97.8 percent of global emissions and provisions for review and updating.

So how will the outcome on particular crunch issues affect the new agreement’s success?

Updating. The key questions are both the frequency with which countries will be asked to submit updated targets and guidance for that effort. The current draft requests targets be submitted every five years with an eye towards economy-wide targets for all countries in the future, while recognizing that peaking will take longer for developing countries. This would codify a regularity to the process that, at every five years, would provide a relatively frequent opportunity to rally countries to stronger action. The emphasis on economy-wide targets for all countries would point to an eventual cap on global emissions.

Transparency. What matters here are both the information that countries are required to submit with their target, in order to understand underlying assumptions, as well as how those targets will be reviewed both at the time of submission and as time passes. The current draft only refers to information that countries “may include” with their submitted target.  It also offers options for reviewing progress that might focus whether a country achieved its targets, or might be limited to whether its reporting followed established guidelines. In both cases, many details are being left to subsequent negotiations. This vagueness leaves open, for now, how useful this formal process will be in establishing the countries’ track record and rallying future national commitments. It potentially puts a greater emphasis on outside analysis and debate.

Legally binding. There has been much discussion about whether the targets would be legally binding or whether submission of targets and reporting would be legally binding (and whether this would require the U.S. Senate to ratify the agreement). The current draft does not suggest the targets would be legally binding. Ultimately, this is likely not a huge deal: The 1997 Kyoto Protocol included legally binding limits but with countries such as Japan, Canada, and Russia deciding they no longer wanted to comply, they simply withdrew.

Differentiation: Since 1992, developed and developing countries have had bifurcated obligations —nowhere more evident than in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which applied mitigation responsibilities only to developed countries. This differentiation is increasingly problematic as a growing majority of emissions come from developing—particularly emerging—countries. The current draft makes little distinction between developing and developed economies in terms of mitigation and transparency—except for noting that more financial support to developing countries will allow for higher ambition in their actions.

Finance: Finance is always a contentious issue and of critical importance to developing countries.  Not surprisingly, language referring to the terms of financial resources remains bracketed in the current text. At the same time, finance is typically not an issue that prevents a deal from being made, and most major developing countries are recognizing the need to take action independent of finance.

Although this last stage of negotiation is tough—everyone wants to get the last little bit out of it—and the stakes are high, it is hard to look at the remaining issues and not believe that success is on the horizon. Moreover, a lot of action is being taken outside of negotiations.  As noted in an earlier post by my colleague Brian Murray, there are a host of actions and pledges by sub-nationals actors—states and cities. This activity is complemented by announcements of external finance by a host of wealthy investors. There is a good chance that we’ll wake up Saturday with some good news from Paris.

 The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

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Majority Calls for More Ambitious Deal in Paris

The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University
The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University

More than 100 countries, including the United States, Colombia, Mexico, and the European Union, have formed a “high ambition coalition” in an effort to secure a final agreement at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris. But members will not be satisfied with merely reaching a final agreement—they want an ambitious solution that includes a mechanism to review and raise countries’ emissions commitments every five years, that creates a unified tracking system to monitor countries’ progress on meeting their emissions goals, that recognizes the proposed 1.5 degrees Celsius temperature goal, and that contains a climate finance package.

“This is an ambition coalition,” said Giza Gaspar Martins, chair of the group of the 48 most vulnerable countries to climate change. “This is also a coalition that is open to recognizing the difficulties of others, because alone, we can’t achieve that high mitigation ambition that we have.”

European climate action and energy commissioner Miguel Arias Canete said the newly released draft text for the climate deal was not “bold enough, and not ambitious enough.”

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, in address to the conference, echoed the need for a more in the final text. “We didn’t come to Paris to build a ceiling that contains all that we ever hope to do,” he said. “We came to Paris to build a floor on which we can and must altogether continue to build.”

Negotiations are now happening around the clock in the final days of the conference, set to wrap up Dec.11.  Nearly every country has declared discontent with the current draft, but none are rejecting the agreement either.

