E. Claussen : un système américain d’échange et de limitation des émissions sera en place d’ici la mi-2009[en] 

Could you tell us about the position the US is likely going to present at the upcoming Bali conference?

First, we have to distinguish between the administration, which will be leading the delegation in Bali, and what is actually happening in the US, because there is a big division between the two. 

The Bush administration's view is that we should have an aspirational long-term goal and then countries should set out their own programmes leading to that direction, and so there would not be any form of binding international agreement in a post-2012 world. I am guessing that that position has not changed and that that will be their objective in Bali.

Do you see this as a red line position or something they might budge on?

I find it hard to believe that they would budge on this. Even though when they tried this out in Washington (at the Major Economies Meeting in September) it was very clear that just about no one at the table agreed with that concept. But they still continue to hold it as their view. 

What can be reasonably expected from the US administration at the Bali meeting?

You have to understand that their way of doing something is different from virtually everybody else's view of doing something. They were asked at a briefing yesterday whether what countries are currently doing is enough, and the answer was 'yes'. 

I do not see them changing. The challenge then is to get a mandate or a decision that lets them not try to get what they want, which is not acceptable, and not preclude anything that another administration (but not starting until 2009) would be able to negotiate from. 

Assuming there is going to be a more favourable position after 2009, what would be some of the best options for a global climate change framework?

Let me say something about what is happening in the US, which helps answer this question. 

There has been an enormous amount of activity at the state level. There are now three groups of states working on cap-and-trade systems: one in the Northeastern/Mid-Atlantic, one in the West and one that was recently announced in the Midwest. They will eventually get a large proportion of US emissions working on cap-and-trade systems. The US Climate Action Partnership (USCAP – which is 27 large companies and 6 NGOs) has also been very clear in calling for a national cap-and-trade system, with, for the US, a pretty ambitious target. 

State activity and a push by business has led to some sort of activity in Congress, which certainly will not have an outcome by Bali, other than that a bill will likely get through the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee: the cap-and-trade bill. There is some chance that we could get a bill in 2008 through Congress, if not, I think it's inevitable by 2009 or 2010. 

So the US will probably have a cap-and-trade system passed through legislation by mid-2009. 

So would you say that the cap-and-trade system the EU has started to put in place will gradually be bolstered and linked up the US initiative?

Yes, and Australia is working on one as well.

So I think you are going to see virtually all developed countries with some sort of a cap-and-trade system.

Do you see that as the main option for a global framework on climate change or do you see other possibilities beyond carbon markets?

I think that is going to be the main option for developed countries. 

But I do not think even the major economies in the developing world are anywhere close to accepting that kind of a system for themselves. One of the challenges is to find a flexible enough framework so that they can have binding commitments of a different sort but that show a clear direction and that are also globally binding. 

How could the two then work together? 

I do think there need to be commitments, but it is just very naïve to assume that developing countries will do the same thing as we will. For one thing, I know very few countries in the developing world that have a good enough data set to be able to set a realistic target. I do not think that there is any chance you would get an absolute target agreed from China, India or any of the major developing countries. 

But I do think that they are doing something and that they might agree to making some of their own internal commitments globally binding. For example, China has an energy intensity target, a renewables requirement plus standards for vehicles. I think you can take some combination of what they are already working on and they could offer those as binding commitments – of a different sort but nevertheless which point them in a direction that is consistent with trying to achieve the kind of reductions we need by 2050. 

So this would be a kind of sectoral approach?

Yes it could be sectoral, and I think that's fine, because I do not think they are able or ready to do the other. What is important is that they get on a cleaner path and I think there are ways for them to do that. 

What I think is important is – and this is where we differ from the Bush administration, which says China is doing fine – that China has to be able to agree to something globally, to an international commitment, because they are much more likely to keep it if they want to do it. 

I think the US would have a very hard time ratifying something without binding commitments from countries like China or India. 

The 'Clean Development Mechanism' is seen as a good way to complement a carbon trading system between developing countries because of the transfer of clean technologies to developing countries. Do you think it is a good system?

I think it has to be changed. It could be more programmatic and more centralised so that it is not just project-by-project. 

But I am not sure this is enough. I think incentives are helpful here and maybe even necessary but they in themselves are not enough. I do think that some of the major emitting countries in the developing world have to agree to some form of commitment to reduce emissions. Not in an absolute sense, because there is no way this is going to happen in the short term either, but some kind of a cleaner path with some real commitments in there. 

Do you think that, given all these different strands, the Bali conference will come up with a workable negotiating framework?

Because of where the Bush administration is, I do not think it's likely that the countries in the developing world will agree to take on binding commitments even of a different sort than absolute targets. 

