An Overview of U.S. Global Climate Change Policy In Advance of the Upcoming Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (Buenos Aires, December 6-17)

1:00 P.M. EDT

Real Audio of Briefing

MR. DENIG: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Washington Foreign Press Center. As part of our series of briefings on environmental issues, we are pleased today to be able to provide an overview of U.S. global climate change policy, in advance of the upcoming Conference of the Parties on climate change which will be taking place in Buenos Aires in December from the 6th to the 17th.

And with us today, we have two experts, indeed, two gentlemen who will be down in Buenos Aires as negotiators. To my immediate left, we have Harlan Watson, the Senior Climate Negotiator and Special Representative from the U.S. Department of State. And to his left, we have David Conover, the Director of the Climate Change Technology Program at the U.S. Department of Energy.

Each of the gentlemen will have an opening statement to make, after which they'll be glad to take your questions.

Harlan.

MR. WATSON: Thank you very much and thank you all for coming. And I welcome the opportunity to be here with you today. I'd be pleased to answer any questions.

I'll just make a few opening comments. For the Conference of the Parties, we're expecting, of course, several thousand delegates in Buenos Aires over the next couple of weeks. We'll be exploring a number of issues dealing with climate. We expect to take part in those discussions. We are very active members of the Conference of the Parties at the Framework Convention. We expect to engage all of the other parties in a very cooperative and constructive fashion. We want to make sure that progress is made on the issue.

We also want to take the opportunity at this meeting, as we do at other climate meetings, to explain our policy to the rest of the world. We believe that it's often misunderstood, and quite frankly, we believe that we have a good story to tell and are taking actions on many fronts, and we can match it against any other program in the world.

Domestically, we are implementing the President's climate change policy, which he outlined in his speech of February 14th, 2002. In that speech, the President set a near-term goal, a ten-year goal, of reducing the U.S. greenhouse gas intensity -- that is, the greenhouse gas emissions per dollar of GDP -- by 18 percent over the decade, over the ten-year period, 2002 to 2012. And then, he also indicated that the purpose of that was, first, to slow the growth of emissions, and then, as the science justifies, to stop and reverse that growth in emissions.

We're well on our way. We've just completed our second year of working on the implementation of the President's program. We're making significant progress. We still have a ways to go, but we're very pleased with the progress we have made. I might mention that this 18 percent reduction in greenhouse gas intensity is about a 30 percent improvement over what we would expect under a business as usual profile over that same ten-year period. It would be roughly equivalent to saving 500 million metric tons of carbon emissions over that period, roughly equivalent to taking 70 million cars off our U.S. highways.

The second part of the program which the President announced in 2002 was robust investments in science and technology. We believe that there are still a lot of unknowns in the climate science. We have been spending significant amounts of money over that period since 1990, when the United States first initiated the United States Global Change Research Program. Since that time, since 1990, we have expended approximately $23 billion on climate change science.

Within the last year, of course, we did complete work on what's called our Climate Change Science Strategic Plan, which is a ten-year plan on addressing a number of the outstanding issues. And this is the first time, I might add, that there's been a comprehensive multi-agency coordinated budget for the Climate Change Science Program. It's just not a rollup of a collection of what some 14 or 15 agencies are doing, it is really a well-structured, well-managed program. I'd certainly like to commend Dr. James Mahoney, who couldn't be with us here today, the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Science, who heads that effort. He's done a marvelous job.

Internationally, we are also engaged, both on a bilateral basis and in a number of multinational science and technology activities.

In the U.S. Department of State, where I have been engaged over the last three years, we have created partnerships with some 14 regional and individual countries, including both Kyoto and non-Kyoto parties. We have very strong partnerships working heavily in science and technology of climate change and a number of other issues, certainly with our friends in the European Union, with whom we often have disagreements on matters regarding the Kyoto Protocol, certainly with our strong partners. We also have strong partnerships with Japan, with Russia, with our friends from the north and south, Canada and Mexico, and with large developing countries such as India, China and Brazil, among others. Overall, with the United States, this group of countries' partnerships encompass well over 70 percent of the world's emissions in greenhouse gases. Multinationally, we also have a number of science and technology initiatives which we have undertaken over the past three years. I'm going to turn to Mr. Conover to talk about the technology initiatives, but I will just mention a science initiative which is making great progress, and that was in earth observations.