United States Attempts to Spur Momentum on Paris Talks with Funding Announcement

Yesterday the United States announced a doubling of the grant funding it provides to help developing countries adapt to climate change, a pledge that Reuters reports might help “clinch a climate pact.” The pledge announced by Secretary of State John Kerry is part of what the United States views as its contribution to a promise made in 2009 by developed countries to mobilize $100 billion a year in public and private money by 2020 to deal with impacts such as droughts, flooding, and sea level rise. The $860 million, which must be approved by Congress, would come from the State Department and Treasury budgets and would be distributed through both U.S. mechanisms, such as USAID, and multi-lateral systems like the Green Climate Fund.

“If we just continue down our current path, with too many people sitting on their hands and waiting for someone else to take responsibility, the damage is going to increase exponentially,” Kerry said. “To cut to the chase: Unless the global community takes bold steps now to transition away from a high-carbon economy, we are facing unthinkable harm to our habitat, our infrastructure, our food production, our water supplies, and potentially to life itself.”

The announcement appeared intended to give momentum to talks stalled by resistance by China and India to an outside monitoring system for emissions and to submission to a review process for pollution reduction plans.

“This impasse has slowed progress to a crawl, with the U.S. lacking leverage and China and India seemingly content to wait out the process,” said Paul Bledsoe, a former Clinton administration climate adviser who is attending the talks. “The decision to double U.S. adaptation funding itself is a strategic play to head off loss and damage calls by developing nations. This is why Kerry is pushing these lines right now.”

Study: Worldwide Carbon Emissions May Fall in 2015

As ministers work on a deal to cut post–2020 carbon emissions at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris, a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change suggests that growth in those emissions has stalled, at least temporarily. Specifically, the authors say that in 2015 worldwide greenhouse gas emissions will fall, marking the first time they will have done so during a period of substantial economic growth. The reason? A decrease in coal consumption by China as well as increased use of renewables and decreased growth in demand for oil and gas. But it isn’t clear whether the decrease in China’s emissions is temporary due to the slowing economy or long-term due to changes in how the country consumes energy.

Using preliminary data through October 2015, the authors projected that total carbon emissions this year will be down by 220 million tons. But the decrease—0.6 percent—is so small that it may not be a decrease and could actually be a slight increase because of the margin of error. Nevertheless, the figure appears to mark a departure from an average annual growth of 2.4 percent over the last decade.

Corinne Le Quéré, director of the Tyndall Centre at the University of East Anglia and one of the paper’s authors, said that the Chinese think their emissions are going to rise, suggesting a resumption of an upward trajectory. Moreover, the emissions of India, which has emerged as a key player at the Paris talks, are likely to have risen 6.7 percent this year. The study authors warned that for global emissions to peak soon, part of India’s new energy—designed to spur economic growth and connect 300 million people to the grid—must come from low-carbon sources. And even more must be done to avoid dangerous climate change.

“Global emissions need to decrease to near zero to achieve climate stabilization,” said Le Quéré. “We are still emitting massive amounts of CO2 annually—around 36 billion tonnes from fossil fuels and industry alone. There is a long way to near zero emissions. Today’s news is encouraging, but world leaders at COP21 need to agree on the substantial emission reductions needed to keep warming below two degrees Celsius.”

The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

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Tough Issues Linger in New Climate Deal Draft

The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University
The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University

Editor’s Note: This is the third in a series of special issues, this week, of The Climate Post that focus on the climate talks in Paris.

Climate negotiators at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 21) in Paris have until Friday to reach a global deal to curb greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the most serious climate change impacts. Negotiators released a new, shorter draft of that deal. The 29-page document leaves some major sticking points unresolved, including whether to reduce overall global temperatures 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels or 2 degrees Celsius, who shoulders the cost of moving to a low-carbon economy and how often nations should review their emissions reduction plans.

“On these issues I ask you to scale up your consultations to speedily come to compromise solutions,” French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told conference delegates. “We’ve made progress but still a lot of work remains to be done. Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.”

Many of the countries supporting a 1.5 degree Celsius target are arguing that rich but still developing economies—among them, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, and South Korea—provide funds to help the poorest countries adapt to climate change—a move that would upend the Kyoto Protocol’s funding structure, which demands that only those countries designated as industrialized in 1992 pay up (subscription). It may be best, Mexico’s former president Felipe Calderon tells The Guardian, if developing countries were not treated as a single negotiating bloc.

