Were the European Union to call for a deeper cut in carbon dioxide emissions, it would do little to stem the unrelenting increase in global emissions and is unlikely to have any effect on the international climate negotiations, according to the International Energy Agency.

While Europe's negotiating position in international climate talks remains a target of 20 percent emissions reductions below 1990 levels by 2020, some have pushed it to target an additional ten percent reduction. The EU has long maintained that it would boost its target to 30 percent if other industrialized countries followed suit.

What is the significance of an extra ten percent reduction in EU emissions by 2020? Not much, according to IEA Chief Economists Fatih Birol:

"We estimate extending Europe's plan to cut emissions from 20 to 30 percent would roughly equal China's two-week gas output."

Could the 10 percent EU additional emissions cut really equal only two weeks of emissions in China? We checked the numbers on that (h/t Roger Pielke, Jr.), and Mr. Birol is indeed correct.

Continue reading "Eye on the Prize: China is Make or Break for Climate" »

Cross-posted from Roger Pielke Jr.'s Blog.

It is not clear how much support there is for such a proposal, but the EU Commission is to bring forward a proposal to ban most forms of carbon offsets:

European Union member states may oppose new rules on how far their factories and power plants can offset their carbon emissions, to be proposed by the European Commission, environment ministries told Reuters.

The EU executive is expected to propose in the next two weeks curbs or an outright ban from 2013 on the most common types of offsets.

Europe's emissions trading scheme caps planet-warming gases emitted by industry, but allows companies to offset emissions by paying for carbon cuts in developing countries, as a cheaper alternative to cutting their own.

Shutting the main supply of offsets could push up carbon prices, if agreed by a majority of member states at a meeting of Commission officials and environment ministers later this month.

Any such ban would represent a step towards a more transparent form of carbon pricing, along the lines of a straight up tax. Offsets are of course one reason why there is no such thing as a "cap" in cap and trade.

Cross-posted from Roger Pielke Jr.'s Blog.

If you want to focus on a single metric that tells you how fast an economy is decarbonizing (that is, reducing its ratio of carbon dioxide emissions to GDP) then you should focus on changes in the proportion of energy consumption from carbon neutral sources. For any nation to hit emissions reductions targets, and the world to hit low stabilization targets the simple mathematics indicate that annual decarbonization rates will have to exceed 5% in most national economies.

By the metric the UK is presently moving in the wrong direction, according to a story in the Guardian yesterday:

The UK has suffered a second fall in renewable energy production this year, raising concern about the more than £1bn support the industry receives each year from taxpayers.

The drop in electricity generated from wind, hydro and other clean sources in the first half of 2010 could also be a setback to the coalition government's promise that the UK could help lead a "third industrial revolution" and create a low-carbon economy.

The DECC today said lower than expected wind speeds and rainfall led to a 12% fall in renewable electricity generated between April and June, compared to the same period in 2009. This setback follows a smaller but still notable decline between January and March, again compared to last year.

With a sharp drop in output from nuclear power stations as well, greenhouse gas emissions from each unit of electricity generated will inevitably have risen, at a time when the UK has pledged to cut such pollution, and is pressing other countries to do the same.

The renewable energy figures are likely to prompt criticism of the government's energy policies from all sides. Supporters want ministers to increase funding for green industry so more wind farms are built, reducing the risk of seasonal set backs; critics will say the government should instead increase support for energy efficiency, nuclear power or cleaner forms of burning fossil fuels.

The changes in the UK energy mix suggest that the economy has become more carbon intensive as gas has increased at the expense of nuclear power:

The latest energy statistics for the second quarter of 2010 show total energy production in the UK was 9.2% lower than the same period last year, while final energy consumption was 1.8% higher. Among the different fuels, output from oil and coal fell, while only gas increased its output, by 7.1%. It was a similar picture for electricity alone: coal power stayed steady at about 23% of electricity supplied, nuclear output fell by 23% to 15.8%, and gas production rose by more than 10% to over half of all electricity.

It is not just the UK that is recarbonizing, but the US as well. What is remarkable is that these trends have been foreseeable for a while. Even so, the hold of magical solutions remains strong.

Yet another carbon offset auditor was suspended in late March. And how is it that these carbon offsets are verified, again?

The reputation of a Kyoto Protocol carbon finance scheme was dealt another blow after a UN climate panel late on Friday suspended the third emissions cut verifier in 15 months, and partially suspended a fourth.

The scheme's executive board suspended emissions auditors TUEV SUED and partially suspended Korea Energy Management Corporation (KEMCO) after spot checks at the companies' offices revealed procedural breaches.

What does big picture, public investment in clean energy look like?

It looks like nine European countries planning to invest up to 30 billion euros (nearly $40 billion) in an underwater North Sea super grid that would harness and integrate Europe's vast renewable resources:

It would connect turbines off the wind-lashed north coast of Scotland with Germany's vast arrays of solar panels, and join the power of waves crashing on to the Belgian and Danish coasts with the hydro-electric dams nestled in Norway's fjords: Europe's first electricity grid dedicated to renewable power will become a political reality this month, as nine countries formally draw up plans to link their clean energy projects around the North Sea...

...All those involved also have an eye on the future, said [EWEA's Justin] Wilkes. "The North Sea grid would be the backbone of the future European electricity supergrid," he said. This supergrid, which has support from scientists at the commission's Institute for Energy (IE), and political backing from both the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and Gordon Brown, would link huge solar farms in southern Europe - producing electricity either through photovoltaic cells, or by concentrating the sun's heat to boil water and drive turbines - with marine, geothermal and wind projects elsewhere on the continent. Scientists at the IE have estimated it would require the capture of just 0.3% of the light falling on the Sahara and the deserts of the Middle East to meet all Europe's energy needs."

After the governing conservative party of French President Nicolas Sarkozy got clobbered in regional elections this week, France's proposed carbon tax is going the way of the Canadian Liberal Party's 'green shift' carbon tax proposal and Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (a cap and trade plan), according to the NYTimes' Green Inc. blog:

After his governing conservative party took a pounding in regional polls on Sunday, French President Nicolas Sarkozy has dropped a key environmental goal: setting up a carbon tax to limit the growth of carbon emissions and spur the development of renewable fuels.

"We want decisions that are taken in common with other European countries, or else we will see our competition gap widen," said François Fillon, the French Prime Minister, according to The Financial Times.

The idea of a carbon tax had been widely opposed by France's business lobby, which argued that it would increase costs, as well as by members of the governing party which opposed the idea of a new tax. A law was initially voted by parliament last year but was censured by France's top court, the Constitutional Council because it was too weak on polluting industries.

Cross-posted from Roger Pielke, Jr.'s Blog

From today's FT:

The United Nations body in charge of managing carbon trading has suspended approvals for dozens of Chinese wind farms amid questions over the country's use of industrial policy to obtain money under the scheme.

China has been by far the biggest beneficiary of the so-called Clean Development Mechanism, a carbon trading system designed to direct funds from wealthy countries to developing nations to cut greenhouse gases.

China has earned 153m carbon credits, worth more than $1bn and making up almost half of the total issued under the UN-run programme in the past five years, according to a Financial Times analysis. The credits are currently trading at about $10-$15 each.

Industrial countries can meet part of their commitments under the 1997 Kyoto protocol to battle global warming by financing projects that mitigate emissions in developing nations. Projects only qualify for credits if the applicants prove they would not have been built anyway, a condition known as "additionality".

The controversy over Chinese wind farms and other CDM projects will intensify calls for the system to be overhauled at the UN's Copenhagen conference, which opens on Monday.

China-based consultants said the CDM's board in Bonn began refusing approval for Chinese wind power projects in the middle of 2009, over concerns Beijing had deliberately lowered subsidies to make them eligible for funding.

"The board now suddenly says the projects are not additional, whereas in the past they found no fault with additionality," said Yang Zhiliang, general manager of Accord Global Environment Technology, one of China's leading CDM consultants. "They are blaming the Chinese government and its decision to lower subsidies."

Ms Yang said Beijing had other aims, such as limiting overcapacity in the wind turbine sector, in setting subsidies. "The Chinese government wouldn't adjust subsidies just to bag CDM money," she said.

Industry officials said the CDM board had refused approval for about 50 wind power projects. Doubts over whether CDM funding will be available in the future has also prompted power companies to stall new wind power investments.

Lex de Jonge, head of the UN board, confirmed that "a handful of [Chinese] projects" had been suspended but declined to give reasons. Michael Wara, of Stanford University, said there were considerable problems in China with the CDM's rules.

With the emphasis that Beijing is now placing on both smaller hydro-electric projects and wind power, the government would have supported at least some of the projects receiving money under the CDM scheme anyway.

"It is hard to believe that there is additionality in many of the energy projects in China right now," he said.

Continue reading "CDM Halts China Wind Projects" »

Touted as a model for future U.S. cap and trade policy, the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) is on track to help the EU comply with their Kyoto Protocol obligations, according to a recently released EEA report and liberal climate bloggers. But a recent story by E&E News Greenwire published in the New York Times checked the fine print, and gets at the truth behind this "success" story: creative accounting.

Current greenhouse gas emissions from Western Europe still exceed their U.N. commitments, the report says, and 10 countries will have to rely on emissions trading, land-use changes or carbon offsets to meet their legally binding levels. In general, Mediterranean countries like Spain and Italy have been most delinquent about meeting their targets, the agency said.

Of the wealthy, older E.U. members, only France, Germany, Greece, Sweden and the United Kingdom are currently below their Kyoto agreements, the report says...

A close reading of the report reveals that European ambitions have only begun to catch up with the bloc's commitments, with many of the greenhouse reductions achieved by countries partially derived from secondary benefits, like the gasification of the energy industry in Britain or the economic collapse of the former East Germany.

The 15 Western European nations that accepted a joint target as part of the last U.N. climate deal -- which covers 2008 to 2012 -- committed to cutting emissions on average 8 percent below Kyoto's baseline, typically set at 1990 levels. Even with the help of the recession, emissions for the region sat at 6.2 percent below this baseline in 2008, and the most recent five-year average was 3.9 percent.

The gap is especially pronounced because of the inability of several southern countries to meet the reductions promised as part of the bloc's burden-sharing agreement, which divvied up the bloc's emission commitment in the late 1990s.

"This [emissions] average would have been substantially lower without the large absolute gaps observed between actual domestic emission levels and burden-sharing targets in Italy and Spain," the report says.

These countries will be joined by Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Portugal in using Kyoto accounting mechanisms to close their emissions gap.

Some additional emission credits -- enough to increase the E.U. average by 1.4 percentage points -- will come from financing clean energy projects in the developing world. Improved forest management and other land-use changes will account for an additional percentage point, the report estimated.

Another 2.2 percent will come from excess emission credits purchased from other Kyoto members. Already, a host of European countries have purchased these credits from flush post-communist nations, largely through what are called green investment schemes, which seek to mollify criticisms that the emission credits amount to "hot air" (Greenwire, Nov. 9).

By using these accounting schemes, only Austria will be projected to be above its Kyoto commitments. Excess Kyoto credits from Germany, France and Britain will be essential for the region meeting its overall target, the report adds.

Continue reading "Fine Print: Greenwire finds the truth about the EU Cap and Trade "Success Story" " »

By Yael Borofsky and Jesse Jenkins

Outcry over a planned Texas wind farm, which will be the first project to import wind turbines from a Chinese manufacturer, has resulted in calls to prevent government stimulus money from funding the project. As Bloomberg reported, in a letter to U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Senator Charles Schumer insisted that funding only be granted to U.S. manufactured turbines.

"I urge you to reject any request for stimulus money unless the high-value components, including the wind turbines, are manufactured in the United States...China is fast emerging as one of our main rivals in the race to build the technology that can help us achieve energy independence. We should not be giving China a head start in this race at our own country's expense."

But those expressing alarm that money from the stimulus package will accrue to China are forgetting that importing wind turbine components is actually nothing new in the United States. In fact, this story broke at almost that same time that a new investigative report by the American University School of Communication revealed that 84% of the U.S. stimulus money for renewable projects has been given to overseas companies.

Continue reading "The Real Policy Lesson From the Chinese Wind Turbine "Scare"" »

On Tuesday, Breakthrough reported that a leaked draft of the European Commission's (EC) Strategic Energy Technology plan (SET) revealed plans for the European Union (EU) to invest $73 billion in clean energy technology. The official communication, released on Wednesday, was not a budget appropriation, but it was, however, a proactive clean energy investment "roadmap" of the next decade for the EU, Member states, and the private sector.

In the report, the European Commission acknowledged that the EU faced a critical challenge: reinventing its energy system. Towards that goal, the EC designated a role for the public sector explaining that the market was not capable, on its own, of ensuring a rapid transition to a clean energy economy:

"Markets and energy companies acting on their own are unlikely to be able to deliver the needed technological breakthroughs within a sufficiently short time span to meet the EU's energy and climate policy goals...Public policy and public investment partnering with the private sector is the only credible route to meet our goals, established for the public good."

The proposal was designed to demonstrate how much clean energy funding is necessary in order to realize the EC's "vision of a Europe with...a diverse portfolio of clean, efficient, and low-carbon energy technologies as a motor for prosperity," and the sources where such monies might be obtained.

Continue reading "European Commission Creates Roadmap, Not Budget for Clean Energy Investment" »

By Yael Borofsky and Jesse Jenkins

Europe is planning to stage a grand entrance into the clean energy race by investing approximately $73 billion in clean energy research, according to Reuters, which has obtained an early draft of the European Commission's Strategic Energy Technology Plan (SET Plan) scheduled for release Wednesday.

Until now, the race to lead the world in clean energy technology has largely involved competition between the United States, East Asia's "clean tech tigers" - China, Japan, and South Korea - and up-and-coming challenger, India. With the U.S. wavering for the better part of a year on how best to enact climate and energy legislation, the Breakthrough Institute and others have called on the U.S. to include large-scale investments in clean energy technology if it wants to remain a world leader in innovation and corner what could be a market worth trillions.

But it seems that Europe has beaten the U.S. to the punch. If the draft is any indication, the EU will triple funding in energy research in order to bring suite of clean energy technologies to market and achieve its 80% reduction in greenhouse gas target by 2050. Europe at least, has realized the urgency of the clean energy race and that investment in clean energy innovation is the only way to compete. As an EU official told Reuters:

"We know that low-carbon technology will one day become cost-competitive with fossil fuels, and the question then is whether the EU will be an importer or an exporter of that technology...We have to be in pole position."

Although it is not possible to verify the exact details of the plan until the report is released on Wednesday (stay tuned for future coverage), the draft is a reliable indication of the types of investments Europe has in store, including EU16 billion (US$23.5 billion) for solar power, EU6 billion (US$8.8 billion) for wind power, EU7 billion (US$10.3 billion) for nuclear, and EU13 billion (US$19 billion)for carbon capture and storage technology, all over the next ten years.

Continue reading "EU Set To Enter Clean Energy Race with $73 billion for R&D" »

Almost as soon as the calls for global cooperative action on climate change finished echoing around the halls of the United Nation Building during the UN Climate Summit in New York on Tuesday, an EU court may have undermined its own climate change mitigation policy by ruling on Wednesday that the governing body overstepped its power when it imposed "excessively strict" emissions quotas on Poland and Estonia in 2007.

Upon hearing the news, the urgent need for climate change action was easily forgotten, and Italy, with other EU members considering following suit, quickly petitioned the EU to increase its carbon emissions quotas - action that is hardly indicative of global cooperation against climate change and demonstrates the unwillingness of countries to submit to any international climate policy that could potentially constrict their economic growth. As Breakthrough Senior Fellow Roger Pielke, Jr. noted on his blog:

"Absent a world government, the ruling should make clear that which should already be obvious -- there is no global set of institutions capable of overseeing any sort of interlocking, multi-national cap-and-trade programs. If it can't work in the EU it certainly won't work in the UN."

The viability of Europe's emissions trading scheme, which allows firms that exceed their carbon emissions allowances to purchase permits from firms that have successfully reduced theirs, may be threatened by the EU's ruling. In addition to Italy's written request to have its emissions quotas re-considered, the EU court is now facing similar cases involving Bulgaria, Romania, Latvia, Lithuania, and the Czech Republic, according to Deutsche Welle.

Continue reading "EU Court Ruling Reveals "Cracks" In Kyoto Framework" »

cross posted from Roger Pielke Jr.'s Blog

The Guardian has an interesting, though somewhat speculative, article today about emerging U.S. plans to propose an alternative international climate policy architecture to that embodied in the Kyoto Protocol:

The dispute between the US and Europe is over the way national carbon reduction targets would be counted. Europe has been pushing to retain structures and systems set up under the Kyoto protocol, the existing global treaty on climate change. US negotiators have told European counterparts that the Obama administration intends to sweep away almost all of the Kyoto architecture and replace it with a system of its own design.

The issue is highly sensitive and European officials are reluctant to be seen to openly criticise the Obama administration, which they acknowledge has engaged with climate change in a way that President Bush refused to. But they fear the US move could sink efforts to agree a robust new treaty in Copenhagen.

The US distanced itself from Kyoto under President Bush because it made no demands on China, and the treaty remains political poison in Washington. European negotiators knew the US would be reluctant to embrace Kyoto, but they hoped they would be able to use it as a foundation for a new agreement.

If Kyoto is scrapped, it could take several years to negotiate a replacement framework, the source added, a delay that could strike a terminal blow at efforts to prevent dangerous climate change. "In Europe we want to build on Kyoto, but the US proposal would in effect kill it off. If we have to start from scratch then it all takes time. It could be 2015 or 2016 before something is in place, who knows."

Energy Secretary Steven Chu had these interesting remarks as well:

The goal for the climate conference in Copenhagen is to reach a deal that can actually be implemented, rather than agreeing on binding high targets for reducing carbon dioxide emissions, US Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Tuesday in Vienna. The United Nations' International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is calling for countries to make firm commitments to reduce emissions that cause global warming by 25 to 40 per cent below 1990 levels.

"Let's not make that one particular time the be-all and end-all, and if it doesn't happen, oh, we are doomed," Chu told reporters in Vienna, where he was attending the International Atomic Energy Agency's annual general conference.

Expect more trial balloons, pronouncements of negotiating doom and confusing reports in the months ahead.

By Johanna Peace, Breakthrough Fellow

It's strange to hear of "insourcing"--the transfer of manufacturing jobs into the United States instead of out--but that's exactly what's happening with Denmark's wind giant Vestas, according to a New York Times article yesterday.

According to the report, a combination of global recession and domestic stimulus spending on clean energy is adding up to a boon for the American clean energy manufacturing industry.

In Europe, Vestas has seen several nations slow down their rates of added wind capacity, and flagging government support combined with financial difficulties has impeded the construction of new projects. By contrast, the United States built 8,500 megawatts of wind capacity in 2008 to Britain's 500, and demand for turbine technology is high. So for opportunities in a more robust wind market, Vestas has begun to look across the Atlantic.

Continue reading "US Must Not Blow Its Chance as Foreign Investments Bring Wind Jobs Ashore" »

By Yael Borofsky, Breakthrough Fellow

To some, recent discussion of the "clean energy race" is just the latest iteration of flashy climate change rhetoric, refurbished and repackaged as a do-or-die clean technology race between the U.S. and Asia. Yet, as a New York Times piece entitled "China Racing Ahead of U.S. in the Drive to Go Solar," testifies, the clean energy challenge is more than just verbal tap dancing, it's a dynamic economic competition - and China is earning its racing stripes.

While the U.S. is still floundering with ad-hoc investments in clean energy, China has developed a straight-forward, no-nonsense approach to achieving its 2GW solar capacity target by 2011 and gaining leadership in the solar industry: build market share. With the help of serious government investment, China is on the path to achieving that goal. Chinese companies like, Suntech Power Holdings, have succeeded in driving solar panel price reductions over the last six months by selling panels on the U.S. market below the marginal cost. Furthermore, China is circumventing protectionist legislation by constructing assembly plants in the U.S.

According to Steven Chan, Suntech president for global sales and marketing, the first plant will be located in Phoenix, Arizona and will allow China to tap into the portion of the market that wants to "'buy American' and things like that." The catch, however, is that even though the panels will be constructed in America, by Americans, the components will, of course, be made in China.

Continue reading "NYT: China's Solar Industry Poised to Leave U.S. in the Dust" »

By Johanna Peace, Breakthrough Fellow

In New Delhi today, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said that India must invest in both new and existing clean energy technologies in order to develop sustainably over the coming decades. This comes as the latest indication of India's progress on building a domestic clean energy economy through investment--a strategy that could also serve as a new approach to international climate policy. Unfortunately, Western nations that stall climate negotiations with their insistence on setting carbon caps continue to miss the world's best chance at forging a global agreement.

Continue reading "Indian Prime Minister Says India Must Invest in Clean Energy Technology" »

By Leigh Ewbank, Breakthrough Fellow

This week marks the 40th anniversary of Neil Armstrong's moonwalk, the event which made the US the first and only nation to accomplish one of the greatest technological feats in human history. While space-race aficionados will argue that US-Soviet competition continued beyond the 1969 moon landing, for the layperson, Armstrong's 'small step' marked the end of the space race.

In 2009, the United States faces a new global competition, one that will have far greater implications for the future of our nation and the world: the clean energy race

The dual challenges of climate change and increased economic competitiveness are driving nations to develop new energy technologies that harness earth's abundant renewable resources. This technology is increasingly viewed as central to our economic fortunes with renewable energy and other clean technologies poised to be the next big growth sector. On several occasions President Obama has acknowledged that:

'The nation that leads the world in creating new sources of clean energy will be the nation that leads the 21st century global economy.'

We've heard calls for a New Apollo project for renewable energy before, and I will not discuss the merits of such a scheme here. Instead, on this historic anniversary, I will compare the space race of the Cold War era and the clean energy race of today--both similarities and differences are apparent, and both offer insights into America's current standing in today's clean energy race.

Continue reading "40th Anniversary of the Moon Landing - Lessons for the Clean Energy Race" »

It appears that there is an effort underway (whether coordinated or just coincident) from the Obama Administration, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and United Nations to place a reality check on expectations for United States climate policy progress in advance of the international climate negotiations in Copenhagen this December.

Yesterday, IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri told UK newspapers that Barack Obama would have a "revolution on his hands" if he tried to implement binding cuts in emissions on the scale that the IPCC's scientific consensus recommends.

"He [Obama] is not going to say by 2020 I'm going to reduce emissions by 30 per cent," Pachauri said. "He'll have a revolution on his hands. He has to do it step by step."

Pachauri's word's echo those of U.S. special climate envoy, Todd Stern, who recently stated that the 25-40% emissions cuts called for by the IPCC are "beyond the realm of the feasible" in the U.S. Congress. Stern called for a focus on "the art of the possible," saying "we need to be guided both by science and by common sense."

Now, UN climate czar, Yvo de Boer tells Bryan Walsh in a TIME interview that he doesn't expect cap and trade from the U.S. before Copenhagen either.

Continue reading "Playing the Expectations Game as Copenhagen Looms" »

James Hansen of NASA has written an op-ed for the Guardian that, more than any other piece of his that I've seen, expresses his political philosophy. In a phrase, that philosophy can be characterized as "scientific authoritarianism." Scientific authoritarianism, as I am using it here, holds that political decisions should be compelled by the political preferences of scientists. It is a very strong form of the "linear model" of science and decision making that I discuss in The Honest Broker.

Hansen believes that the advice of experts, and specifically his advice alone, should compel certain political outcomes. He opens his op-ed in the Guardian with this statement:

A year ago, I wrote to Gordon Brown asking him to place a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants in Britain. I have asked the same of Angela Merkel, Barack Obama, Kevin Rudd and other leaders.

Continue reading "The Political Philosophy of James Hansen" »

Not in Europe it doesn't, according to this article in Der Spiegel (thanks RG and BP for the link):

Germany's renewable energy companies are a tremendous success story. Roughly 15 percent of the country's electricity comes from solar, wind or biomass facilities, almost 250,000 jobs have been created and the net worth of the business is €35 billion per year.

But there's a catch: The climate hasn't in fact profited from these developments. As astonishing as it may sound, the new wind turbines and solar cells haven't prohibited the emission of even a single gram of CO2.

