Speeches and Transcripts

Clean Energy for Sustainable Growth: U.S. Policy on Climate Change

by
Alexander Vershbow
U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Korea

136 Environmental Forum
Korea Press Center - January 15, 2008

President Choi, distinguished guests:   I am delighted to have this opportunity to explain U.S. policy on climate change to such a distinguished audience.

I’m particularly pleased because I think our policy is not widely understood.  Opponents of the Bush Administration have so often misrepresented U.S. policy on climate that the facts have been obscured.  I’m looking forward to clarifying today some of the most commonly-held misperceptions, and explaining our strategy for addressing this critically important issue.
 
Where the critics are correct is on one basic fact:  the United States is not a member of the Kyoto Protocol.

But from that basic fact they extrapolate numerous false assumptions.  They assume that the United States does not take seriously the challenge of global climate change -- when in fact we do take it very seriously, and are “putting our money where our mouth is.”  They assume that we are doing little to combat climate change domestically -- when in fact we are working very successfully to fight greenhouse gas emissions at home.  Finally, they assume that the United States is abandoning any leadership role in global efforts to address climate change -- when in fact we are leading efforts to build a global consensus on the way forward.   As we shall see, there is no contradiction between our decision to stay out of Kyoto and our determination to confront what President Bush has consistently called “a serious long-term challenge.”  

The basis of U.S. climate change policy is the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), adopted at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.  The Framework Convention’s central objective is to achieve “stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.”  Let me be clear:  the United States is firmly and unequivocally committed to that goal.

At the time that we negotiated the Framework Convention, climate science was still developing, and there were, as noted in the UNFCCC preamble, “many uncertainties in predictions of climate change.”  My country believes that sound policymaking has to be evidence-based, so it has consequently worked hard to reduce the uncertainties that the preamble referred to.  Since 2001, the Bush Administration has devoted more than $12 billion to climate science, quite possibly as much as what has been spent by all other countries combined.

The value of that investment in science became clear last year, when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) convened scientists from around the world to assess the available evidence.  The United States co-chaired Working Group I, examining the record of climate change, and many U.S. scientists contributed.  The participants emerged with an overwhelming consensus view that global warming is undeniably occurring, that most of the observed temperature increase is very likely due to human activity (particularly the burning of carbon-based fuels), and that temperatures and sea levels will both continue to rise.  A second Working Group laid out the potential impacts of climate change, in such areas as the availability of fresh water, species loss, changes in crop productivity, the threat of coastal flooding and extreme weather events, and the spread of tropical diseases.  Thanks in good measure to scientific efforts supported by the United States, we have a strengthened global consensus that climate change is real, that it is human-induced, and that it matters.

Some critics acknowledge that the United States has made a real and substantial contribution in advancing climate science, but go on to allege that the United States does not take the problem seriously and has done little to confront it.  Typically, their evidence is that the United States did not join the Kyoto Protocol.

So let’s start by addressing that issue head on:  Why didn’t the United States ratify the Kyoto Protocol?

For over a century modern economies have been built on a foundation of fossil energy.  The unintended result of burning all those fossil fuels, and of numerous other industrial and agricultural activities, has been the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, contributing to global warming.

This fact presents an enormous policy challenge.  The availability of modern, reliable energy supplies is crucial to economic growth and poverty alleviation, key goals for both developed and developing countries.  We are caught between the need to assure increasing supplies of energy to fuel growing economies and the need to stabilize, and eventually reduce, the emissions resulting from the use of the most widely available forms of energy.

The Kyoto Protocol was the first attempt by the members of the UN Framework Convention to balance these competing priorities.  The approach they took, unfortunately, failed to adequately distribute the burden of addressing climate change, making the agreement impossible for the United States to ratify.
A key concept embedded in the preamble to the UNFCCC acknowledged that “the global nature of climate change calls for the widest possible cooperation by all countries and their participation in an effective and appropriate international response, in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities and their social and economic conditions.”

The approach taken at Kyoto, however, focused almost exclusively on “differentiated responsibilities.”  It significantly reduced the Framework Convention’s emphasis on “common responsibilities” and on ensuring “the widest possible cooperation in an effective and appropriate response.”  Under Kyoto, only the developed countries were required to contribute to the effort to reduce emissions.  As the world’s largest developed economy, the United States was allocated a very large share of the burden, leading many in the United States to question whether the economic cost was justified. 

But what was most troublesome was the question about whether the system established at Kyoto would be effective.  If the developing countries had no obligation to control emissions, emission-rich industries would have every incentive simply to move rather than to invest heavily in cleaner technologies.  Potentially, the net result would be no decrease in emissions, at a heavy cost to the economy of the United States.

