Climate Action » Climate Negotiations

Dispatches from Durban: How do you spell “climate negotiations”?

USCAN — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 12:35:02 +0000

Please join US CAN in welcoming our new Outreach Director, Justin(J.P.)Leous. J.P. arrived in Durban yesterday and will be actively engaged with members and friends. J.P. has extensive experience with community organizing, climate policy and non-profit management. J.P. comes to USCAN from The Wilderness Society where he covered a range of climate-related policy issues. J.P. is an avid blogger and has already started to document his trip so, stay tuned for more!

I should have known I was about to be dumped into a vat of United Nations alphabet soup the moment I heard I was going to “COP17”. However, it wasn’t until opening my briefing book for this 17th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (that’s the UNFCCC for those keeping score at home)that I realized I was about to learn a new and foreign language.

Sure, the international climate scene uses words too—and climate dorks like me are familiar with jargon like “mitigation”, “adaptation”, and “technology transfer”. But there’s nothing intuitive about acronyms like BAP (that’s the Bali Action Plan—shorthand for agreements reached at a Conference of Parties aka COP several years ago in, well, Bali), nor CBDR (Common But Differentiated Responsibilities—this principle acknowledges that all of humanity is in fight against climate change together, but different countries have different responsibilities to reduce emissions based on past pollution levels, current development status and so forth).

As I write this blog a soaking rain falls on Durban, South Africa—this year’s home to the UN’s 17th annual Conference of Parties (or as the cool kids say: COP). Delegates from more than 190 nations will gather in this sea side city to continue working toward an international agreement that addresses the climate crisis. Thousands of activists, nonprofit organizations, reporters, government representatives, and interested folks from across the globe are similarly filling Durban’s hotels and bars, seeking to witness—if not influence—the proceedings. And whether they’ve been steeped in climate negotiations for decades or just a few days, they are quickly picking up Durban’s new dialect: climatespeak.

While I thought I was connecting from Johannesburg this morning, I’ve now learned I spent time in “Joburg”. And I’m actually not really in Durban—I’m in “Durbs”. Heck, I don’t even work for the US Climate Action Network—I’m with US CAN. And don’t be caught confusing the AWG-KP with the AWG-LCA (I won’t bore you with the details), or thinking that someone talking about “REDD” is describing her favorite color. Nope—she’s talking about Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and (forest) Degradation.

Stay tuned for more updates, and acronyms, from Durban as negotiations head into their final week. Also, posted at: http://www.care2.com/causes/dispatches-from-durban-how-do-you-spell-climate-negotiations.html#ixzz1fNVXBi85

J.P. Leous, Outreach Director.

@jpleous

The Dangers Of Delay

USCAN — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 19:00:01 +0000

The Dangers of Delay

In Bonn, Germany last week diplomats and climate advocates gathered to build on the international framework for climate cooperation. As the UNFCCC nears its 20th birthday, this annual session was marked by difficulties sorting out the wording and scope of the agenda of its ‘implementing’ bodies. Despite near universal acclaim for the Cancun Agreements that laid out a modest, but detailed plan for the next phase of negotiations, work was stalled over differences of opinion of what decisions are actually ready to be implemented and what still needs more discussion and debate. By the end of the week, the negotiators were hard at work, engaged in productive conversations. But they wasted some valuable time.

UNFCCC’s Christiana Figueres briefs press on first day of the conference Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/unfccc/

UN climate chief Christiana Figueres is calling for world leaders to revise its 2 degree goal, aiming for a more protective level of 1.5. She also indicated that the world may have to resort to geoengineering technology that sucks greenhouse gases from the air to stave off the worst effects of global warming. This call for greater ambition and extraordinary measures comes as new figures from the International Energy Agency (IEA) suggest that prospects for reaching the 2 degree goal are even dimmer. Global emissions of energy-related carbon dioxide in 2010 were the highest ever.

Newsweek ran a great article recently illustrating the real costs of political bickering about climate. It asked, “Are you ready for more” extreme weather events that are the result of the climate altering pollution of our modern age. The article focused on the adaptation measures that will be needed as a result of decades of denial, disputes and delays. The reality of the stalemate on climate issues in the US, with ripple effects internationally, is that we now must tackle a more difficult and disparate set of policy choices. Adaptation is not something we must plan for in the future. It has become just as urgent as curbing the emissions that has caused the problem.

In an announcement that should have been greeted with cheers, American Electric Power (AEP), one of the nation’s largest power companies, announced that it was closing some its most polluting power plants, ‘blaming’ new EPA regulations for forcing the shut down. Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) both set the record straight in statements/blogs that are worth reading. Over a decade ago, this same company was sued by the Clinton Administration to avoid existing clean air rules that required modern pollution controls be installed on any modified power plant. The delays EPA rules AEP seeks, supported by Congressmen Dingell, Upton and Whitfield and Senator James Inhofe, is just another in a long line of delay strategies the utility industry has been using for over a decade. There is simply no more time to waste.