On July 31st of 2003, the United States hosted the first Earth Observation Summit, and the purpose was to rally support for the establishment of a comprehensive, global and sustained earth observation system over the next ten years. There are many, many systems operated by various UN agencies and other groups of countries, but what's not happening is having all of this information tied together. And we feel that it's going to be very important to implement this system, not only to address climate change, but also many other environmental issues. It's going to be a very valuable asset. We now have over 50 countries; the European Commission and over 30 international organizations have joined the United States in this effort. And we have had a second Earth Observation Summit in April of this year in Tokyo, and we're looking forward to this all culminating in a third Earth Observation Summit, which will be held in Brussels in February, where the ten-year implementation plan will be blessed.

And with that, I would like to turn over to Mr. Conover to talk about the technology programs. You might want to mention both what we're doing domestically as well as internationally, David.

MR. CONOVER: Thank you, Harlan. I'm Dave Conover. I direct the U.S. Climate Change Technology Program, which is organized under the President's Cabinet Committee on Climate Change Science and Technology Integration, the setup that was established in the February 2002 announcement that Harlan referenced earlier.

We are a multi-agency R&D program that coordinates approximately $2.4 billion a year in investments in clean energy, carbon sequestration, measurement and monitoring systems, basic science, and the reduction of emissions from non-CO₂ gases. In addition to that $2.4 billion in research and demonstration, we spend about $600 million annually on deployment of these technologies, particularly in the energy efficiency area, and there is another $817 million in estimated tax credits for activities, near-term activities in both energy efficiency and renewable energy. The Climate Change Technology Program is organized around six goals: reducing emissions via energy efficiency and infrastructure improvements; reducing emissions from energy supply; capturing and storing carbon dioxide; reducing emissions from non-CO₂ gases; improving our measurement and monitoring capabilities for technology validation; and fortifying basic science to undergird all of those efforts.

Within that portfolio of $2.4 billion, approximately 38 percent is spent on energy efficiency research development and demonstration, and we have a very diversified portfolio across the board. The President announced in January of 2003 the Hydrogen Fuel Initiative, a $1.2 billion initiative to allow the first child born in that year to be driving a hydrogen-fueled vehicle by the time he or she is old enough to drive. This year, we've invested more than $350 million in hydrogen research and development projects through public-private partnerships with Department of Energy labs, academia, private industry. We also released a Hydrogen Posture Plan this year, which integrates the functions of producing hydrogen from fossil fuels, renewable sources and nuclear. We've released a carbon sequestration roadmap and are funding about $40 million worth of carbon sequestration projects, including 65 individual projects around the country.

Internationally, we have a robust program encompassing all areas of this issue, starting with the International Partnership for a Hydrogen Economy, which has 15 nations as members, representing over 85 percent of the world's GDP, nearly 3.5 billion people, and over 75 percent of the electricity used worldwide. This organization's goal is to coordinate multinational research development and deployment programs that advance the transition to a hydrogen economy. The Steering Committee for the International Partnership for a Hydrogen Economy held its second meeting in Beijing in May of 2004 and initiated a Beijing Action Plan which will, among other things, identify the role for the organization in setting codes and standards, a pathway forward for stakeholder participation, and compiling an integrated international partnership roadmap for the hydrogen economy.

The Implementation and Liaison Committee of that organization met for the third time in September of 2004, in Iceland, and highlights from their 14-point action plan include: the publication of scoping papers on high-priority activities; conducting international conferences on high-priority topics, including hydrogen production and storage and fuel cells; a world atlas on hydrogen and fuel cell demonstration; development of a roadmap for the international partnership; and establishing a safety codes and standards task force.