“Sub-Saharan Africa is not the same as China,” Calderon said. “The G77 [comprising most of the biggest developing economies] is not the same as the Alliance of Small Island States. Arabian countries have different interests.”

On Tuesday, the European Union (EU) forged an alliance with 79 poor African and small-island countries that could, reports the Wall Street Journal, help eliminate the 20-year division between developed countries and developing countries on climate issues. It comes with $517 million in EU funding to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The announcement focuses on some of the highly debated points at the conference so far—including calling for a mechanism to review emissions targets every five years.

Linking Carbon Markets Explored in Paris

As negotiators continue to stew on the details of the agreement’s level of ambition and funding for developing nations, an interesting undercurrent has permeated the talks—whether national commitments could be linked to create a “bottom-up” carbon market. With many nations now looking to carbon markets to execute their national programs—including the top emitter, China—many stakeholders are expressing a desire for collaborative language that would empower nations to bring their programs together.

In a COP 21 side event co-sponsored by the Nicholas Institute, the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA) and the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), stakeholders expressed the logic of such an approach and discussed the language necessary to enable it. According to my Nicholas Institute colleague Brian Murray, the gains from trade increase with the number of participants—the more participants, the lower the cost of compliance.

Steven Rose of EPRI took the concept even further, describing considerations suggested by his modeling of trading among the United States, China and the European Union.

“Expanding the partnership can be welfare improving in total,” he said, “but it can have distributional effects so there will be some strategic incentives and strategic thinking required in terms of the composition of those partnerships.”

These concepts were encouraged by industry representatives from Statoil and the Italian power company Enel. Discussion also focused on what would be required to achieve linkage. In a clear parallel to the “common elements” approach that allows U.S. states to permit linked systems under the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan, Brian Murray pointed out that only minimal common policies are required to permit jurisdictions to link.

The linkage could be accomplished fairly easily, he said, as long as each jurisdiction adopts a common unit to trade, allows units from other jurisdictions to be used in their own market and participates in a registry that ensures that each unit is counted only once.

There’s been some talk of reflecting the market linkage concept in the eventual climate agreement. A joint proposal from Brazil and the European Union has garnered interest. But the concept does not appear to be in the new draft text released today, and the United States is notably not pursuing it.

“I am speaking for a country that has no intention to use them (carbon markets) in an international concept,” said Christo Artusio, director of the U.S. State Department’s Office of Global Change.  And without the U.S.’s support, it is unclear how far the enabling language will proceed.

The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

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Sticking Points for the Paris Climate Talks

The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University
The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University

Editor’s Note: This is the second in a series of special issues, this week, of The Climate Post that focus on the climate talks in Paris.

At the Paris climate talks, where ministers are hammering out an international deal to curb climate change, two huge debates remain unresolved: the long-term global warming target and the amount and nature of finance that will flow to poor countries, a debate that hinges on differentiation of developing country and developed country responsibilities.

“Whether the text will also take into account a very justifiable request from the most vulnerable countries to improve on those efforts, it remains to be seen how that is going to be handled,” said United Nations climate chief Christiana Figueres. “It wouldn’t surprise me if there is a recognition of the intense vulnerability of some nations.”

It’s about Money and Temperature Goals

Brian Murray, director of the Environmental Economics Program at the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, writes from the climate talks in Paris.

The central objective of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations at a level that prevents dangerous interference with Earth’s climate system. The collective proposed efforts of all countries’ pre-Paris emissions pledges, or intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs), add up to approximately 3 degrees Celsius of warming above preindustrial levels—well short of the 2 degree Celsius goal established at the 15th Conference of the Parties in Copenhagen in 2009.

Many countries are now advocating for a target of 1.5 C or, alternatively, well below 2 C, but there are no real provisions for revisiting INDCS this week to pursue a 2 C or 1.5 C target. One commenter suggests that the objective of the Paris agreement is not to assign and enforce a temperature goal that will keep the planet safe but to create the “structure and momentum for [mitigation] efforts that are already underway.” However, the difference between 1.5, 2, or 3 C may determine whether low-lying island countries remain habitable. These and other countries that are most vulnerable to climate change view a more aggressive temperature goal as essential to their long-term survival and will likely remain steadfast in their support for such a goal in the agreement to be finalized by Dec. 11.

