Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon at the Rio+20 summit

by Adam James, Andrew Light, and Gwynne Taraska

The final draft text of the Rio+20 Earth Summit agreed on today has disappointed many delegates and activists around the world. Other than the Brazilian chair of the meeting, no one seems to be strongly defending the document.

The World Wildlife Fund has declared the text “a colossal failure of leadership and vision.”  Ida Auken, the Danish Environment Minister and Chair of the European Environment Council, remarked that “the EU would have liked to see a much more concrete and ambitious outcome, so in that respect I’m not happy with it.” Even Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary-General, said that he had hoped for a more “ambitious” outcome, though he quickly added that we should understand the difficulty has been over resolving “conflicting interests” among the parties.

Some of this criticism could be overwrought.  Unlike the first Rio Earth Summit 20 years ago, this meeting never aimed to produce a new international treaty or a process that would lead to an international agreement.  From the start, its most ambitious aim was to create a set of Sustainable Development Goals that would replace the Millennium Development Goals, which were agreed to in New York City in 2000 and are set to expire in 2015.  Given the conflicting interests identified by Moon, it is impressive that the parties were able to go on the record supporting as many progressive changes in the development and environment agenda that they did.  But while the current Rio text acknowledges (and occasionally even underlines, underscores, and stresses) that action on sustainable development and climate change is urgently needed, it is deficient in specific goals, details on how to achieve them, and target dates.

Some, like former U.S. Senator Tim Wirth, President of the U.N. Foundation, reply that we shouldn’t focus on the text as much as we should focus on the public-private partnerships that are being announced at the meeting around initiatives such as Moon’s Sustainable Energy For All initiative, which has drawn $2 billion in support from the U.S.

Wirth has a good point.  At this moment, there may be no need to wrangle further over why the Rio text is as weak as it is. Instead, we should move on to make these newly emerging institutions of international cooperation work as well as they can.  In the end, what was produced at Rio looks much more like a G20 text, simply articulating the lowest common denominator among the parties.  While activists may have hoped for more, this could be the best we could hope for in this kind of process when an actual treaty is not on the table.

Still, there are some interesting lessons to be learned here from how this text went wrong.  If we go back and look at the development of the Rio text, we can see that it could have been bolder if some parties had been allowed to strengthen it.

The Evolution of the Text

We compared the current final text in Rio with the text as it had been negotiated up to June 2^nd.  We chose the June 2^nd version because it still identified requests by parties to put in or take out language from the document.  Parties at the time were half-way through a two-week long meeting at the UN in New York during the third round of informal negotiations to draft a text. In contrast, the final draft from earlier this week is a text determined by the Brazilian chair of the meeting to be the best compromise between the competing interests of the parties.

Our main conclusion is that while responsibility for this final text now rests with all the assembled parties in Rio, the chair of the meeting could have pushed harder on the parties to produce a more ambitious text by negotiating throughout the week.  Instead, the pattern seems to be one of eliminating any disagreement on any item, which resulted in a joint declaration now charged with failing to provide adequate targets, timelines, or guidelines for achieving any of its aspirations.

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by Gwynne Taraska

Ban Ki-moon’s initiative “Sustainable Energy for All” (SE4ALL) did not receive a strong endorsement in the final draft of the Rio+20 declaration.  It should have.  Nevertheless, SE4ALL leaves the summit with something that is arguably better: strong support from governments, the private sector, multilateral development banks, and civil society groups.  We should continue to support the initiative so that it survives – and thrives – after the summit.

About SE4ALL

SE4ALL, led by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, has three objectives to be achieved by 2030.

1. Ensure universal access to modern energy services.

2. Double the global rate of improvement in energy efficiency.

3. Double the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix.

The initiative’s High Level Group, chaired by Kandeh Yumkella (Director-General of the UN Industrial Development Organization) and Charles Holliday (Chairman of Bank of America), has produced a Global Action Agenda to “to guide efforts undertaken in support of achieving the initiative’s three objectives.” Secretary of Energy Steven Chu is the U.S. representative to the group.

Ban Ki-moon labored for months to put SE4ALL at the center of the Rio agenda.  The strategy made sense.  Rio was the biggest sustainable development event on the global agenda in the last ten years, and it possibly won’t be duplicated for another ten years.  It was the optimal moment to call the world’s attention to the problem of energy poverty.  It’s impossible to imagine a fair and effective distribution of global climate mitigation that would be acceptable to the developing world without a robust companion sustainable development agenda.  Ban Ki-moon’s process therefore fills a needed gap in the global effort to reconcile climate and development needs.

Unfortunately, SE4ALL didn’t get much support from the Rio text.  In the one paragraph on the initiative, the three specific objectives and target date are not mentioned.  The paragraph even provides an out to parties who won’t be able to meet its goals, or who won’t try to accomplish them.

129. We note the launching of the initiative by the Secretary General on “Sustainable Energy for All”, which focus on access to energy, energy efficiency and renewable energies. We are all determined to act to make sustainable energy for all a reality, and through this, help eradicate poverty and lead to sustainable development and global prosperity. We recognize that countries’ activities in broader energy-related issues are of great importance and are prioritized according to their specific challenges, capacities and circumstances, including energy mix.

SE4ALL Beyond Rio+20

The good news is that the success of SE4ALL does not rely on the Rio text.  In fact, the initiative received an impressive boost from many parties at the summit.

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by Chris Peters, via the Carbon Brief

Fellow Europeans, apparently we’re all committing ‘green energy suicide’ — that’s according to a piece in the Wall Street Journal by Rael Jean Isaac, who has recently authored a book about climate activism for the US Heartland Institute.

The general tone of the piece is, as you might guess, not particularly favourable towards renewable power, and the article contains a bewildering array of statistics and figures. And a closer look at the sources reveals a mixed bag – some are accurate and up to date; others are both old and dubious. It all adds up to a somewhat chaotic economic argument.

Here’s our take on some of the claims made in the piece. First, what looks unproblematic: A description of EU energy targets seems correct, as does a brief appraisal of Danish energy policy. Short sections dealing with Spain and Italy we haven’t checked in detail as we don’t know much about them.

We have limited ourselves to examining the part of the article that deals with UK energy policy, which includes an accurate (although partial) reporting of the effect that UK government energy policies will have on UK energy bills. But there are also some problems.

Job loss claims: only one report cited

The piece begins by arguing that energy intensive industries will lose out because of “green energy suicide”, referencing a report from consultancy Verso Economics, which:

“…has calculated the opportunity cost of the United Kingdom’s subsidy system for renewables to be 10,000 jobs between 2009 and 2010 alone”.

This figure is from the report Worth the candle? The economic impact of renewable energy policy in Scotland and the UK (March 2011), which says:

“…policy to promote renewable energy in the UK has an opportunity cost of 10,000 direct jobs in 2009/10 and 1,200 jobs in Scotland”.

The report argues that there would be 10,000 fewer jobs under UK green energy plans than otherwise. However, the report focused only on Scotland, with Full Fact suggesting that the jobs conclusion had been “extrapolation… in which it is difficult to have full confidence”.

It’s worth noting that the consultancy which produced the report isn’t particularly well known, and so this claim sits alongside other alternative viewpoints on what effect green targets will have on employment. It doesn’t seem to us that there is a particularly clear answer yet.

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As world leaders arrived for the Rio+20 Earth Summit earlier this week, the skies began to darken over Rio de Janeiro — a sign of how attendees were feeling after negotiators presented a watered-down document on Tuesday night outlining global sustainability aspirations.

When U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton landed in Rio early this morning, she arrived amidst a torrential rainstorm that soaked the streets of the city. And that’s about how many people were feeling as the conference neared a close today: a little soaked.

In an effort to break the clouds and show that the U.S. has done something other than commit to weak aspirational goals, Clinton was in Rio today to announce a new U.S. initiative to leverage private financing for clean energy projects in Africa. The partnership, which includes the State Department, the Overseas Private Investment Corp., and the U.S. Trade and Development Agency, will provide $20 million in grants to business owners in Africa to help leverage hundreds of millions in private financing.

“This initiative is part of an across the board push to make clean energy and energy security cornerstones of our foreign policy,” said Clinton, speaking at a side event before her speech to the full conference.

Clinton then highlighted other key initiatives supported by the U.S., including a partnership with Brazil on developing sustainable cities, an international program to stop deforestation, and $2 billion in commitments to the UN’s Sustainable Energy For All program.

While environmental groups have been very critical of the formal negotiated outcome in Rio, the announcement from Clinton received some cautious praise.

“This is a positive step for leveraging scarce resources to deliver clean energy access for the poor. I’m more than happy to see Secretary Clinton putting her weight behind these kinds of initiatives,” said Justin Guay, head of the Sierra Club’s international program.

Some of the public and private commitments made in Rio are older and have been re-packaged for the summit, making groups watching the pledges skeptical. But this is a new program, said Jake Schmidt, international climate policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

“This will help unleash the large potential for renewable energy that exists in Africa. This proves that renewable energy is ready in all continents as it expands OPIC investment into a continent in desperate need of renewable energy to help address energy poverty and the growing energy needs in key African countries,” said Schmidt.

After leaving the side event, Clinton moved to the plenary where she addressed the entire summit and again highlighted “targeted action” supported by the U.S. in an attempt to weave a positive message. She made no mention of the sense of disappointment about the negotiated text coming out of the conference.

But others were more blunt about the overall outcome.

“Opportunities to bring together political leaders in this context happen so rarely, this summit is correctly perceived as a missed opportunity,” said Manish Bapna, executive vice president of the World Resources Institute, speaking about the official document coming out of Rio.

Bapna said he was excited to see new initiatives coming out of Rio like the one announced by Clinton today. But he lamented that the official document from the summit has “few deadlines, few numbers, with very little that is truly concrete.”

Stephen Lacey is reporting from Rio this week. For a full wrap up of the conference, stay tuned to Climate Progress.

Asian Development Bank, via Flicker

by Jorge Madrid

Earlier this month a group of 12 Latino doctors, nurses, and other public health professionals from across the country met in Washington, D.C. to deliver a clear message to the White House: Climate change and carbon pollution is a serious public health issue that affects the Latino community – and we want the EPA to do something about it!

The trip culminated with a visit to the White House, where the public health professionals met with Nancy Sutley, Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). During the meeting they delivered an open-letter in support of new proposed EPA carbon rules, signed by over 40 doctors and public health professionals.

During the meeting, doctors and nurses shared personalized stories about the predominantly Latino communities where they live and work, and the effects of increased smog pollution, extreme heat and drought, fiercer wildfires, and other health-related concerns that are directly linked to global climate change.  In particular, the group shared their concerns about asthma and other respiratory diseases that are worsened by carbon pollution.

Watch the video here:

Fortunately, there is a pathway to limiting dangerous carbon pollution in this country with a proposed new rule from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which would force new coal-fired power plants to reduce their carbon emissions by 40 percent to 60 percent. This Carbon Pollution Standard would clear the way for cleaner forms of energy like wind and solar power. Coal power plants are the main source of carbon pollution in this country, and their CO2 emissions are currently unregulated

This group of Latino public health professionals joins a chorus of voices calling for cleaner air and more public health protections from the EPA.  So far, more than 2 million public comments have been submitted to the EPA in in support of the proposed rule.

To add you voice in supporting public health protections against carbon pollution in new power plants, click here.

Jorge Madrid is a research associate on the Energy Team at the Center for American Progress.

Related Post:

• Economics Stunner: “Coal-Fired Power Plants Have Air Pollution Damages Larger Than Their Value Added.”

By Matt Kasper

The proposed Keystone XL pipeline running from Alberta’s tar sands south to Nebraska and Texas continues to stay in the public eye. Mitt Romney gave it center stage in a campaign ad released today, and the House Republicans attempted to attach it to a drilling bill that passed yesterday.

But this week it was reported that over the past few months, a million liters (quarter million gallons) of oil from several pipelines have spilled in Alberta. Canada’s The Star reported on Wednesday that cleanup crews are working to prevent contamination from the three major oil spills:

The latest spill occurred earlier this week in northeastern Alberta near the town of Elk Point, where Enbridge confirmed a spill of about 230,000 liters through its pumping station on the Athabasca pipeline.  The biggest incident was earlier this month near Red Deer and Sundre in central Alberta, where 475,000 liters of oil from Plains Midstream Canada leaked, some of it spilling into the Red Deer River.

This is not the first time the Canadian tar sands giant, Enbridge, has been involved with an oil spill. In July 2010 one of its pipelines ruptured in Marshall, Michigan and spilled an estimated 819,000 gallons.

Even proponents of the Keystone XL pipeline see these incidences as worrisome, and confidence in the tar sands extraction and transportation throughout Canada has clearly been shaken.  For example, Doug Bloom of the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association and president of Spectra Energy said:

Any spill right now is going to be bad timing. There’s such a focus now with Gateway and with Keystone XL and other projects going through regulatory review. Any time there’s any kind of an incident no matter how large or how small, it’s going to be prominent.

The 1,700 mile long Keystone XL pipeline proposed by TransCanada would run from Alberta down to Houston, Texas and move 435,000 barrels of heavy crude oil per day.  Environmentalists and residents near the proposed pipeline fear that that it could leak in critical areas such as Nebraska’s Ogallala Aquifer.

TransCanada’s own analysis shows that the Keystone XL pipeline would have 11 “significant spills” over its 50-year lifecycle, while an independent study estimated that there could be as many as 91 spills. The first leg of the Keystone  pipeline even suffered 12 spills in 2010 – a record for a pipeline’s first year in operation.

Although not always reported in the media, oil spills from pipelines, wells, and infrastructure happen so frequently that at this point they are just part of doing business for oil companies.  For example, a report from USA Today found an average of 22 large spills offshore every year between 2005 and 2009.

And yet, the spill has not deterred proponents of the pipeline.  In fact, Alberta Premier Alison Redford has called for an investigation into the spills, while still trying to get Keystone XL built over the Canadian-American border.

Matt Kasper is a Special Assistant for Energy Policy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

by Joe Smyth

Next week, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is scheduled to hold an “auction” for 721 million tons of taxpayer-owned coal in the Powder River Basin.

This is for the North Porcupine tract, and like the South Porcupine tract that BLM leased to Peabody last month — even though this coal is owned by you and me — the lease was drawn up by Peabody itself for its own profit. This is what’s known as a “lease by application,” and under BLM’s corrupt coal leasing program, