Posted on December 6, 2011 by David Wagner

Where Do Things Stand in the Second Week of the U.N's Climate Change Conference?

This post was written by Jennifer Smokelin.

After one week of discussions at COP 17 in Durban, serious doubt hangs over the future of a new commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol, whose first commitment period on tackling climate change expires at the end of next year. The other major issue for debate is how to obtain financing to help poorer nations adapt to a warmer planet in an economic environment where the developed world wrestles with sovereign debt problems and a slow economy. Negotiations are not progressing well on this front either.

Regarding the future commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol, know that the commitment period for the developed nations to cut emissions by a minimum of five percent is just one clause in the Kyoto Protocol, the companion legislation to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Without a new commitment period, the rest of the related agreements remain intact, but do not enforce action on lowering emissions.

A further commitment period is unlikely because the European Union, a large supporter until recently of a new commitment period, has been undermined by the huge strain it is under from a sovereign debt crisis that is threatening to destroy the Euro. It is hoped a credible plan to prop up the Euro will emerge at an EU summit on Friday, which is also the last day of COP 17. But that is likely too late to have any effect at COP 17.

Since it looks like there will be no new agreement to a commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol, negotiators are aiming to agree on when Kyoto Protocol parties can agree on new commitments. The EU's aim is for binding and enforceable emission cuts to be agreed to by all parties and to have a deal by 2015 to take effect by 2020 at the latest. (This five year lag period may be ambitious; it took the Kyoto Protocol original commitment period eight years to be ratified and come into force after it was adopted).

China, the world's biggest carbon emitter, has suggested it might sign up to a legally-binding deal to cut emissions after 2020, but it has set conditions. China's conditions include that (1) other big emitters (including US and India) sign up to a legally-binding deal to cut emission; and (2) finance is provided under a Green Climate Fund agreed at talks last year in Cancun, which aims to channel up to $100 billion a year by 2020 to help developing nations. In the United States, the second largest global emitter, environmental issues have become a heated argument between Democrats and the Republicans. It was widely supposed going in to Durban that any type of commitment out of the United States before next year's presidential elections was unlikely. Not surprisingly, Todd Stern, the U.S. special envoy for climate change, said China's conditions were not acceptable. But the basis he gave was because the United States would not agreed to any condition on compliance: "no condition of receiving the financing, no trap doors, no Swiss cheese (with holes) kind of agreement." Jonathan Pershing, deputy U.S. climate change envoy, left open the possibility that countries may increase their emission cuts but he noted that the pledges were just made at the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit and codified last year in Cancun, Mexico and that a new one here in Durban was unlikely. However, note that the emission cuts listed in the Cancun Agreements are not binding and enforceable under the Kyoto Protocol.

In sum, although the final resolution remains to be seen, it seems unlikely that COP 17 will yield an agreement on a new commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol or secure significant additional financing to help poorer nations adapt to a warmer planet.

 
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Posted on November 29, 2011 by David Wagner

Climate Change Talks in Durban Kick Off Amid Low Expectations

This post was written by Jennifer Smokelin.

Durban, South Africa is the setting for the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP 17) to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The two weeks of meetings will draw representatives of 194 countries and nearly 12,000 delegates. The delegates are expected to include several heads of state and government, ministers, UN officials, members of civil society and journalists. COP 17 is scheduled to run until December 9.

The COP 17 agenda includes efforts to make progress on a new commitment period for carbon reduction under the Kyoto Protocol and to provide assistance for developing nations facing the worst effects of climate change. Nonetheless, COP 17 is not expected to make much progress on either agenda item. In the current global economic crisis the linkages between emission reduction and economic growth will make any progress on emission reduction a hard sell for politicians and governments back home. Given the likely failure to achieve these big-ticket agenda items, what accomplishments can we expect in Durban? According to the UNFCCC, the discussions will seek to advance, in a balanced fashion, the implementation of the Framework Convention and the Kyoto Protocol, as well as the Bali Action Plan, agreed at COP 13 in 2007, and the Cancun Agreements, reached at COP 16 last December. What does that mean? Delegates in Durban will be addressing relatively small and, to many, arcane questions of process and finance. Negotiators, having entered the United Nations climate talks at Copenhagen two years ago with grand ambitions and having left with disillusion, are now defining expectations down and hoping to keep the process alive through modest steps. Last year in Cancun, Mexico, delegates produced an agreement that set up a fund to help poor countries adapt to climate changes, created mechanisms for the transfer of clean-energy technology, provided compensation for the preservation of tropical forests and enshrined the emissions reductions promises that came out of the Copenhagen meeting. Delegates in Durban will look to produce similar outcomes.

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Posted on December 17, 2010 by David Wagner

Reed Smith's 4th Quarter Climate Change Report: Slides and Audio Available Here

This post was written by David Wagner.

If you missed Reed Smith's Quarterly Climate Change Teleseminar on December 16, 2010, feel free to listen to an audio recording of the event while watching the slide show. We discussed:

  • Significant developments at COP16 (Jennifer Smokelin)
  • The Impact of California's new "Proposition 26" on the implementation of California's Global Warming Solutions Act (aka "AB 32") (Eric McLaughlin)
  • USEPA's issuance of PSD and Title V Permitting and BACT Guidance for GHG sources subject to the "Tailoring Rule" (Larry Demase)
  • Recent Carbon Capture and Storage Developments (David Wagner)
  • Issues and problems to consider regarding 2011 GHG emissions monitoring & reporting (Douglas Everette)
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Posted on November 19, 2010 by David Wagner

UNFCCC and COP-16: Living the Adage "Under Promise and Over Deliver"?

This post was written by Jennifer Smokelin.

The United Nations Climate Change Conference (UNFCCC), which will be held in Cancun, Mexico, from November 29 to December 10, 2010, encompasses the sixteenth Conference of the Parties (COP) and the sixth Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP). It sounds like a big deal but you don’t hear much about the COP in the media these days. Does anyone recall the frenzy about the COP this time last year? We certainly remember the speculation regarding which heads of state would be attending and what agreements would be reached. It felt like the Super Bowl of COPs. This year feels a lot different. The COP is meeting with far less hype and we wonder whether the conference parties learned their lesson from last year and decided to abide by the adage “under promise and over deliver”.
 

 

Perhaps. It’s not like there aren’t significant decisions to be made this year. To discuss future commitments for industrialized countries under the Kyoto Protocol, the Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP) established a working group in December 2005 called the Ad Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties under the Kyoto Protocol (AWG-KP). In Copenhagen, at its fifth session, the CMP requested the AWG-KP to deliver the results of its work for adoption by CMP 6 in Cancun.

At its thirteenth session in Bali, the COP launched a comprehensive process to enable the full, effective and sustained implementation of the UNFCCC through long-term cooperative action (LCA) now, up to and beyond 2010, in order to reach an agreed outcome and adopt a decision at its fifteenth session in Copenhagen. This process has been conducted under the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention (AWG-LCA). In Copenhagen, the COP decided to extend the mandate of the AWG-LCA to enable it to continue its work with a view to presenting the outcome to COP 16 for adoption. It is under the AWG-LCA that the Copenhagen Accord was reached at COP 15.


Like Last Year, the Environmental Law Resource Blog Will Provide Daily Updates of COP-16 Starting on November 30, 201.


With comprehensive climate legislation or even more-narrow energy legislation shelved in the United States there is little hope for any significant movement on a global climate change treaty this year – since most major nations will not agree to binding emission reduction in the face of inaction by the United States. This is frustrating to many world participants, particularly since it looks like US climate policy will not be making any significant strides towards placing a price on a ton of carbon in the wake of the recent elections. World leaders are therefore looking elsewhere – outside the UNFCCC process – to address climate issues. And where might they land? On a protocol, but not Kyoto – instead, some world leaders are looking to the Montreal Protocol to address global climate change. The Montreal Protocol was adopted in 1987 for a completely different purpose, to eliminate aerosols and other chemicals that were blowing a hole in the Earth’s protective ozone layers. And it has been amazingly successful at addressing this problem on a global level. The idea would be to use this successful template to address GHG emission – expanding the ozone treaty to phase out the production and use of the industrial chemicals known as hydro fluorocarbons or HFCs – one of the 6 Kyoto GHGS that has thousands of times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide. If the UNFCCC fails to address climate change, look to the Montreal Protocol to be expanded to address at least the high global warming potential GHGs under the Kyoto Protocol.
 
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Posted on February 9, 2010 by David Wagner

Who's in Accord with the Copenhagen Accord - and What Does It Mean?

This post was written by Larry Demase, Jennifer Smokelin and David Wagner.

January 31, 2010 marked the official deadline for parties to the Copenhagen Accord to submit their respective plans for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. However, this was not considered a “hard deadline” by the UNFCCC Secretariat and thus responses still trickle in. To date, 95 countries have officially agreed to “associate” with the Accord, with certain emitters (arguably key emitters) also including emission reduction actions in their statement to the UNFCCC. Some big global emitters have signed on to the Accord – the US Climate Action Network (USCAN) indicated that as of the date of this posting, countries representing 80.8% of global emissions are in accord with the Copenhagen Accord. 

 

But this fails to take into account the hodge-podge assortment of reductions so far pledged under the Accord – and the effect thereof. And it’s not clear whether activities related to the Accord represent some progress or a setback, or serve as a distracter to the two UNFCCC working groups that are negotiating an agreement that would take over when the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol expires at the end of 2012. First, consider some of the reduction pledges:

  • Annex I entity and Kyoto Protocol-signatory European Union (with collectively 12% of global GHG emissions) pledged a 20-30% reduction in overall GHG emission from a 1990 baseline by 2020.
  • At the same time, Annex I and late-Kyoto-signatory Australia (with nearly 5% of global GHG emissions) pledged a 5-25% reduction in overall GHG emission by the same time from a 2000 baseline (which translates roughly into a 3-24% reduction from 1990 levels, according to Australia GHG Inventory data). 
  • In contrast, Annex I but non-Kyoto-signatories like the United States (with almost 15% of the global GHG share) pledged a 17% reduction from 2005 levels by 2020, which translates into a mere 3.87 percent reduction from 1990 levels. 
  • Kyoto-signatory Canada, the United States largest trade partner, not surprisingly similarly pledged a 15% reduction from 2005 levels by 2020, which leads to an increase in GHG emissions of 0.25% from 1990 levels for that nation. 

 These vastly different reduction commitments among Annex I nations bode ill for even-handed (and more likely sustainable) GHG reductions. Also, keep in mind that developing (non-Annex-I) nations have different reduction commitments from Annex I nations for reasons of historic responsibility. But having Accord commitments differ (in type and amount) among non-Annex-I nations – what we see emerging under the Accord – is likely not workable in the long-run and perhaps not even in the short term. For example, developing countries such as China (with 16% of global GHG) pledge a 40-45% reduction by 2020 and India (with nearly 5%) pledged a 20-25% reduction in GHG intensity, a measure of GHG emissions per dollar of GDP. GHG intensity reductions cannot accurately be represented in terms of reductions on a 1990 base year due to wide variation in GDP projections so it is impossible to gauge such a commitment against Annex I nations. Not only is this non-gaugeable commitment likely to meet with resentment in the US Congress when is comes to passing domestic GHG legislation (although “GHG intensity” reductions were the only reduction measures offered as recently as one year ago by the Bush administration), but it differs from other non-Annex I countries. Non-Annex I Brazil (with a little more than 6% of global GHG emission) and a few other nations have pledged reductions not in absolute terms or in terms of GHG intensity, but on a “Business as Usual” (BAU) model, which is a commitment to reduce emissions from the most plausible projection of the future GHG emissions if climate-friendly emission reductions were not taken. In the case of Brazil, which has pledged a 36-39% reduction on a BAU model, this actually translates to an increase of between 2-7% in GHG emissions from a 1990 baseline.

            So what does the Accord mean? It appears to mean different things to different countries. What we are seeing looks a lot like “from each according to ability” from a reduction standpoint and if you add in the Copenhagen Green Climate Fund (the financial pledges to support mitigation and adaptation in certain at-risk nations in paragraph 8 and 10 of the Accord), there is a component of “to each according to need.” It doesn’t take a Marxist scholar to recognize what is developing – and add the fact that there are no enforcement mechanisms under the Copenhagen Accord to encourage compliance and little verification of target compliance, one begins to worry whether the Copenhagen Accord can lead to a fair, ambitious and binding agreement to solve the climate crisis. On the positive side, it did bring the major players into the mix. But the Accord’s role is unclear given the soft and differing commitments and the continued work of the two working groups trying to hammer out the post-Kyoto agreement.
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