Acting on the Paris pledges will require money—and the need for money introduces responsibility for providing it. One of the core principles of the UNFCCC is the notion of common but differentiated responsibility—or, more simply, that the responsibility each country bears depends on its economic condition. There is little debate that the very poorest of countries should receive what they need to finance their transition to a low-carbon economy and to adapt to climate change. However, there is disagreement about how much finance major emerging economies such as China, India, and Brazil, home to nearly 40 percent of the world’s population, should receive for their efforts. China appears ready to finance much of its climate action, but it seeks headroom on emissions and proposes to lets its emissions grow until 2030. India has thus far refused to establish a peak for its emissions, proposing instead to reduce the greenhouse gas intensity of its economy and establish ambitious targets for renewable energy, while allowing coal use to grow steadily and requesting external finance to achieve its goals. Brazil pledges to continue efforts to significantly reduce its largest emissions source, deforestation, largely through payments from Norway. In different ways, each of these countries argues that it is entitled to its share of the global carbon dioxide budget to advance its economy, just as the United States and other countries have done. Convincing them that carbon’s consequences (as we understand them today) should modify the terms of access to that budget will be a difficult sell. Another challenge will be determining how much money the advanced economies will provide to these emerging powers to finance their costs of mitigation and adaptation.

The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

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Paris Climate Talks: Second Week Begins with Draft Text

The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University
The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University

Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of special issues, this week, of The Climate Post that focus on the climate talks in Paris.

Over the weekend, negotiators at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris produced a draft accord for a global deal to curb climate change, leaving the final week for ministers to address several major issues in text to be finalized by Dec. 11. Our own Brian Murray will examine those issues in more detail from Paris tomorrow.

Three other items of note came out of the talks:

  • Australia announced plans for a new initiative to slow the loss of rainforests, preventing the release of billions of tons of carbon dioxide emissions (subscription).
  • Despite saying that it is engaging in the talks with “positivity,” India has demanded an exception to carbon dioxide
  • Throughout the talks, delegates have questioned whether there will be an accounting system to ensure nations keep to their pledges. “It seems now there is a growing consensus that (reviews) will be every five years,” said U.N. climate chief Christiana Figueres.

Rise of the Subnationals

Brian Murray, director of the Environmental Economics Program, Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, writes from the climate talks in Paris.

Ground-level negotiators in Paris sent draft text to delegation heads for final decisions on four key issues: whether to aspire to a 2 degree Celsius or 1.5 C goal, how to differentiate the responsibilities of rich countries and those of poor countries, whether and how often to revisit mitigation targets, and how much finance to commit to help poor countries mitigate and adapt to climate change and possibly to compensate them for residual losses.

One curious development at COP (Conference of the Parties) 21 is the huge presence and active engagement of officials from subnational jurisdictions: states, provinces, and cities. These officials do not have a seat at the negotiating table—only countries are empowered by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to be parties to the agreement. But they come with the hope of directly or indirectly informing what goes on inside the negotiating rooms by announcing new initiatives, providing technical information, or vocally appealing to the moral and ethical principles that they wish the agreement to reflect.

Frustrated at the slow pace of international and national climate policy, many subnational government officials have initiated their own efforts to reduce emissions, often jointly with other subnational jurisdictions. And so we see California Gov. Jerry Brown, Quebec Premiere Philippe Couillard, and Ontario Premiere Kathleen Wynne exemplifying the role that subnational actors can play in advancing climate action. They represent one U.S. state and two Canadian provinces that recently joined forces to develop the world’s second largest greenhouse gas cap-and-trade program.

These subnational government officials come to Paris for two reasons. First, they wish to spur other subnational jurisdictions to act: the Canadian province of Manitoba announced this week that it will join the California-Quebec-Ontario carbon market, and other U.S. states have announced interest in participating. Second, they seek a formal statement in the Paris agreement of support for the role that subnational jurisdictions play in shaping climate solutions. This statement of support in Paris helps validate their climate actions for their constituents at home by demonstrating that, even as relatively small actors on the world stage, they can trigger larger and more meaningful actions globally.