As climate advocates, we find ourselves in a war that has at least two fronts. First, we have to defend and implement the laws on the books, both domestically and internationally. Despite its smokescreen, AEP’s actions are proving that those laws can have real and beneficial effects for public health, the environment, and the economy. Second, we must seek new policies, investments and actions that will dramatically reduce emissions and enable both US cities and states, along with vulnerable nations, adapt to the reality of climate change. The risks and costs of both mitigation and adaptation measures only go up the longer we delay. Military experts are becoming increasingly vocal about the threats to our national security that will result if fail in this task. If politicians and industry continue to play games with the climate, what is now a war of words may become real life conflict over natural resources and climate refugees.

Angela Anderson, Program Director

The Dangers of Delay, Climate Action Hotline, 6.13.11

In Cancun, Negotiators Search For Agreement While Their Nations Push In Different Direction

Keith Schneider — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 17:45:42 +0000

On November 29 representatives from 190 countries will be in Cancun, Mexico for the 16^th Conference of the Parties under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Late last week, following a two-day Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate in Washington, the Obama administration’s chief climate negotiator told reporters not to expect too much.

“I would describe myself right now as neither an optimist nor a pessimist,” said Todd Stern, the State Department’s special envoy on climate, adding that there won’t be any “enormous leaps forward” in Cancun but “real and concrete steps” can be made.

Exactly what those could be has not come into focus, though Stern and other negotiators also noted that unless something tangible occurs at the Cancun meeting the credibility of the UN process will weaken. “The process can’t continually stalemate and remain the locus of activity,” Stern said.

A year ago, of course, global anticipation of a diplomatic breakthrough was high enough to attract the American president, the Chinese premier, and over 100 other heads of state to the Copenhagen climate summit. More than 125,000 people from all over the world marched for climate action on a cold and sunny Saturday afternoon. Thousands of journalists and producers filed reports from a crowded media room at the Bella Center, itself so full that security forces limited access.

Yet what was clear in Copenhagen, just as it was plain in the two other international climate conferences I’ve attended — in Barcelona in 2009 and in Tianjin last month — is this: The very same governments that produced a near stalemate on a climate treaty are simultaneously supporting global alliances of powerful energy companies to develop and consume the planet’s remaining reserves of fossil fuels. Let’s just put it this way. The executives of those companies are perfectly content with the grudging pace of climate negotiations.

China, for instance, has gained international renown for the speed at which it’s developed an alternative fuels manufacturing and power-generating sector. But the bigger money in China, and the alliances formed to make it, involve carbon-emitting coal, oil, and natural gas produced in and outside the fastest growing energy consumer on earth.

Royal Dutch Shell, for instance, is collaborating with CNPC, the Chinese National Petroleum Corp., to develop big new natural gas reserves in the deep shales below Sichuan province in a project aided by the U.S. Department of Energy. Sasol, the big South African oil company, is negotiating to build a huge refinery in Ningxia province to turn coal into liquid fuels. The world’s engineering firms are lining up to help China turn a proposal into an actual project to build a 2,000-mile long pipeline from the Bohai Sea inland to desperately dry Xinjiang province to provide coal mines with process water and power plants with cooling water.

Though China has announced its commitment to produce 15 percent of its electricity from renewable alternatives by 2020, up from seven percent this year, roughly 70 percent will still come from the 3.5 billion to 4.5 billion tons of coal it is expected to consume annually by the end of the decade. China’s oil and gas consumption also is climbing rapidly.

That’s why here in North America, China is joining India and Korea on a fossil fuel buying spree. China and Korea have big stakes in oil production from Canada’s tar sands, where they have joined American. European, and Canadian companies in spending $15 billion annually. The Wall Street Journal last week reported that Coal India Ltd., a state-controlled entity, is talking to Peabody Energy and Massey Energy Company to buy American mines.

Grist last week reported that “Reliance Industries of India bought a $3.4 billion stake in three U.S. shale gas companies earlier this year. In March, India’s Essar Group acquired Trinity Coal for $600 million; the company has active mines in Kentucky and West Virginia.”

Grist also noted that the China National Offshore Oil Corporation Ltd. agreed in October to pay up to $2.16 billion for a 33.3 percent stake in Oklahoma-based Chesapeake Energy’s interest in the Eagle Ford deep shale natural gas play. Chesapeake’s chairman, Aubrey McClendon, is an important contributor to Oklahoma Republican Senator James Inhofe, one of Capitol Hill’s most ardent opponents of climate action.

In short, the Cancun climate summit reflects two opposing theaters of action. In one, climate negotiators are getting tangled up in the soft lines of national distrust and diplomatic nuance. In the other, their governments and domestic energy companies are busier than ever drilling, mining, processing, and producing the dirty power that perpetuates the fossil fuel era. Somehow, climate advocates have to find a way to help the negotiators find a path to agreement while convincing the world of the emergency the fossil fuel industry is determined to make worse.

This is my last Hotline article. Thank you to my colleagues at USCAN and to you for all the hard work. You can find me at Circle of Blue, an independent Michigan-based news organization covering the global freshwater crisis, where I serve as senior editor.

Take care, Keith Schneider

Beneath the Bickering, Real Progress on Clean Energy, And Global Work Party Success

Keith Schneider — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 22:52:28 +0000

TIANJIN, China — On Monday, two days after the UNFCCC climate conference ended after six days of grudging negotiation, the sky above this busy city turned blue, the sun appeared for the first time in a week, and Tianjin’s angled skyline, not visible previously in the thick smog, appeared like a gleaming glass and steel mountain range.

