UNFCCC looks into plan B

As 2012 draws closer and closer the United Nation Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) officially started thinking about a contingency plan, in case no agreement on a Kyoto Protocol successor were struck in time. The document published on the UNFCCC website focuses on the legal implications that a gap between the current international agreement and its possible successor could entail.
Under current rules three quarter of the parties to the UNFCCC (143 of the 190 countries) must accept the agreement to make it binding, and in order to avoid a gap with the current scheme, this acceptance should take place by October 12, 2012. Moreover, even once an international framework had been agreed upon, it would take a long time to ratify at national-parliament level, as the Kyoto Protocol ratification process has shown, which could undermine the continuity with the old scheme. Thus, in order to facilitate the process of ratification, instruments such as tacit acceptance or automatic opt-in after acceptance could be useful as well as other modification of the ratification amendments, or even the possibility to reduce the required majority for approving a new treaty, or the possibility to simply extend current commitments. These modifications would be considered provisional and are currently feasible under international law.

The text of the document can be found at http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2010/awg13/eng/10.pdf

Time to reform climate institutions?

The last climate Conference in Copenhagen and the difficulty to reach a comprehensive agreement, pointed out three main problems with the negotiating process under the United Nations:

1. it involves too many countries: 194, when 20 account for about 90% of global emissions;
2. the voting rules require unanimity for nearly all decisions, this often makes the decision-making too difficult;
3. the discussion is polarized in two factions: developed vs. developing countries.

So, for these reasons the academic world is questioning the United Nation Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) as the major institutional venue for international climate policy negotiation. The matter is not new, but in recent years something is changing.
Indeed, States have begun to negotiate plurilateral, non-legally binding climate agreements outside of the UNFCCC umbrella.

A new leader for the UNFCCC

As announced last May by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC in the next years will be a woman coming from a developing country. In fact, last Thursday July 8, Ms. Christiana Figueres has taken the lead in the negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. With a long experience as a member of the Costa Rican negotiating team and in both non-governmental and private sectors, Ms. Figueres is considered one of the most skilled mediators of the Convention as well as an international leader on strategies to address global climate challenges. For this reason she already facilitated and co-chaired several contact groups, in particular the Contact Group on Clean Development Mechanism in Nairobi in 2006, in Poznan in 2008, and in Copenhagen in 2009, and the Contact Group on flexibility mechanisms for the post 2012 regime, in Bonn, Accra and Poznan in 2008. In addition, she was a member of the Friends of the Chair that negotiated the Bali Action Plan in December 2007.
In replacing Yvo de Boer to the head of the Convention, Christiana Figueres becomes the fourth UNFCCC Executive Secretary and inherits the difficult task of leading climate Talks for the future agreement in Cancun and beyond.

In the picture Ms. Figueres with two of her predecessors, Mr. Yvo de Boer (left) whom she succeeds, and Mr. Michael Zammit Cutajar (right), the first UNFCCC Executive Secretary in office from 1991 to 2002. Ms. Joke Waller-Hunter, who was in office from 2002, passed away in 2005.

More info about Christiana Figueres

Text and Talks

Two weeks of extremely busy agendas, crowded meeting rooms (overflow rooms were sometimes needed) and no substantive outcomes characterized the Bonn June talks (May 31st-June 11th).
No agreement was reached on the text to be presented at Cancun in November, and the Bonn August talks are now the last chance to find a compromise (the Chair of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-Term Cooperative Action under the Convention (AWG-LCA) – who drafted the text – asked the Parties to compile a revised version by the next negotiating session).
All the countries that didn’t agree to the Copenhagen Accord (Bolivia, Cuba, Nicaragua, Sudan, Venezuela, Tuvalu) were still expressing the same claims - Bolivia was in the forefront, taking an almost obstructive stance, while Cuba didn’t actually intervene in the negotiations - decreasing the currently low chances of reaching an agreement in Cancun (Table).

Numbers...again!

The two weeks of negotiating talks held in Bonn concluded yesterday. During this session, Parties resumed negotiations from the two Ad Hoc Working Groups left open in December. Also both Subsidiary Bodies started their work again.

During the weeks developing countries asked for a more ambitious mitigation target, namely a limit to the atmospheric temperature increase by 1.5°C.

Kerry-Lieberman: the contents

According to its authors, the American Power Act will transform U.S. economy, set the country on the path toward energy independence and improve air quality. In addition, it will create millions of new jobs and it will launch U.S. into a position of leadership in the global clean energy economy.
The following sections describe how the new bill will seek to achieve these objectives.

Overall structure:
create a cap-and-trade system for the electricity sector in 2013 initially, with the industrial sector phased in 2016, with linked refinery cap, plus consumer rebates, support for state-level renewable electricity and energy efficiency standards as well as energy investments.