On the climate adaptation front, municipalities are often on the front line. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg hosted a mayoral summit at Paris’ Hôtel de Ville (City Hall) attended by leaders of many of the world’s largest cities. Actor Leonardo DiCaprio (no COP is complete without celebrities) implored the mayors to take serious action on both emissions reductions and adaptation to forestall impending threats to their cities. Many of those mayors, particularly those in developing countries, are no doubt looking to the COP negotiators to create the needed mitigation and adaptation finance.

The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

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Paris Climate Talks Begin

The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University
The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University

Editor’s Note: Dec. 7–11 we will present a series of special issues of The Climate Post featuring updates on climate negotiations and commentary from our staff in Paris.

At the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris, world leaders on Monday suggested that stakes are too high to end negotiations on Dec. 11 without inking a climate deal that would limit global warming to two degrees Celsius over preindustrial levels—the U.N.-declared threshold for avoiding the most dangerous climate change impacts.

NPR reports that observers hope the deal will include three main items: agreement by countries to increase pledges in the future, a rigorous system of accountability to ensure nations keep those pledges, and support for poor countries to adopt low-carbon energy technologies.

A major sticking point for delegates of the nearly 200 countries meeting at the conference is the legal status of the treaty they hope to ink.

The Commonwealth and Europe have called for a deal to be legally binding. But the United States is looking to make only some aspects of it legally binding.

“Although the targets themselves may not have the force of treaties, the process, the procedures that ensure transparency and periodic reviews, that needs to be legally binding,” President Obama said in Paris. “…that’s going to be critical.”

Countries Pledge Financing for Clean Energy, Withdraw It for Coal

Another key negotiating point in Paris will be whether developing countries get enough financing to make the transition to clean energy worth it given the comparative cheapness of coal. In an announcement intended to give the U.N. climate talks momentum, the leaders of 19 nations, including the United States and many developing economies, on Monday pledged a doubling of clean energy spending to $20 billion in a deal with 28 corporate leaders (the so-called Breakthrough Energy Coalition spearheaded by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates) who are putting up billions of their own (subscription).

According to a White House e-mail, the public component of the public-private agreement, known as Mission Innovation, is aimed at helping energy technologies “cross the investment ‘valley of death’” presented by their risk profiles and long return time horizons.

Brian Deese, White House climate adviser, said that Mission Innovation “should help to send a strong signal that the world is committed to helping to try to mobilize the resources necessary to ensure that countries around the world can deploy clean energy solutions in cost-effective ways.”

In an editorial for the Boston Globe, U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz wrote that Mission Innovation and the Breakthrough Energy Coalition are “synergistic initiatives that establish clean energy innovation as a foundation for environmental stewardship, prosperity, security and social responsibility. Strong American leadership in these initiatives has provided a tremendous global leveraging opportunity, and innovation has remained common ground in our political discourse.”

Three questions raised by the initiatives are whether a multinational research effort combining public and private investments could entail intellectual property problems, how much of the newly pledged money might represent formerly pledged funding, and whether the future funding will be approved in national budgets.

In the lead up to the Paris talks, some of the countries that just committed financial support for clean energy signed on to a deal to severely cut funding for some prospective coal projects. A promise by China to control its support for high-carbon projects overseas—part of its most recent climate agreement with the United States—allowed Japan and the United States to develop a proposal that last month became a less stringent agreement by members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to curb public financing for coal plants (subscription). Under the policy, which goes into effect in 2017 and will be up for revision in four years, OECD countries will continue to provide export credits for “ultra-supercritical” coal-fired power plants—those constructed to meet the most stringent environmental standards—but public financing for 85 percent of coal plants going forward would effectively be cut off. The agreement does allow support for less efficient plants with a capacity under 500 megawatts in the world’s poorest countries.

House Votes to Block Power Plant Rules

The House approved, largely along party lines, to block the Obama administration’s measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. The House voted 242–180 to repeal the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan, which would limit carbon emissions from existing power plants, and 235–188 to block EPA rules governing emissions from new power plants. The votes come just weeks after the Senate passed legislation blocking U.S. Environmental Protection Agency rules that apply to new and existing power plants.