The beautiful warm day not only brought a fresh focus to just how earnest China is in building cities of the future, it also helped to clarify the outcomes of this nation’s first global climate gathering.

From the speeding bullet train that brought participants from Beijing to this city’s spotless train station, to the state-of-the art electric buses that transported them to and from the brilliant marble and glass conference center, to the advanced coal-fired power plant and lithium ion auto batteries being built within city boundaries, China is as serious as any nation in adding clean energy and energy efficient tools to its economic development strategy.

The second big lesson of these intercessional talks is that a good portion of China’s work in the clean energy economy is occurring in close cooperation with either the American government or American companies.

Beneath Bickering, Real Progress

So while China and the United States continued the diplomatic bickering over commitments each was making to limit climate-changing emissions, and how to measure progress, the story on the street is that both nations are kind of walking hand in hand toward the same goal.

But one partner seems more ready than the other to take the lead. The big difference, made plain last week here, is that China’s leadership has developed the world’s largest markets for wind and solar power and appears committed to the clean energy enterprise. Meanwhile the staying power of the United States has been weakened by the opposition party’s conviction that climate change is a myth, and its avowed goal to roll back federal investment in solar, wind, clean car, rail, and other clean energy initiatives advanced by the Obama administration.

Christiana Figueres, the UNFCCC executive secretary, considered all of these competing trends and accurately declared the Tianjin conference a step forward. Negotiators completed a draft text to submit to the annual global climate summit that begins late next month in Cancun that, she said, defines “what is doable in Cancun and what will be left after Cancun.”

In the artful language of global negotiations that means negotiators here managed to push ahead a bit to resolve issues related to forest conservation, technology transfer, and financing for developing countries that could eventually lead to a global climate agreement.

Work Party Is Global Success

In the other big global climate story, tens of thousands of citizens from over 180 countries gathered in a giant global work party on Sunday to mark 350.org’s second annual international demonstration for climate action. Days before the work party, the White House announced it was installing new solar panels on the roof, the result of a concerted campaign to do so by Bill McKibben, the writer and 350.org leader.

One of the largest demonstrations occurred in Beijing where 30,000 students from 200 Chinese universities used the Global Work Party for a national call for climate solutions, marking the biggest show of youth environmental action in China’s history, said Paul Horsman, a leader of Tcktcktck.

“How do you say ‘thank you’ 7,347 times?” asked McKibben in a message sent to supporters. “People got to work yesterday in at least that many places around the world — the planet has never seen anything quite that widespread. Or quite that beautiful.”

Keith Schneider, a journalist and producer, is senior writer for the U.S. Climate Action Network. Reach him at kschneider@climatenetwork.org

Talk of Tianjin Climate Conference: China and U.S. Companies Are Electrifying The Car

Keith Schneider — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 01:04:54 +0000

TIANJIN, China – Whatever the differences that irked delegates from China and the United States during the six days of climate negotiations that ended here on Saturday, divisions principally defined by how each would control carbon emissions and measure progress, the unmistakable conclusion reached by most of the delegates and participants is how closely tied the two nations are to each the other.

Lying quietly below the nuanced diplomatic language of frustration and distrust expressed all week by Chinese and American negotiators is an expanse of cooperative projects in and outside government that are expressly designed to help China and the U.S. use energy more efficiently, develop new technology, and lower carbon emissions.

Participants this week toured an advanced coal-fired power plant that is being built by a consortium of Chinese companies and includes an American coal company. Chinese and American partnerships also are being forged in solar and wind manufacturing, and in carbon capture and sequestration emissions control technology. The two countries last year established a joint clean energy research center, with offices in China and the United States.

Coda electric sedan.

Coda Electric Car
Another good example is how Coda Automotive, a California-based electric vehicle manufacturer, and Lishen Battery Company, a Tianjin-based manufacturer, are collaborating to build batteries in their joint venture factory for Coda’s all-electric cars for sale in the U.S. starting early next year. The powerful, 800-pound lithium-ion battery pack that will provide the Coda with a 100-mile range between charges, is being built and assembled in Lishen’s joint venture plant on the city’s south side.

The Coda’s drive train and electric engine are American designs built in factories in the U.S. The car’s safety systems were engineered by American and European experts and will be built by American companies. And a Chinese auto manufacturer will receive all of the various parts and assemble them under contract into new cars for shipment to the U.S. The company is planning to build a battery assembly plant in Ohio, where Coda’s chief executive, Kevin Czinger, was raised.

In his blog posts and various interviews in recent months Czinger has expressed his own frustration with energy and climate policy in the U.S. But that is not affecting his company, which he says will sell 14,000 cars in California next year. “The good news is that we can take action,” Czinger writes in his latest blog post. “We don’t need to wait for our leaders. We can do what we do best – take new ideas and new technology and create. The electric car can be the driver of a new economic and energy system. It can be the driver of a new American mindset and a revived manufacturing foundation. Within a globally interdependent world that will have increasingly higher shipping costs, we can rebuild our car industry based on a new technology. And we can replace our foreign oil with clean, secure and affordable electricity generated in America. We can create a new prosperity for this century. We have the choice. Now.”

