How Congress Threatens to Undermine the Clean Energy Future: Weak Carbon Caps

The new Greenpeace report Business as Usual describes "five maximum points of danger" in the House and Senate climate bills. SolveClimate will be reposting each of those arguments over the course of the week.

Federal climate legislation proposes to set a cap on carbon. In and of itself, a cap on carbon is an unprecedented step, a signal achievement, but both the House and Senate’s targets are weak and timid in the short term and wishful thinking in the long term.

The House target for 2020 is to reduce U.S. emissions 17% below 2005 levels of CO2 pollution, 80% by 2050. The Senate target ups the short-term ante slightly — to a 20% reduction by 2020 below 2005 levels.

These numbers seem to point to reasonable progress, but embedded within them is some sleight of hand that hides the truth about these targets: They are far short both of what science demands and what our European allies have committed to achieve.

The sleight of hand involves using a 2005 benchmark. The honest vocabulary of international climate discourse uses 1990 as the benchmark against which to measure progress, because it recognizes the Framework Convention on Climate Change, which emerged from the Rio Earth Summit of 1992.

It was the moment when the international community agreed “to achieve stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a low enough level to prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.”

The U.S. is party to this agreement. When it came into force, 2005 was still more than a decade away. There was no question then that 1990 was the benchmark against which to measure progress, and it remains the benchmark of honest accounting practiced by climate scientists and the IPCC.

So for the U.S. to adopt a 2005 benchmark is a purposeful attempt to create confusion. It is behavior unbecoming a superpower reaching now, at least with its rhetoric, for global leadership on the climate issue.

What happens to the proposed U.S. emission target when measured against 1990 levels of CO2 pollution?

From an apparent 17% reduction, it shrinks to an actual 4%. Or from the Senate’s 20% reduction, it shrinks to an actual 7%. That’s the raw, unvarnished truth. The U.S. is seeking to reduce CO2 pollution 4% to 7% below 1990 levels.

Now that we can compare apples to apples using a 1990 benchmark, we can ask:

Is the U.S. cap enough of a commitment for the world’s largest historical polluter to make?

To begin with, the science says no. The IPCC’s 4th assessment report, now already a conservative document, says a 25% to 40% cut in global emissions below 1990 levels is needed to prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. That level of reduction will be impossible to achieve without a commensurate U.S. commitment.

The European Union for its part is ready to pull its weight. It has committed to a 20% cut in emissions below 1990 levels by 2020 already and is willing to reach for a 30% cut within the same time frame if the U.S. and other heavily polluting nations in the developed world match the commitment.

The U.S. has yet to ante up a sufficient marker to get in this high stakes game. The U.S. carbon cap targets create little leverage or negotiating room that will be needed to persuade China, India and other nations of the developing world to join an international climate regime to help solve a problem they did little to create.

What is particularly disappointing about the 2020 cap is that to meet it will require almost no effort or change on the part of polluters. The pending legislation has very strong energy efficiency provisions which honestly promise to cut energy consumption — and hence carbon emissions — emanating from our buildings and appliances.

It is worth noting what McKinsey and Company, one of the most perspicacious management consulting companies on the planet, has repeatedly and convincingly told us about energy efficiency, and its potential to reduce emissions. McKinsey believes it would be possible for the nation to reduce non-transportation energy consumption 23% through energy efficiency by 2020. It would translate into a CO2 abatement of 1.1 gigatons — more than 15% of annual current US emissions — from an integrated set of energy efficiency investments and solutions.

In other words through energy efficiency alone, the potential exists to surpass the proposed cap many times over. Further, because the energy savings would eliminate $1.2 trillion in waste, this level of success would come at virtually no cost.

Given this prospect, it is embarrassing to think that our lawmakers do not have the courage to extract some contribution from polluters to augment the size of the cap and allow the nation to at least stand as an equal among allies in Copenhagen in December.

Instead we are being asked to take a leap of faith — that a carbon price signal — however weak — will conspire with market forces to squeeze the carbon out of our economy.

It is impossible to ignore the reality that the weak cap undermines the foundation of the theory, fundamental to its integrity. It is as if we are imposing a price on carbon that nobody really has to pay, and this is happening so that the current generation of political leaders can pass the baton of responsibility down the line for another decade or two.

It is a bad foundation upon which to build a climate policy.

Mr. President, this is another maximum point of danger that needs your urgent attention.

The report Business as Usual was written on behalf of Greenpeace by SolveClimate founder David Sassoon.

See also:

How Congress Threatens to Undermine the Clean Energy Future: The Clean Air Act

Greenpeace Warns Obama: Congress is Undermining the Clean Energy Future

Clean Energy Climate Bill Gives Coal a Competitive Future

Polluters' War on Climate Legislation Is Taking a Toll

5 AGs Urge Senate to Let States Set Higher Climate Standards

Gaping Hole in Climate Bill Would Give Polluters More License to Pollute

(Chart: Greenpeace)

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