The resolutions now go to President Obama, who last month announced plans to veto them, claiming that they undermine public health protections of the Clean Air Act and “stop critical U.S. efforts to reduce dangerous carbon pollution from power plants.”

The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

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Tougher Rules for Pollution That Crosses State Lines

The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University
The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University

Editor’s Note: The Climate Post will not circulate next Thursday, November 26, in observance of the Thanksgiving holiday.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Tuesday proposed updates to its Cross-State Air Pollution Rule in response to a recent decision by the D.C. Circuit Court. The update now affects 23 states whose nitrogen oxide emissions blow into other states, increasing their ozone levels. No longer subject to the rule are South Carolina and Florida—neither of which contribute significant amounts of smog to other states.

“States should act as good neighbors, and the EPA must act in its backstop role to ensure they do,” said Janet McCabe, acting assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation. “This rule provides an achievable and cost-effective path to quickly reduce air pollution.”

The proposal calls for states to comply with air quality standards for ozone set by the George W. Bush Administration in 2008. It would reduce summertime emissions of nitrogen oxides using existing, proven and cost-effective control technologies. Along with other measures, The Hill reports, the update could equate to a drop of about 30 percent in nitrogen oxide levels in 2017 compared with 2014.

“This update will help protect the health and lives of millions of Americans by reducing exposure to ozone pollution, which is linked to serious public health effects, including reduced lung function, asthma, emergency room visits and hospital admissions, and early death from respiratory and cardiovascular causes,” said EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy.

COP: Negotiations Will Go Forward

United Nations and French officials have confirmed that the U.N. Climate Change Conference, which aims to create a global climate treaty, will go forward Nov. 30–Dec. 11 despite recent terrorist attacks in Paris. Still, many public concerts, marches and festive events are expected to be canceled.

“No head of state, of government—on the contrary—has asked us to postpone this meeting,” said French Prime Minister Manuel Valls. “All want to be there. To do otherwise would, I believe, be to yield to terrorism. France will be the capital of the world.”

News that the negotiations were still on brought a wave of predictions about the talks’ outcome. President Barack Obama was “optimistic that we can get an outcome that we’re all proud of, because we understand what’s at stake.” David King, the British Foreign Minister’s Special Representative for Climate change expected an “imperfect deal.” Ultimately, the Washington Post reports, divisions remain and many continue to question key elements of the draft agreement.

U.S. negotiators are expecting to use the EPA’s Clean Power Plan (subscription) to show the country’s commitment to tackling climate change. But on Tuesday the Senate approved two resolutions to stop the agency from implementing the plan, which calls for existing power plants to reduce their emissions.

Study: U.S. Forests’ Carbon Sequestration Capacity Is Decreasing

Efforts to protect the health of forests and to slow deforestation—a leading contributor to climate change—are largely absent in the pledges of most countries taking part in historic climate negotiations beginning this month in Paris, reports Climate Central, and the United States is no exception. Although the United States will rely heavily on forest regrowth to meet its emissions reduction target—up to 28 percent of 2005 levels by 2025—its pre-Paris climate pledge makes no mention of forestry practices or of others means to preserve forests.

Now a study published in Scientific Reports finds that the carbon sequestration capacity of U.S. forests could diminish over the next 25 years as a result of land use change and forest aging. It also finds that decreases in that capacity could influence emissions reduction targets in other economic sectors and affect the costs of achieving policy goals.

Using detailed forest inventory data, Forest Service Southern Research Station scientists David Wear and John Coulston projected the most rapid decline in forest carbon sequestration to be in the Rocky Mountain region, where forests could become a carbon emissions source (subscription).

Land use change greatly influences carbon sequestration. The researchers found that afforesting or restoring 19.1 million acres over the next 25 years, a plausible goal, could yield significant carbon sequestration gains.

“Policymakers interested in reducing net carbon emissions in the U.S. need information about future sequestration rates, the variables influencing those rates and policy options that might enhance sequestration rates,” said Wear. “The projection scenarios we developed for this study were designed to provide insights into these questions at a scale useful to policymakers.”

The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.