We also initiated in June of 2003 the Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum, consisting of 16 nations and the European Union in voluntary association, to cooperatively develop and demonstrate technologies that will curb and eliminate carbon dioxide emissions. The objective is to make carbon capture and storage an internationally accepted alternative in dealing with greenhouse gases. The Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum ministers met this past September in Melbourne, Australia, and approved 10 projects for joint activities under the partnership. These include: technology developments involving all fossil fuels, not just coal; and five dealing primarily with carbon dioxide capture before or after combustion; five with carbon dioxide storage, safe and permanent sequestration.

The most recent announcement this summer was a methane-to-markets partnership involving eight nations, developed and developing countries alike, that will work on reducing barriers to the cost-effective capture and reuse of methane emissions. Methane, of course, accounts for about 16 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions but it's some 26 times more potent than CO₂, making near-term reductions in methane emissions an incredibly important asset in dealing with the challenge of climate change and an economically valuable resource for the countries that can capture and reuse it.

We also are working with 10 nations in the Generation for Nuclear Forum, which is designed to produce new nuclear reactors that are safer and more economic, more environmentally friendly and proliferation-resistant.

And finally, in January of 2003, the President announced that we are rejoining negotiations over the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, otherwise known as ITER, which will harness the power of the sun’s infusion energy, promising abundant, clean and virtually unlimited supplies of energy with no greenhouse gas emissions.

We're very proud of all of these multinational efforts. We believe we have an aggressive, positive and very well-funded initiatives in the Climate Change Technology Program. And I'm happy to answer any questions.

MR. DENIG: Thank you very much, gentlemen. We’ll take questions now. Let me remind you to please use the microphone and introduce yourself and your news organization.

Okay. Let's start back there, please.

QUESTION: Volker Bargenda of the German Press Agency.

Obviously, you have a lot of critics out there, including some EU members who are saying you're not doing enough and you're not signing the Kyoto Protocol. What's your response to critics who are saying the U.S. is not doing enough to support (inaudible) climate change?

MR. WATSON: Well, what I do is to recite all that we are doing and to challenge them to match us. And we believe that the true measurement is in results-oriented actions, not in agreeing to pieces of paper. So I challenge them to match us. As I say, we spend more on science and technology than anyone else in the world, by far. In fact, our expenditure on climate change science is more than the rest of the world combined, and certainly our significant technology expenditures far exceed, I believe in almost all the technologies, anyone else in the world.

We're also aggressively taking, in terms of our voluntary programs, we're making great strides with getting sectors and individual companies on board to help reduce the growth of their greenhouse gas emissions, again using a carrot rather than a regulatory stick, and we find we're making great headway there. And, in fact, over the last few years, our growth in emissions, our overall emissions, are lower than many of our EU colleagues. So that's my response.

MR. CONOVER: And we find common ground on the technology issues. The European Union is a member of both the Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum and the International Partnership for Hydrogen Economy, and in those areas what we're focused on is solutions to this challenge, solutions that will need to be developed regardless of the international regime that governs reduction of emissions.

MR. DENIG: Okay, let's go to the lady in the middle, please.

QUESTION: Yes, I am Ana Baron from Clarin, Argentina. Now I just wanted to know, I haven't -- I'm not a specialist in this subject, but I wanted to know, if you are doing so well, why didn't you sign the Kyoto Treaty?

MR. WATSON: Well, the terms that the previous administration had agreed to, if we had tried to follow those, would have required the United States to reduce its emissions by approximately 30 percent from what they otherwise would have been, and there's no way that the United States could have done that without severely impacting the economy. So that's one of the problems we have with Kyoto -- a devastating impact to our economy if we're trying to meet an unrealistic target. The second issue, of course, is that we do not believe that the Kyoto Protocol is an effective measure because it excludes any obligations from developing countries, either now or in the future, to take any actions to reduce their emissions.

So it's for those two reasons that the President declined to sign it in March of 2001. It was why he said we would not go forward with Kyoto. I might say that sentiment had previously been laid down by the United States Senate in 1997 before the Kyoto Conference, when the Senate, by a vote of 95-0, told the previous administration “don't agree to any protocol or any sort of an agreement that would (a) cause significant harm to the U.S. economy or (b) did not include all countries,” and Kyoto met neither one of those challenges. And, of course, you know in our system that international agreements require the ratification by two-thirds of the Senate, and so there's no way that Kyoto would be ratifiable even if any President would try to push it forward.

QUESTION: Yeah, I have a little follow-up now. In fact, I wanted to know what do you expect about the meeting in Buenos Aires, then?

MR. WATSON: Well, we think that there are two items that we know are of great interest on the agenda in our conversations with the officials there. One, there's been tremendous interest on the subject of adaptation in recent years. The focus on much of the negotiations that have gone on since the Framework Convention entered into force in 1944, and the focus was on Kyoto, has been on mitigation and reducing emissions. There's been a growing recognition that whether or not climate change is going to happen, whether or not it is human-induced or natural, that there's a strong role for adaptation in this process. Climate throughout the ages is always changing one way or the other, and so it's very important that people be able to prepare themselves for floods, droughts and so on. The United States is blessed enough to have rather robust adaptive capacity and there's obviously much interest, and particularly in developing countries, also in strengthening their adaptive capacities to adjust to either climate change itself or climate variability. And so this has been an agenda which had been of particular interest to developing countries who had finally got moved to the top of the agenda in New Delhi, in the Delhi Declaration which was agreed to in 2002, and there's much interest in moving together, moving more concretely on an adaptation package.

The problem we have with adaptation, of course, is that it's very difficult to define exactly what it is, and so there's much work to be done. The impact, say, of climate variability or potential climate change tends to be very local or regional in magnitude. We don't really have a good way to forecast what those changes might be. Some changes may be positive, some negative. So there are a lot of technical issues underlying that, but we certainly want to assist the presidency of the COPs and the parties, who will be the Argentina Environment Minister, to move forward on that as much as possible.

The second piece in which there's much interest in a number of Kyoto parties is moving forward to what we'll call the next round of negotiations. As you know, the Kyoto Protocol just covers the period 2008 to 2012. Under the terms of the Protocol itself, the Kyoto parties are to initiate discussions on commitments beyond 2012 in 2005, which is next year, and so there's going to be interest on the part of a number of the Kyoto parties, in particular, to start those conversations, if not in Buenos Aires, then at least to set the stage there so that they can be launched next year. That is an area which we do not think is going to be particularly helpful and we, quite frankly, think it's not advisable to move forward yet for a variety of reasons which, if you want to do a follow-up, I can get into.

But it's those two basic areas that we think that are going to be highlighted in Buenos Aires, along with a whole raft of, say, more technical issues.

MR. DENIG: Okay, let's go to Japan in the front, please.

QUESTION: My name is Turu Yoshida with Nikkei newspaper. Why don't you propose Kyoto Protocol member countries to lift, as you said, to modify the Kyoto Protocol to allow U.S. to enter the Kyoto Protocol or to impose some restriction to China or India or other developing countries?

MR. WATSON: From the United States point of view, there are many, many problems with Kyoto, of which the stringent targets and timetables are only one. I would recommend that you read a report which your Ministry of Energy, Trade and Industry, METI, has issued in October, which examines a number of perceived flaws, even from their point of view, in the Protocol itself. We just do not think that the targets and timetables approach anything that the United States will be able to accept in the foreseeable future, certainly nothing that's going to attract the participation of developing countries such as China and India. Rather, we believe that a more cooperative approach is going to be required; to go to China, India, other large developing countries and try to get them to enter into a Kyoto-type regime with strict targets and timetables is a nonstarter, it's a waste of time, and, quite frankly, it's not a conversation the United States would engage in either.

MR. DENIG: Okay, let's go here, please.

QUESTION: Thank you. This is Akemi Yoshimoto with Kyodo News, Japanese wire. Let me ask two questions. And the one is that the Bush Administration position about global warming, it has been quite unclear whether or not global warming was caused by human activity. You know, it's quite unclear how Bush Administration looks at this matter, and could you clarify the present position about global warming, whether or not it is caused by human activity?

And may I place a second one? A second one is just about number about COP 10. Could you tell me the number of delegation and who leads the delegation?

MR. WATSON: Yes, let me take the second one first since that's the easier one. The leader of the U.S. delegation will be Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky. She will be there during the ministerial portion, which will be the second week of the meeting. I will be alternative head of the delegation prior to her arrival.
We're going to have senior officials from a number of agencies, senior officials as well as technical experts. I can't remember all the agencies that are involved. I know certainly the Department of Energy is going to be an important part of that. Our Department of Commerce, our National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Environmental Protection Agency, our U.S. Department of Agriculture, and our U.S. Agency for International Development will be among the major contributors there, and of course a large contingent of negotiators from the State Department. We're going to have roughly the same size, somewhere in the neighborhood of 40, that we've had in the past at these meetings. Obviously we'll have some people that won't be directly involved in the negotiation but also will be participating in some site events and so on and talking about our policy.

With regard to your second question, let me first start it that we do recognize, and the President has made it very clear that the United States does consider climate change to be a long-term issue, and we are committing to addressing it. Now, I'll go back to what the President said in his February of 2002 speech. Almost simultaneously when the President indicated that we would not be joining Kyoto, he asked the National Academy of Sciences to produce a report on the state of the science of climate change, and the National Academy produced a report in 2001 and actually the President made reference to the results of that study in his February speech. And I'll just paraphrase; I don't have the exact quotes of what he said. But, basically, what he said, referring to the Academy Report, is that science tells us that the surface temperature of the earth has risen by approximately .5 degrees Celsius over the past 100 years. Concentrations of greenhouse gases, specifically, especially carbon dioxide, have increased since the beginning of the industrial revolution. Those are facts. There is no doubt that those are facts. But, you know, as we get into the issue of how much is human-induced and how much is natural, the science also tells us that the projections of the future in an area as complex as climate change are subject to large uncertainties. And so, there are many, many uncertainties as to how much is attributable to human activities, and how much is attributable to natural impact.

However, I want to emphasize that we are taking the issue seriously. We're spending a lot of money on the science, $2 billion annually, to address the science, to try to get a firmer grip on the science. And as Mr. Conover said, over $3 billion in the variety program, both research and development and in deployment programs, to address the problem.

MR. DENIG: All right. Let's go in the back there please.

QUESTION: Hello, Suzanne Presto, with VOA.

I have a question about the response to you, this week's article in Nature, where the scientists in Britain say that they can quantify how much the greenhouse emissions can contribute to freak weather events, and also they open up the idea of a possibility of lawsuits that can come from that. I was wondering what your reaction is to that.

MR. WATSON: I'm sorry. I haven't seen the article.

MR. CONOVER: I believe it's just being published today.

MR. WATSON: Yeah, there were news reports about it.

QUESTION: (Inaudible.)

MR. CONOVER: Yes. And in general, many of these studies and modeling efforts have large margins of error, and the point that Dr. Watson was making is that we are spending $2 billion a year through our climate change science program to attempt to reduce those margins of error and to better quantify those very questions -- What are the risks? What are the benefits? What's the interplay between adaptation and mitigation? -- but at the same time recognizing that mitigation technologies are going to take some time to develop.

We are aggressively working on the research and development of those technologies, which, in addition to having significant greenhouse gas management attributes, generally have great local health benefits, reduction of air pollution and energy security in the various countries in which they'd be deployed. So we are working very hard, in terms of reducing the costs of the mitigation technologies, as we're answering these questions on the science side.

MR. DENIG: Any other questions?

Yes, Austria in the back.

QUESTION: Edith Grunwald, Austria Press Agency.

You mentioned before, if I understood correctly, that climate change has also -- has not only a possible negative but also possible positive effect. What do you mean -- in your view, these positive effects of the global climate change?

Thank you.

MR. WATSON: Well, I believe that there are many areas in the world that people inhabit that don't think they have a particularly good climate. It might be too arid. It might be too wet. It might be too hot. It might be too cold from their point of view. The point is it isn't all good. If you're going to be all bad in all places -- I know the way it's portrayed in the press is that everything is horrible, but there are winners and losers and it's not a unity. The climate does not act uniformly across the globe, obviously.

MR. DENIG: Okay. Yes, up here.

QUESTION: Dietmar Ostermann, German newspaper, Frankfurter Rundschau.

Can you give us some numbers? You said that you're on your way reaching that goal of the 18 percent reduction in intensity. And you also said that the growth in emissions is lower than in many or some of the EU countries. Can you just give us the numbers to that?

MR. WATSON: Well, let me give you a specific number that I can -- that most recent submission, at least that we did, and you can compare it with what other countries did. Each of the developed countries is required to submit an annual inventory of its greenhouse gas emissions to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Secretariat. Typically, it happens in the April to June timeframe for most parties. And we reported in April, as did the other parties, our 2002 figures, as well as any updates we might have had on past figures.

Let me just say that from 2000 to 2002, which is really the time period that this President could impact, our emissions have declined by approximately 1 percent, and if you could compare that to what's happened in many countries, that's not a record that many could match. Now there are many reasons for that.

But, yes?

QUESTION: Is it intensity or is it the --

MR. WATSON: Oh, I'm talking about absolute emissions.

QUESTION: Okay.

MR. WATSON: Yeah, absolute emissions. And we have had some significant economic growth during that time, so our intensity has gone down. But our emissions in 2002 were lower than they were in 2000. We'll have to see. I believe preliminary figures in 2003 indicated there -- I think --

MR. CONOVER: -- slight growth but --

MR. WATSON: Yeah, very, very slight growth.

MR. CONOVER: But intensity declined.

MR. WATSON: Yeah, but continued intensity declined. So we really believe we're making headway on reducing the growth in the emissions. And again, I'm sorry I don't have exact numbers on the intensity declined, but we feel we're well on our target to meeting the 18 percent goal at the present set forth.

QUESTION: Yeah, Toru Yoshida, with Nikkei newspaper.

With respect to nuclear energy, what's your strategy to promote nuclear energy? And the second question is about to ITER, you mentioned. Do you support Japanese initiative, or do you change the mind to support European Union?

MR. CONOVER: I'll take the second question first, and then the first question. We have found the Japanese site technically superior but we support the ITER process and look forward to the conclusion of the negotiations and getting on with the work.

As to the first question, we have a varied approach to supporting nuclear power, both in the near term and in the long term. We have a program called Nuclear Power 2010, which is designed to get nuclear power plants sited in the United States, dealing with the combined operating instruction license to move forward with getting that emissions free energy source growing again in this country.

We also have a longer range program, the GEN 4 initiative that I mentioned before, the multilateral effort, to create a new generation of nuclear power plants that are economically more attractive, environmentally more acceptable, deal better with the waste issue and are proliferation resistant. At the same time, we have an advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative that is designed to get a better handle on reducing waste so that those issues can be dealt with in a better fashion and allow us to move ahead with the large amounts of nuclear power that are likely to be needed to deal with this challenge over the next century.

MR. WATSON: You might want to just mention the re-licensing in Yucca Mountain.

MR. CONOVER: And to deal with the waste here domestically, we are making progress with the Yucca Mountain waste repository; the re-licensing process is going forward and the issues that are involved with the standards will be dealt with. We're very optimistic that that site will be opened up and able to begin receiving waste in the 2015 timeframe.

MR. DENIG: Okay. Is there a final question? No? Okay.

Thank you very much, gentlemen.

MR. WATSON: Thank you all.