US to Push at UN Meeting for Voluntary Carbon Plan
Date: 17-Nov-05
Country: USA
Author: Chris Baltimore
Environmental groups said the administration will try to derail any attempt at the Montreal meeting to set mandatory targets to extend the Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012, when its first phase ends.
Kyoto requires developed nations to cut emissions of greenhouse gases by 5.2 percent from 1990 levels by 2008-2012. Carbon dioxide is one of several gases blamed for climate change that is melting glaciers and raising sea levels.
The United States, the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, shunned the Kyoto pact, saying it would be too costly to the US economy.
The White House prefers a voluntary, multi-national plan to sequester and store carbon dioxide. The plan would include most European Union nations, India and Saudi Arabia.
It would encourage nations to separate carbon dioxide from industrial emissions and pipe it into geologic formations or deep beneath the ocean floor for permanent storage, an Energy Department official said.
The UN meeting is "an important moment for this technology -- we are hopeful it would be endorsed in Montreal," said Mark Maddox, the deputy assistant secretary of energy. He declined to say what form such an endorsement would take.
Officials from some 150 countries will meet in Montreal on Nov. 28 to discuss how to curb greenhouse gas emissions when the first phase of the Kyoto treaty ends.
Montreal could provide a crucial start of negotiations for a new round of emission cuts, according to environmental groups. But "the United States wants to block this process from starting," said David Doniger, a climate change expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
"Look for the US to use a variety of strategies to try to veto consensus," Doniger said, such as lining up Middle Eastern OPEC countries and India in favor of voluntary approaches.
A major source of greenhouse gases comes from burning fossil fuels like crude oil and coal.
"There's got to be a better and cheaper way to do this" than mandatory cuts envisioned by Kyoto, said John Grasser, an Energy Department spokesman. "That's why sequestration is taking off -- it might be our ace in the hole."
Doniger said he is "bullish" on sequestration technology, but it must be accompanied by specific carbon cuts.
The federal government should give US utilities incentives to capture carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants, and introduce a cap-and-trade system similar to one being used in the European Union, Doniger said.
Sequestration projects have been shown to work. Some 5 million tons of carbon dioxide were successfully stored in a oilfield in Canada while doubling the field's crude oil recovery rate in a multinational project.
"The pieces are all there," said Peter Rozelle, an Energy Department engineer. "It's just a matter of putting them all together."
The Energy Department also touts a $1 billion plan to build FutureGen, a sophisticated plant that would burn low-emission gasified coal and store carbon dioxide gases underground. Several US utilities, including American Electric Power, are working with the government to build the plant.
US lawmakers' attempts to require cuts in American emissions have repeatedly failed in Congress.