Although I think it is really important that this is not precluded during the negotiations, and that we leave it open as something that could emerge. Otherwise you are going to have the Bush administration here in 2007; you are still going to have the Bush administration in 2008, which will be after the elections, but they will still be here and leading the Bali delegation. And you are not going to have any real change until 2009 and probably not until at least mid-2009. 

So it is really important that there be enough room in what is agreed in Bali for some future where the US takes on binding commitments and the major developing countries take on some form of binding commitments.

There is an argument, often heard in Brussels, that in order to have countries such as China or India reduce their emissions significantly, considering the pace of their growth, they would need massive technological and financial transfers from the developed world to finance clean projects. Do you think this is needed?

I am not sure if it is needed, and I think as a practical matter it is highly unlikely when China is as competitive as it is as with a lot of the other countries in the world. I just do not see that happening. 

I do agree that, for example, if China wants to move to carbon capture and sequestration, which is essential at the rate at which they are building coal-fired power plants, that that is an incremental cost that someone will have to bear and it is not insignificant as we are starting to figure out here. But there might be some way to move some financing for those kinds of things.

There have been 140 hearings on climate change in Congress since January. And at every hearing I testified at, the first question was always about China and what China will do. So there is a real sense here in the Congress and among members of both parties that commitments from China are crucial and that for competitiveness reasons, and sometimes I think this is overstated, there has to be some way of leveling the playing field. 

The EU is wondering which side the US will be on, because the EU really wants commitments from developing countries…

Part of the problem is that the Bush administration does not, but the Bush administration does not want commitments from the US side either.

So the Congress wants commitments from developing countries, but the Bush administration does not?

Yes. So there is a lot of potential for mischief.  

China tends to hide behind the US position and the US tries to hide behind China. How can this deadlock be solved?

That is precisely the point, although I will say that a number of the developing countries, when they were here at the major economies meeting, said that developed countries had to have binding targets. So the Bush administration's view going into the meeting - that the developing countries and the US should all agree that no commitments should be binding - was an attempt to isolate the EU. But that is not what actually happened.

Instead, the US was somewhat isolated as everyone agreed that at least the developed countries should have binding commitments. 

We would like to get your thoughts on the strengths and faults of the Kyoto system. What could be salvaged from the system?

If the US ends up with a mandatory cap, which is inevitable, some of the criticism saying that it will cost the US an enormous amount of money as we are hearing it in terms of a national cap will have proved wrong. Some of the statements and some of the number are simply not true. 

I do think for Kyoto the targets were too soon to be met in the US because we do have a very long and cumbersome process here. If we had to ratify Kyoto we would have had to pass legislation through both houses of Congress. 

Also we would have had to give the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) authority to regulate, and regulation itself takes time. You have to give the industry some time to comply and it is very unlikely that we could have negotiated something in December of 1997 and actually had it going into effect on time to meet the 2008-2012 targets.

So Kyoto was not bad in itself for the US, in terms of structure, but just in terms of poor timing? 

That is my view. But also the previous administration did not work very closely with Congress at that point. Congress passed something that basically said: "Cost to the US cannot be too high and the major developing countries have to do something in the same time frame, which was impossible to achieve."  I think some of that thinking has changed over time and I am pretty sure we will end up with a cap-and-trade trade system here in the US. But we do not have it yet and the cost arguments are still being made.

One other point that I think is important: when the EU talks about 20% below 1990 levels by 2020, it ought not to imagine that the US could be anywhere close to that. The strongest position here is to be at 1990 levels by 2020 because, of course, we have grown our emissions so that we are now between 18 to 19% above 1990 levels, so we have to come down from that. We are going to be in a different place, even with a mandatory carbon trade system. 

Regarding technology solutions on climate change: In Europe a sort of technology map was adopted for the next coming years. The EU is running low on funds whereas in the US there is quite a lot of money spent on ambitious research and deployment programs. Is that the real strength of the current US approach?

Well, I do not think that the US is spending enough either and the government spending is not very much, despite the claims that have been made to the contrary. And a lot of this is spending that would have happened anyway. 

There are some crucial pieces that we need much more ambitious efforts on, and the most important of those is dealing with coal. We have a lot of inexpensive available coal. So does China, so does India. People are going to burn it. The most urgent need is to have, at scale, demonstrated carbon capture and sequestration technology, because without that none of these other targets are going to mean anything. China has built over 600 coal-fired power stations in the last decade and their plans suggest that they are going to do something like that in the future. 

If we cannot figure out how to capture and sequester those carbon emissions, everything you can get from everything else just pales in comparison. We need a much bigger effort here.

The Bush administration claims that it is doing a lot on one facility where it is going to do a demonstration. You actually need different geographies, different kinds of sequestration, different kinds of power stations to make sure that you can adequately capture. A much more significant effort is needed if we really want to deal with climate change.