The Kerry-Lieberman - compromise - Bill

The American Power Act, unveiled on Wednesday by Senators Kerry and Lieberman, outspokenly aims at being a compromise bill. When the Democratic effort to take up the Kerry-Boxer Senate legislation (also known as CEJAPA) stalled after the bill passed out of committee, the "tri-partisan" group of Senators John Kerry (D), Lindsey Graham (R), and Joe Lieberman (I) set out to write a comprehensive bill they believed could secure 60 votes on the Senate floor and achieve the three administration’s main goals: green jobs, green technology and green exports.

US: Senators Kerry and Lieberman released climate bill proposal

As announced last week, Senators John Kerry (D) and Joe Lieberman (I) today unveiled the American Power Act (APA), a Senate bill aiming at gathering bipartisan support.
This is a long-awaited bill. Senators J. Kerry and Lindsey Graham (R) formally announced their commitment to work on comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation on October 11, 2009, while Senator J. Lieberman joined this effort two months later. The climate bill aims to tackle climate change with a more comprehensive approach, capitalizing on “a growing and unprecedented bipartisan coalition from the business, national security, faith and environmental communities” which drafted the text in previous months.
While the 987-pages Kerry-Lieberman plan (of which a 4- page summary is available) calls for a 17% reduction in carbon pollution from 2005 levels by 2020 like the House-passed Waxman-Markey bill ; it differs

An informal meeting to break the ice

Less than one month before the next UNFCCC formal meeting, countries met in an informal conference from 2 to 4 May in Petersberg, near Bonn. Organised by Germany and Mexico, the Petersberg Climate Dialogue involved environment and climate ministers from 45 key nations. They discussed the main issues such as mitigation actions, financing, reforestation and technology transfers to developing countries, with the aim to decide the next concrete steps in the run-up to the COP-16 in Cancún (Mexico),
The conference didn't adopt any formal decision but at least revived the international debate on climate change.

The long road to Cancun

After a night of negotiations, the UNFCCC meeting in Bonn concluded this early morning. Parties agreed on the future negotiating agenda, adding two more sessions before the big conference in Cancun. So, in 2010, countries will meet four times in an attempt to reach an agreement by the end of the year. However, two aspects stand out from this short meeting. The first is the "gigatonne gap", it's not a new concept but it's the first time that countries explicitly talk about it. Gigatonne gap refers to the gap between the reduction targets proposed by countries and the emission cuts needed to keep the temperature under the 2 degrees objective.

Back in Bonn

For the first time after the Conference held in Copenhagen, countries will meet next Friday in a round of formal U.N. climate talks. According to the UNFCCC agenda, national representatives of the 194 Parties will resume negotiations on the future climate agreement from 9 to 11 April 2010 in Bonn, Germany.
This first session will mainly focus on the organization of work of the two Ad Hoc Working Groups this year, including the need for additional meetings, with the objective to address pending issues and reach a shared outcome at the Conference of the Parties (COP-16) in Mexico next December.


UNFCCC Overview scedule

Renewable target: EU on track, some Member States no

Some days ago, each Member State has submitted to the European Commission a report in which it estimated the potential share of renewable energy in its final energy consumption by 2020.
According to the Summary Report, at least ten Member States expect to have a surplus in 2020 compared to their binding target for the share of renewable energy in their final energy consumption while five Member States expect to have a deficit.
However, this results are preliminary. It will be possible to have more details by the end of June 2010 when states submit their the National Renewable Energy Action Plans.

What about a carbon tax?

In July, France has outlined plans to impose a carbon tax with the Rocard Proposal which aims at leaving a CO2 tax on non-ETS sectors, especially on final consumption of fuels. However, the Constitutional Court rejected last December the government's original plan because the large number of exemptions for big emitters already covered by the EU ETS would put an unfair burden on consumers.
The European Commission is also considering to impose an EU-wide tax on CO2 emissions by 2013 on sectors such as transport and agriculture, which are currently not covered by EU ETS. This could be done through the amendment of the 2003 Energy Taxation Directive.
So far, carbon tax is not a new policy instrument. It has been implemented since the early 1990s in some Scandinavian countries and not only. Below some examples!

Goodbye Yvo

Last week, unexpectedly, Yvo de Boer announced that in July 2010 he will resign his position. After more than three years as UNFCCC Executive Secretary, de Boer will join the staff of the consultancy group KPMG in London as Global Adviser on climate and sustainability.
De Boer specified that it was a tough decision, unrelated to the Copenhagen outcome.
Until the end of June, he will continue to lead the negotiations ahead, but U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will have to find a successor well before the next COP-16 in November.
Yvo de Boer is one of the most experienced negotiator on climate change and the U.N. will face a difficult task finding a replacement with the same skills.

For more information: UNFCCC press release

An inadequate commitment

Even if major countries complied with the deadline of January 31, the emission reduction targets submitted to the UNFCCC have not changed compared to the level proposed during the COP-15 in December.
But are these efforts enough to reach the emission reduction requested by science?