Continue reading "Does More Renewable Energy Equal Less Emissions?" »

Some folks are surprised to learn that market mechanisms for carbon trading allow both the buying and selling of emissions permits. Clearly this sort of capitalistic behavior must be stopped if carbon markets are to work. The Guardian has the details:

Britain's biggest polluting companies are abusing a European emissions trading scheme (ETS) designed to tackle global warming by cashing in their carbon credits in order to bolster ailing balance sheets.

The sell-off has helped trigger a collapse in the price of carbon, making it cheaper to burn high-carbon fossil fuels and leading to a fall in the number of clean energy projects. The moves were seized on by environmentalists and other critics who have previously criticised the European Union's ETS for delivering more windfall profits for business than climate change.

Continue reading "Apparently Markets Allow Buying and Selling" »

Todd Stern will be named by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as the U.S. State Department's special "Climate Envoy," news outlets reported today. Stern's climate credentials include a stint as a senior negotiator representing Bill Clinton's White House at the Kyoto Protocol talks, a role he'll likely reprise at the upcoming Copenhagen climate talks this December.

As a high level negotiator at Kyoto in 1997, Stern helped forge an international climate reduction framework that has been largely ineffective (see Michael and Ted's essay, "Scrap Kyoto", here [pdf]). Stern's appointment thus makes one wonder: has the Clinton-era negotiator learned the lessons of the past 12 years and is now prepared to offer a new direction at the Copenhagen talks? Or does Stern's appointment signal that the Obama administration's official thinking on international climate policy is still stuck in the winter of 1997?

Continue reading "Will New "Climate Envoy" Bring More of the Same for the US in Copenhagen?" »

The U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), a coalition of corporations including General Electric and Duke Energy in addition to environmental groups such as the Natural Resource Defense Council and Environmental Defense Fund, released a "blueprint" for climate legislation today. Essentially a Cap-and-Trade system, the legislative recommendation reads like a sequel to the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act.

The report was released today, and already the fallout has perfectly captured the existential moment that the major green groups are experiencing right now in their increasingly urgent efforts to address climate change on a national and global scale.

The defeat of Lieberman-Warner, the oil drilling debate, and global recession have awakened the greens to the immovable political truth that politicians will never enact, and the public will always reject climate legislation that significantly increases energy prices. This truth undermines the power and attraction to cap and trade that has made it the preferred legislation of climate activists for two decades.

Continue reading "Greens Divided by USCAP Proposal: Will They Find Their Way Past the Price Gap?" »

The Huffington Post has featured an op-ed by me and Jesse Jenkins, "The Danger of Green Stimulus," which issues a cautionary note about losing sight of climate objectives amidst all the fervor about green jobs and green stimulus:

The Danger of Green Stimulus
By Teryn Norris and Jesse Jenkins
The Huffington Post
January 5th, 2009

Barack Obama's final appointments in December indicate a strong commitment to action on climate change. Steven Chu as Energy Secretary, Carol Browner as Energy & Climate Czar, John Holdren as Assistant for Science and Technology -- just to name a few recent selections -- are all proponents of vigorous action to cut U.S. global warming pollution and take leadership on a new international climate treaty. And Hilda Solis, Obama's new Labor Secretary, is a champion of "green jobs."

All is well on the climate front, it seems. Except that it's not.

Carbon cap and trade regulation remains the top federal policy priority for the majority of environmental groups. But in June, cap and trade legislation failed in the Senate, and sixteen Democratic Senators from coal and manufacturing-heavy states voiced their opposition to high carbon pricing. The policy faces even greater obstacles in today's economic climate, since it would increase the energy bills of the American public.

Continue reading "The Danger of Green Stimulus" »

The New York Times ran a landmark article today, "Money and Lobbyists Hurt European Efforts to Curb Gases," about the failure of cap and trade in Europe. It should be required reading for anyone concerned about climate change policy in the United States and abroad.  It opens with this:

The European Union started with a high-minded ecological goal: encouraging companies to cut their greenhouse gases by making them pay for each ton of carbon dioxide they emitted into the atmosphere.

But that plan unleashed a lobbying free-for-all that led politicians to dole out favors to various industries, undermining the environmental goals. Four years later, it is becoming clear that system has so far produced little noticeable benefit to the climate -- but generated a multibillion-dollar windfall for some of the Continent's biggest polluters.

As President-elect Barack Obama considers how to curb the gases that contribute to global warming, Europe's struggle with the problem illustrates the momentous task ahead for the United States.

The piece comes after the GAO just released a highly critical study of the use of offsets in Europe's Emissions Trading Scheme and amidst the chaotic climate negotiations at Poznan, where several European nations are balking at strict emissions caps.  It also comes only a few weeks after President-elect Barack Obama pledged his support for cap and trade at a major climate conference in California.

Continue reading "NY Times Reports Failure of Cap & Trade" »

"The framework of the European system put governments in the position of behaving like 'a grandfather with a large family deciding what to give his favorite grandchildren for Christmas,' Mr. Trittin said in an interview."

-From this New York Times article about the pitfalls and failures of cap and trade in Europe.

Last week in response to Michael and Ted's piece in The American Prospect, Bradford Plumer at The New Republic's "The Vine" wrote a piece called "Should We Forget About Carbon Pricing? (No.)" The post, which mischaracterizes the stances Michael and Ted take in the Prospect piece, also propagates the myth of successful emissions reductions in Europe.

Plumer writes:

"Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger have yet another essay arguing that environmentalists should abandon all hope of trying to cap or tax carbon emissions, and instead focus solely on subsidizing clean-energy sources if they want to avert drastic global warming.

...Simply having the Energy Department dole out $50 billion per year to clean-energy producers (as Nordhaus and Shellenberger suggest) will pale beside the amount of private-sector money that will flow to alternative energy and efficiency improvements if carbon is priced properly."

This characterization of S&N's positions in The American Prospect and the Breakthrough Institute in general is a strawman.

Continue reading "In "Vine" Veritas? (No.)" »

Dominic Lawson, columnist for the British newspaper "The Independent," issued a scathing condemnation of the Poznan Climate Talks aimed at renewing the Kyoto Protocol after 2012:

The truth, however, is that Kyoto, as a means to reduce carbon emissions, has been like Monty Python's parrot, long dead, despite all the protestations to the contrary by its salesmen.

You don't have to be a "climate change sceptic" to assert this unwelcome fact. Professor Gwyn Prins, Director of the LSE's Mackinder Centre for the Study of Long Wave Events, has been advocating measures to reduce what he sees as man-made climate change since 1986. He was a lead author on the Third and Fourth Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and on the Advisory Board of Friends of the Earth UK. For some years now, Prof Prins has been warning that the Kyoto approach is hopelessly flawed - and his unpopularity in the environment ministries of Europe has grown, precisely as his criticisms of their approach have been vindicated.

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Last week the United States Government Accountability Office released its evaluation of Europe's Emissions Trading Scheme, the European Union's cap and trade program designed to control greenhouse gas emissions. The GAO was asked to investigate the effectiveness and outcomes of the ETS in order to inform the ongoing debate on emissions reduction strategies in the United States.

A carbon pricing scheme has two basic purposes: to reduce carbon emissions and to drive private investment in low carbon technologies. However, according to the GAO, the ETS has failed to accomplish either objective in any measurable way:

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The UK Government auctioned the first four million allowances to emit greenhouse gases under their portion of the European Union's Emissions Trading System this week, raising 54m British pounds ($80.9m). However, the government is drawing fire for failing to earmark the auction revenues to investments in clean energy and energy efficiency that could further cut emissions and help reduce the costs of compliance with the cap and trade program. Instead of reinvesting the revenues in clean energy ventures, the government is reportedly planning to add revenues to the general budget.

Continue reading "UK Auctions First Carbon Permits; Government Hoarding Revenue" »

By Roger Pielke, Jr.  Cross-posted from Prometheus

In the coming weeks a monumental decision will be made that will influence the future evolution of global climate policies. A single country has in its power the ability to alter the course of global negotiations and change the dynamics of a political debate characterized by gridlock. That country is . . .

Poland. Yes, Poland. (It is not the U.S. presidential election.) Over the next 6 weeks, the EU, with France taking the lead, must convince Poland (plus other Eastern European countries and Italy) to fall in line with (i.e., not veto) its ambitious climate policies or else see them utterly fall apart. The following graph helps to explain the political dynamics...

Continue reading "The Future of Climate Policy Depends Upon A Single Country . . ." »