Due to these concerns, the Kyoto Protocol was what we call “dead on arrival” in the United States.  There was a broad bipartisan consensus against ratifying it.  In fact, the U.S. Senate voted 95-0 to tell the Administration “don’t bother to send it up for ratification.”  You can’t get more bipartisan than that.

But it does not follow that the United States was not taking the problem of climate change seriously.  Though ratifying the Kyoto Protocol was not possible, the United States turned to other means of addressing climate change.

One of the earliest initiatives of the Bush Administration, in 2002, was to call for an 18 percent decrease in the emissions intensity of the American economy by 2012.  That means that over 10 years, the amount of emissions per dollar of GDP will decline by nearly 2 percent per year.  To achieve this goal, the Administration put in place a broad array of measures.  Some of those measures are mandatory, some are based on incentives, and some are voluntary.  And together they are working:  the United States is well ahead of schedule to meet the 18 percent reduction goal by 2012.

In fact, the United States has been more successful in containing emissions than many of the developed countries that ratified the Kyoto Protocol, even though, unlike many developed countries, the United States has a growing population.  Over the five-year period from 2000 to 2005, while our population grew by 5 percent and our economy grew by 12 percent, our greenhouse gas emissions grew by only 1.6 percent for the whole period.  The results for 2006 are even better:  while our economy grew by 2.9 percent, our emissions declined 1.5 percent from the 2005 level.  That means that since the year 2000 we have had essentially zero net growth in greenhouse gas emissions, despite a growing economy and a growing populace.  That is a record that Americans can be proud of.

As you can see from the chart on the screen, up through 2005 -- and therefore not counting the spectacular results from 2006 -- the performance of the United States compared very well with the EU, and outshone many of its individual members.

Despite this success to date, the United States is not relaxing its efforts -- far from it.  On December 19, President Bush signed the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007.  This legislation responds to the President’s visionary “Twenty-in-Ten” initiative put forth in his 2007 State of the Union Address, which proposes a 20 percent reduction in projected U.S. gasoline consumption within 10 years.  The Act mandates a dramatic increase in the use of biofuels -- to 36 billion gallons per year, nearly 5 times the current mandate -- by 2022.  Moreover, it raises the national fuel economy standard by almost 40 percent, to 35 miles per gallon, by 2020.  Taken together, the measures in the Act are expected to reduce projected U.S. CO2 emissions by billions of metric tons.

These domestic measures are substantial and important.  But President Bush also understands that if we are to successfully balance the need for increasing amounts of energy to fight global poverty with the need to fight climate change, there will have to be even more fundamental changes in the way that we produce and use energy -- not just in the United States, but around the globe.

Today we are working to revolutionize our energy technology, similar to the revolution a century ago that led us away from firelight to electric light and from the horse and buggy to the automobile.  This new revolution will not be based on any one technology, but on a suite of innovations that, taken together, can help provide the energy the world needs without pumping dangerous amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

The United States has been a global leader in research on these crucial new technologies.  It has spent nearly $18 billion since 2001 to develop climate-friendly technologies and to make them more economical.  Let me review for you some of the more promising technologies:

• Biofuels:  The United States is producing and using increasing amounts of corn-based ethanol.  Research suggests that, depending on the production process, corn-based ethanol can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 15-29 percent.  Even more promising, however, is cellulosic ethanol, which uses woody feedstocks like switchgrass, corn stalks, and sawdust.  Cellulosic ethanol can reduce emissions by as much as 89 percent compared to gasoline.  Although the technology is proven, further research is needed to bring the cost of production down to make it competitive with fossil-based fuel.  If that happens, it is estimated that the United States could displace as much as 30 percent of its gasoline consumption with sustainably-produced biofuels.
• Hybrids:  The United States is working hard to develop a plug-in hybrid vehicle.  With the energy stored in its batteries, a plug-in hybrid will be able to travel 60 kilometers -- within the range of most commutes -- without using a drop of gasoline.  A gasoline engine will recharge the batteries if travel beyond the 60-kilometer range is needed.  By some estimates the plug-in hybrid will be brought to market by 2009.
• Hydrogen:  Cars powered by hydrogen fuel cells hold the promise of zero tailpipe emissions other than water.  Overall emissions for hydrogen fuel cell use would depend on the production process chosen.  Again, we still have to do considerable research to bring the cost down, and big investments are necessary in new infrastructure to transport and distribute the hydrogen.  Experts believe that these problems could be solved within 15 years.
• Zero-emissions coal power:  Coal, the most plentiful fossil fuel, remains the essential backbone of electricity generation in many countries, including the United States.  The United States is working on ways to capture and store the carbon dioxide produced in the burning of coal.
• Together with international partners including Korea, we are planning to build a demonstration power plant, called FutureGen, that will produce both hydrogen and electricity while using carbon capture and storage to ensure zero greenhouse gas emissions.  On December 18, the FutureGen Alliance announced the selection of a site in Illinois, and construction is slated to begin in 2009.
• Renewable Energy:  Much progress has been made in recent years in reducing the cost of energy from renewable sources, such as wind, geothermal, and solar.  Further research is essential, however, in order to continue to make these energy sources competitive with fossil fuels.

The United States has also worked hard to engage other countries in joint efforts to develop and deploy clean energy technologies.  We are pleased to count Korea as one of the most active and engaged of our international partners.  Let me describe some of the initiatives we are pursuing together:

• The Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate brings together the U.S., Korea, Japan, Australia, Canada, India and China in an effort to speed the development and deployment of cleaner technologies.   Together member countries represent more than half the world’s emissions.
• The International Partnership for a Hydrogen Economy works to eliminate the obstacles to wider use of hydrogen fuel cells.
• The Methane-to-Markets Partnership seeks to expand the use of technologies to capture and use methane, a greenhouse gas that is over 20 times more potent than CO2.
• The Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum seeks to advance the development of carbon capture and storage technologies.
• The Generation IV Nuclear Forum works to promote the use of clean nuclear energy worldwide.
• Finally, the ITER Partnership is building an experimental power-generation device using nuclear fusion.  If it proves technically and economically feasible, fusion would truly revolutionize electrical power, using almost limitless fuel from the oceans and producing neither greenhouse gases nor significant amounts of long-lived radioactive waste.

So how do we go forward from here in the fight against global warming?

The Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.  A new regime is needed, one that will be truly effective in reducing global greenhouse gas emissions.

To be effective, a new regime will need to engage not just developed countries but also developing countries.  That is because within a few years, and increasingly over the coming decades, the majority of emissions will come from developing countries.  Already, China is set to surpass the United States as the world’s top emitter.  Developed countries simply cannot solve the climate change problem by themselves. 

Some 187 members of the UNFCCC met in Bali in December 2007 to lay out a roadmap for negotiating a new post-Kyoto regime.  The bargaining was hard, and sometimes acrimonious, because many varied interests were in play.  Some countries wanted to prejudge the outcome of the negotiating process by writing specific reduction goals into the roadmap, but we and several other countries believed that was premature.  Some developing countries wanted to exempt themselves from any obligations; but in an undertaking of this scale all must bear some part of the burden, especially since some developing countries are major emitters of greenhouse gases.  Resolving these differences forced the Bali conference into overtime, but in the end an agreement emerged that achieved what was needed:  a roadmap for future negotiations.  We expect those negotiations to produce an agreement by 2009.

Our experience with multilateral negotiations by consensus has led us to understand that often the only way to get progress is to convene a smaller group of key players to find common ground.  President Bush launched the Major Economies process with that principle in mind. 

The first Major Economies Meeting was last September.  The President invited 15 countries, including Korea, plus the European Union Presidency, the European Commission and the UN.  The invited countries represent more than 85 percent of the world’s GDP and some 80 percent of its greenhouse gas emissions.  If we can agree among ourselves on the way forward, I have no doubt that we can tackle the problem of climate change.

A second meeting in the Major Economies process is scheduled for the end of this month, in Hawaii.  Additional meetings are planned after that, to culminate in a leaders’ meeting in the summertime.  The results of these consultations will inform the UN Framework Convention negotiations launched in Bali.  Those negotiations will not be easy, but my government is deeply committed to finding a way forward to an agreement that will be both environmentally effective and politically sustainable.

During 2008, the United States will also shine a spotlight on the potential for renewable energy by hosting the Washington International Renewable Energy Conference (WIREC).  We expect to have more than 2000 delegates, including Ministers, businessmen, and NGOs, to explore ways to speed the adoption of the cleanest of energy technologies.

So that brings me back to where we started:  Even though the United States is not a member of Kyoto, my country takes very seriously its obligations under the UN Framework Convention to combat global climate change, and has been working hard to fight greenhouse gas emissions at home.

The United States is leading the world toward a new era where we reduce greenhouse gas emissions while providing the energy that both the developed and developing worlds need to assure the prosperity of their citizens.

To conclude, let me quote President Bush, speaking at the first Major Economies Meeting last September:  “Energy security and climate change are two of the great challenges of our time.  The United States takes these challenges seriously.  The world’s response will help shape the future of the global economy and the condition of our environment for future generations….By developing low-emission technologies, we can meet the growing demand for energy and at the same time reduce air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.”

With goodwill, determination, and dedicated efforts to develop and disseminate cleaner technologies, I believe that we can successfully navigate between the shoals of energy poverty and dangerous climate change, and arrive at a brighter, cleaner energy future.  For the sake of our children, we must!

Thank you.