The Coda will be priced at around $45,000, and with federal and state electric vehicle and clean energy incentives, the off-the-lot cost will be closer to the low $30,000’s. Either way, neither the Coda, nor the other all-electric passenger cars making their way to the market – the Nissan Leaf and the Ford Focus – are priced low enough for sale in the world’s largest car market here in China.

Biggest Car Market and Big Oil Demand
Last year, China surpassed the U.S. as the world’s number one vehicle market, recording 13.5 million car and truck sales, according to the China Passenger Car Association. Manufacturers, by contrast, sold 10.43 million in the U.S., according to the Center for Automotive Research at the University of Michigan. This year vehicle sales in the U.S. could reach 11.6 million according to J.D. Power.

Sales in China in 2010 are expected to top 16 million units. Xu Changming, a research director at the State Information Center, told reporters in June that the number of vehicles in China could reach 78 million units, up from 63 million at the end of 2009, and surpassing Japan as the second largest nation for vehicle registrations. He also said the number of vehicles in China is expected to eventually rise to about 490 million units, though he did not offer a date for reaching that forecast.

A Coda executive on Saturday said that at the current sales pace China’s vehicle population could reach 200 million by the end of the decade, or roughly 60 million less than the number of vehicles in the U.S. this year.

Tianjin traffic and smog.

Electric vehicles, of course, staples of transportation in China, though most of them are two- and three-wheel bikes, scooters, and carts fitted with small electric motors. The country manufactures state-of-the-art electric buses, a number of which were used to quietly transport climate negotiators and participants to and from the conference center and their hotels.

The country also is rapidly electrifying its high-speed rail network that transports thousands of passengers on sleek trains, like the one that links Tianjin to Beijing, capable of speeds in excess of 200 miles per hour. According to Chinese NGO experts at the climate conference, China has built 4,000 miles of high speed rail and is in the process of constructing 6,000 more miles.

China, though, could use many more electric cars. Gas and diesel-fueled cars jam China’s highways and urban streets, and contribute to the smog in China’s major cities that is so thick it obscures the tops of buildings. The rapid rise in vehicle ownership also is challenging China’s economic security, just as it is in the United States. China’s oil consumption last year reached 8.625 million barrels a day, or 3.1 billion barrels annually, or nearly twice China’s consumption in 1999, according to the respected 2010 BP Statistical Review of World Energy. U.S. oil consumption is now just under 7 billion barrels annually, according to the Department of Energy.

China produces nearly 3.8 million barrels of oil daily from its own oil fields, which means that it imports 56 percent of its petroleum. That percentage will grow steadily higher. The demand for oil in China grew 539,000 barrels a day from 2008 to 2009, or nearly 7 percent. Meanwhile China’s oil production fell 111,000 barrels a day during the same period, or just under 3 percent.

Bullet train between Beijing and Tianjin.

Keith Schneider, a journalist and producer, is senior writer for the U.S. Climate Action Network. Reach him at kschneider@climatenetwork.org

Despite Divide Inside the Tianjin Climate Conference, China and U.S. Cooperate To Deploy Advanced Coal Technology

Keith Schneider — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 18:04:32 +0000

TIANJIN, China – Though Chinese workers this week celebrated the 61^st anniversary of the founding of the Peoples Republic of China, a holiday season as significant as July 4 in the United States, a swarm of construction laborers at China’s GreenGen coal-fired gasification power plant were busy welding pipes, fitting massive joints, and bending steel for forms to be filled with concrete.

Since construction on the $1 billion project began in June 2009, said Li Liangshi, the deputy chief engineer, the dusty construction site has been a nonstop 24/7 hive of activity for 2,100 workers. Next year, the consortium of companies financing the project, five of them Chinese plus Peabody Coal, an American producer, plan to start operations.

GreenGen’s principle purpose is demonstrating advanced Chinese technology to burn coal much more efficiently than conventional power plants, remove troubling air pollutants, and prove that its climate-changing carbon emissions can be safely captured. Much of the sequestered carbon will be pumped into oil wells to increase production in one of China’s mature oil fields.

“China has a lot of coal,” said Deborah Seligsohn, the principal advisor of the World Resource Institute’s China Climate and Energy Program, who joined a Clean Air Task Force–USCAN-sponsored tour of the plant on Thursday. “This project deals with efficiency and pollution abatement in a fairly clean way.”

Outside Stalled Negotiations, Promising Steps
This week the UN climate negotiations inside the expansive Meijiang Convention and Exhibition Center here have been stymied, in large part by a dispute between China and the United States about how the two countries take action to combat climate change and measure progress toward those ends.

Outside the closed negotiating sessions, though, a series of side events convened by NGOs and governments have detailed the progress, some of it quite impressive, that both countries are making to advance clean technology and energy efficiency that are intended to simultaneously build economic vibrancy while lowering carbon emissions. In some cases, Chinese and American companies are cooperating on clean energy and efficiency projects.

The trip to GreenGen illustrated both the competition and cooperation between China and the U.S. to develop the tools and technology to burn coal more efficiently, and to safely dispose of its dangerous emissions. In terms of investment and the number of projects, the U.S. and China are both working to perfect the technology, design and deploy the equipment, and command the potential multi-billion dollar annual market for what both countries call “clean coal” power, but more accurately can be called “advanced coal.”

GreenGen will test gasification technology developed by China’s Thermal Power Research Institute (TPRI). TPRI has licensed the gasification technology deployed at GreenGen to Houston-based Future Fuels LLC. Future Fuels plans to use the technology at its Good Spring IGCC project in Pennsylvania, which it expects will deliver 270-megawatts of electricity while capturing over 50 percent of the CO2 output initially and nearly 100 percent by 2020.

Coal in the China, U.S. Path To Lower Carbon Future
Coal’s influence in both countries on climate change is significant. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reported last year that coal combustion at American utilities accounts for 2.7 billion tons of the roughly 6 billion tons of annual U.S. carbon emissions. In rapidly developing China, coal accounts for 80 percent of the 6.3 billion tons of carbon emissions, or about a quarter of all the climate-changing emissions globally.

Both governments, along with utilities and manufacturers see the need to reduce coal’s influence on global warming, and an opportunity to build economic strength in reaching that goal. Last November, during a trip to China, President Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao formally announced the establishment of a joint Clean Energy Research Center to collaborate on the science and development of low-carbon energy, and to cooperate specifically on generating energy from coal with much less pollution. In March, Steven Chu, the American secretary of energy, announced that over the next five years the Energy Department would invest $37.5 million in the joint center to support research conducted at a facility in the U.S. and another in China.

The United States, according to the Department of Energy, also is spending $3.4 billion to leverage $8 billion more in private investments to build a national array of plants that demonstrate CCS technology, and that showcase new combustion techniques.

Advanced Coal Projects
They include the $1 billion U.S. investment, just announced in September, for FutureGen, to build a high-tech oxygen equipped coal boiler unit to an existing 200-megawatt unit at an American Energy Resources plant in Meredosia, Illinois, and then deploy CCS technology to sequester the carbon emissions. The DOE also just approved a $308 million investment in a $2.8 billion Kern County, California plant to develop cleaner combustion technology and carbon sequestration techniques. Other investments include $350 million toward a $1.7 billion state of the art integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) plant with carbon emissions directed to producing more oil in old wells in Texas, and $36 million for a $2.15 billion IGCC plant in Minnesota. Private IGCC plants are under development in Indiana and Pennsylvania as well, and the Duke Power plant in Indiana is testing CCS storage techniques.

According to a recent study by the Brookings Institution U.S. and Chinese companies are collaborating on a number of projects. In August 2009, Duke Energy signed a memorandum of understanding with Huaneng for developing renewable and clean energy technologies. In September 2009, Southern Company and KBR Inc. agreed to license their IGCC technology to the Beijing Guoneng Yinghua Clean Energy Engineering Company. Peabody Coal is an investor in the GreenGen project. Huaneng joined the FutureGen Industrial Alliance.

Here in Tianjin, the GreenGen project is at the head of a pack of Chinese power plants designed to burn coal more efficiently and to develop and prove CCS techniques. China has built over 20 supercritical and ultra-supercritical power plants that operate at extremely high water temperatures and pressures that produce much higher efficiencies, producing more power with less coal, and thus lower emissions per megawatt of power generated.

The World Resources Institute, China has developed and approved seven major energy projects to demonstrate CCS techniques, and to develop more efficient energy generating practices. They include the 845-megawatt Huaneng Gaobeidian Co-Generation plant in Beijing, the first in China to fully test CO2 capture, and features a full suite of environmental controls. During winter months, steam from the plant is used for district heating, and efficiency can be has high as 84 percent. Engineers estimate the plant uses about 400,000 tons less coal annually than a similarly-sized conventional plant.

GreenGen Could Be Big Step
GreenGen represents the next step in China’s drive for higher efficiency and lower pollution in generating power from coal. When the first of three phases opens next year, GreenGen will be the first utility-scale IGCC power plant in China, and one of the few operating in the world.

When fully operational in 2014, Chinese officials assert, Greengen will generate 650-megawatts at 60 percent to 80 percent efficiency – about twice the efficiency of conventional coal-fired power plants – and dispose of its climate-changing emissions through carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology.

If the plant is a success, said Jiang Kejun, a director of research for the Energy Research Institute, a unit of the National Development and Reform Commission, China is prepared to build 20 more such gasification and CCS power plants. “We want to make sure it works,” he said.

Keith Schneider, a journalist and producer, is senior writer for the U.S. Climate Action Network. Reach him at kschneider@climatenetwork.org

Two Senior Diplomats Frustrated By Pace of Tianjin Climate Conference

Keith Schneider — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 20:55:35 +0000

TIANJIN, China — Two of the significant participants in the UN climate change conference here, UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres and chief U.S. negotiator Jonathan Pershing, have made it known they are increasingly unhappy with a tangled negotiating process that seems unable to move beyond producing more snags.
Over the last 18 hours or so, the two made their frustrations public and issued veiled warnings about the relevance of the negotiations and whether it was meeting the urgency of the task at hand.

In statements to reporters yesterday Pershing described the punishingly slow pace of the negotiations, which he said were revisiting old issues and haven’t moved nearly far enough beyond where they were nearly a year ago, when countries agreed to the Copenhagen Accord. “What is frustrating in these negotiations is to see countries not using that as the basis, but relitigating things that we resolved,” he said.

But they weren’t the only ones frustrated. Xie Zhenhua, China’s negotiator, made little attempt to conceal the target of his frustration when talking to reporters. “A developed country I won’t name hasn’t done a job for itself. It has not provided financing or technology to other countries, yet it asks them to accept stringent monitoring and voluntary domestic actions. It’s totally outrageous. It’s quite unacceptable.”

Several countries, including the U.S., warned that the lack of progress could do irreversible damage to the credibility of the UNFCCC. Pershing, who’s participated since the late 1980s in UN climate conferences in various roles inside and outside the government, said that the impediments they continue to face diminished the value of the UN climate negotiations. He said that while the U.S. would stay in the process it also was pursuing progress on global warming in other councils of influence around the world.

Negotiators hoped to use the six-day Tianjin climate conference, which ends on Saturday, to close gaps on issues big and small in order to possibly reach consensus on one or more of the big ideas that could lead to a binding legal agreement. Those include limits on carbon emissions, and a means to verify progress, financing for developing nations to adapt to climate change, technology transfer, and forest preservation.. The annual 2010 global climate summit starts at the end of November in Cancun, Mexico.

This afternoon, Figueres briefed non-governmental organization leaders and expressed a similar level of alarm at how little movement has occurred in the first four days of negotiations in Tianjin. “Parties had a huge number of issues and a huge number of details within each issue when we got here,” she said. “The effort is to pair that down into a realistic number of issues and a realistic level of details. There’s a big challenge here in balance.”

But Pershing and Figueres clearly indicated that the negotiations are not getting as close as they need to in order for the summit in Mexico to yield an outcome significant enough to signal the world is ready to come to a binding climate agreement. That, in turn, could jeopardize the credibility of the UN process for developing a legal framework for limiting climate changing emissions.

“We’re locked in detail and specificity,” said Figueres. “It’s a 3-D picture and overlaid to all of that there is the big question is how do you choose, literally choose, how do you pick out from all the details those aspects which will be the kernels from which parties make a decision? And what do you do with the rest? There is no possibility to have a legally binding treaty in Cancun. But it can be a very good effort to set the foundations and cornerstones.”

She urged negotiators to lay aside at least some portion of their differences and move the world closer to an agreement. “We can not safeguard our future. I do still harbor the hope that we will still be able to make a difference.”

She added: “Can we guarantee that you will have the same quality of life that we did when I was growing up on this planet? I don’t think so. There is already a built-in precarious nature. We are bound to what is happening. There is an increase in CO2 in the atmosphere. We are giving back a diminished planet. It’s true. I am not going to sit here and pretend that the planet that you have now is the same planet we had when I was growing up. It’s not.”

Keith Schneider, a journalist and producer, is senior writer for the U.S. Climate Action Network. Reach him at kschneider@climatenetwork.org

Coal Is King In China, And Top Priority For Engineers Determined To Lower Climate Risks

Keith Schneider — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 14:48:51 +0000

TIANJIN, China – This industrious nation’s allegiance to construction projects of massive scale are as familiar to the world as the 2,500-year-old, 5,500-mile Great Wall of China, which protected the country’s northern frontier, and as imposing as the wide moats and towering red stone walls of the 600-year-old Forbidden City at the heart of Beijing.

Still, international visitors attending China’s first U.N. climate change conference are struck by the immensity of the brand new polished marble and glass Meijiang Convention and Exhibition Center, the site of the meeting, and the intensity of the retail, commercial, and infrastructure construction occurring outside its hangar-like entry.

The Meijiang Convention and Exhibition Center.

Spanning 2.47 million square feet and soaring to interior heights of 10 stories, the exhibition center, which resembles the Trade Federation’s shining headquarters in the Star Wars films, is easily large enough to house a small fleet of transoceanic jetliners. It opened in September following just eight months of construction. The building is so new and was constructed so quickly that the center does not appear on the city’s newest maps, which memorialize the small lakes and wetlands wrecked by its presence.

Meanwhile, flanking the brand new 10-lane boulevard out front are dozens of construction cranes, sprouted like dandelions atop the steel skeletons of residential and commercial towers under construction.

The speed and scope of the development here, and in dozens of other Chinese cities, is visible evidence of the breathtaking economic expansion that in a generation has pulled 400 million Chinese from poverty into the middle class. At all times of the day and night, Tianjin’s restaurants are full and its noisy streets are a tangle of walkers, bikers, and drivers. China’s economic development ministries consistently state that they anticipate growth to continue apace, and by 2020 the economy will be 60 percent larger than it is today.

This week, in a number of side events, including one sponsored on Tuesday by the U.S. Climate Action Network, several of the leading environmental scientists and technical specialists in China and the United States described the consequences of reaching that goal on the nation’s energy production, and to the work of taming the warming climate.

Their conclusions spanned a range of outcomes, both hopeful and discouraging. China’s powerful investment in wind and solar – nearly $35 billion last year and rapidly growing will help reduce carbon emissions. The country also is pursuing new combustion and pollution control technology – a good bit of it in cooperation with American industrial companies — to lower pollution and the climate risks of coal, which accounts for 70 percent of the country’s energy.

“There is real opportunity in developing better ways to use coal,” said Ming Sung, chief representative of the Clean Air Task Force in Beijing, who described new technology China is developing to capture, use, and permanently dispose of carbon emissions from coal plants.

But China’s devotion to its extensive coal reserves, according to every projection in and outside the government, also means an increase in carbon emissions over the next decade.

Inside the center.

A Future Built on Coal
Indeed, lying at the other end of China’s surging economic expansion is a powerful engine fueled principally by coal. This nation, the world’s largest coal producer and consumer, will mine and use 3.15 billion tons of coal this year, three times more than the United States, according to the International Energy Agency. Of course, China also has 5 times the population of the U.S., requiring more power to electrify homes and power its economy. The result for the atmosphere is that China this year will add 6.3 billion tons of climate changing carbon emissions, the most of any country, according to the Energy Information Administration, a unit of the U.S. Department of Energy.

China understands its dilemma and is diversifying the energy portfolio. The country has 11 nuclear plants generating 11,000 megawatts and the government’s goal is to add 60,000 to 75,000 more megawatts by 2020, or roughly 60 to 70 new nuclear generating units. The nuclear expansion is a feature of the country’s plan, announced in July, to spend $738 billion over the next decade on “alternative energy development,” which also includes biomass, wind, solar, and natural gas from deep carbon bearing shales.

Moreover China has already built 4,000 miles of high-speed rail, including the 205 mph bullet train between Tianjin and Beijing, and plans to build 6,000 more miles. It has developed policies to improve buildings, construct eco cities, and save energy.

Yet according to a range of estimates by authorities in and outside China, coal production and consumption by the end of the decade could still reach 3.5 billion to 4.5 billion tons. China announced last year at the Copenhagen climate summit that it would cut the “carbon intensity” of its emissions 40 to 45 percent by 2020, meaning it would reduce the amount of carbon needed to generate a dollar of growth. The world welcomed the commitment, the first time China ever bound itself to any emissions limit. Its representative here say they are meeting the goal.

But government authorities and experts in the NGO community say that China’s emissions will continue to rise.

Flanking the brand new 10-lane boulevard out front are dozens of construction cranes.

When asked about this, Jiang Kejun, a director of research at the Energy Research Institute, a unit of the National Development and Reform Commission, said in an interview, “There’s disagreement about how much coal will be produced. We project that coal production will peak by 2020 at 3.4 billion tons.”

That projection, said Kejun, is based not only on meeting the goals of China’s energy efficiency and diversification program, but also on the country’s ability to achieve sizable improvements in generating efficiency from coal-fired plants.

China is closing its oldest and dirtiest coal-fired power plants at the rate of roughly two a month, according to Barbara Finamore, the director of the NRDC’s China Program, and opening new plants that burn coal more efficiently, thus lowering fuel consumption.

China also is building a 250-megawatt, utility-scale and more efficient integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) coal generating plant in Tianjin that also will use carbon capture and storage technology to control its emissions. The $1 billion plant will be completed next year by partnership that includes an American coal company, a consortium of Chinese utilities and coal companies, and the government. Similar technology will also be used on power plants under development in Illinois and Pennsylvania, learning from the Chinese experience.

It is the first in a line of similar IGCC plants China has already planned and permitted. Kejun said Chinese officials are waiting to see how the Tianjin plant performs before moving ahead with the others.

USCAN has arranged a tour of the plant for conference participants on Thursday, and we’ll have a complete report here.

Keith Schneider, a journalist and producer, is senior writer for the U.S. Climate Action Network. Reach him at kschneider@climatenetwork.org

In Tianjin, China and U.S. Similarities Overshadow Differences

Keith Schneider — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 21:29:05 +0000

On opposite sides of the Pacific, leaders of the world’s two biggest carbon polluters are plainly thinking about clean energy to power up their economies and cool the climate.

In Washington, the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced their intention to extend vehicle efficiency standards that went into effect in April in order meet a national goal of 60 miles per gallon average fuel economy by 2025.

President Obama, in an interview in Rolling Stone magazine promised to keep pushing the clean energy and climate action envelope. And in his Saturday national radio address, the president attacked the Republican campaign plan to scrap clean energy incentives. “We can go back to the failed energy policies that profited the oil companies but weakened our country,” the president said. “We can go back to the days when promising industries got set up overseas. Or we can go after new jobs in growing industries.”

China’s first UN Climate Conference held at the Tianjin Meijiang Convention and Exhibition Center (MJCEC) shown above.

Meanwhile in Tianjin, where China is hosting its first U.N. climate conference this week, Chinese officials also are touting clean energy initiatives. They include mandatory building standards established five years ago that are lowering energy demand, new offshore windfarms that supply as much power as big coal-fired power plants, new cities built on principles of energy efficiency and conservation, and a national commitment to lower the levels of carbon pouring into the atmosphere.

What distinguishes China from the United States is that there’s no political opposition getting in the way. China’s national policy vector is very plainly pointing in the direction of incorporating more clean energy technology, and energy efficient practices into its economy. The U.S. gear at the national level, with Republicans campaigning on a message attacking climate science, the Senate unable to act on a comprehensive bill, and investors unsettled by the roiled politics, is in danger of slipping into reverse if it hasn’t already done so.

What makes the countries similar, though, is how far each needs to go and what both countries are willing to do to really make a dent in reducing global carbon emissions. That, of course, has been the central issue confronting negotiators at UN climate meetings for several years, and it’s the single biggest issue in Tianjin.

Very briefly, while both nations are investing considerable sums in clean energy development, China and the U.S. also are tightly hugging the existing fossil fuel economy as essential to national stability and well-being. The consequences of that are considerable for the environment and the rest of the world.

The U.S. produces and burns 1 billion tons of coal annually, uses almost 7 billion barrels of oil, and last year produced 5.8 billion tons of carbon emissions. China meanwhile, according to state economic agencies, will mine and combust around 3.15 billion tons of coal this year, consume more than 3 billion barrels of oil, and produce around 6.3 billion tons of carbon emissions.

While U.S. energy demand and carbon emissions are slipping as a result of the Great Recession, China’s energy demand is soaring. By 2020 according to government projections, China will use 4.2 billion tons of coal – which accounts for 80 percent of its emissions. And even if China meets its 40 to 45 percent reduction in “carbon intensity” by 2020, an analysis by the Natural Resources Defense Council projects that China’s carbon emissions will essentially double by the end of the decade.

Tianjin climate negotiators, aware of the stakes and stymied by the pace, press ahead here to draw a bit closer to global agreements on financing for developing nations to pursue clean energy, conserving forests, reducing the effects of climate change, verification and transparency, and other issues. The annual global climate summit in Cancun, Mexico approaches at the end of November. The new UNFCCC Executive Secretary, Christiana Figueres, said yesterday there is a dire need to show the world’s citizens that the negotiations are making “visible progress.”

Essentially what she meant is that negotiators need to change the vector of a grim situation. She commended NGO groups for generating grassroots support, including 350.org, which is holding its Global Work Party on Saturday at thousands of sites in nearly 200 countries.

China’s energy demand is soaring. By 2020 according to government projections, China will use 4.2 billion tons of coal – which accounts for 80 percent of its emissions.

Indeed, there’s time, bushels of good ideas, and a tide of public will to act. The NRDC and Environment America calculated that reaching the 60 mile per gallon mileage standard in the U.S. by 2025 would save consumers $101 billion in 2030, cut oil use by roughly 1 billion barrels, and reduce heat-trapping carbon pollution by 470 million tons, the equivalent of taking nearly 70 million vehicles off the road.

And here in China, before the Tianjin climate meeting opened, leaders in the Guangzhou, the nation’s third largest city, said that they were spending $37 billion on 34 projects to reduce fuel consumption, increase energy efficiency, and lower climate emissions. The projects include advances in public transit, replacing low efficiency lighting with LED technology, and generating a sizable share of the city’s power with green energy sources.

Stay in touch with our coverage from the Tianjin climate meeting.

Keith Schneider, a journalist and producer, is senior writer for the U.S. Climate Action Network. Reach him at kschneider@climatenetwork.org

Behind The Great Wall of Climate Change An American Artist Gaining Global Distinction

Keith Schneider — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 15:46:06 +0000

Great Wall’s creator, 26-year-old sculptor and fine artist Joseph Ellis.

TIANJIN, China – In almost every way – timing, media coverage, official attention, and spirited engagement – the stamping of the Great Climate Wall of China with a Chinese proverb this morning was a triumph for its organizers — the Global Campaign For Climate Action (GCCA), Tck tck tck, and Greenpeace. It also was another satisfying example of leveraging art and message – “with everyone’s determination, we can win anything” — for the Great Wall’s creator, 26-year-old sculptor and fine artist Joseph Ellis.

Ellis, an American raised in upstate New York, has lived and worked in Beijing for five years, during which he became the first Westerner to graduate from the Central Academy of Fine Arts’ prestigious sculpture program. His work is colorful, creative, dynamic and fresh, just the sort of artistic message distinctive enough to generate commissions and a handsome living, attract a New York Times profile earlier this year, and earn him a TED Fellowship, one of 20 awarded from the more than 5,000 candidates who applied.

His work also attracted Greenpeace, which worked with Ellis two years ago to design and execute an hourglass presented to Secretary of State Hilary Clinton during a climate action demonstration at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. In 2009, Greenpeace funded Ellis to execute 100 life-size sculptures of children carved from ice for another climate action event.

In creating the Great Climate Wall of China (at a cost of $6,000) for the opening of the UN climate conference here, Greenpeace and other NGOs collected snapshot portraits, which Ellis assembled into a mosaic that formed a dominant image of the real Great Wall. He printed the impressionist mosaic on fabric, fitted it to supports and assembled the display in side-by-side units to build a tall, colorful barrier with a direct message. “I will act on climate, will you?”

The entire project, start to finish, was completed in six days. “It’s amazing what you can do in China in just under a week. The people here are incredible and using the resources at my disposal never cease to amaze,” said Ellis. “When we combine our efforts the chance for change is at our grasp. Art is such a wonderful way to portray such an idea.”

Keith Schneider, a journalist and producer, is senior writer for the U.S. Climate Action Network. Reach him at kschneider@climatenetwork.org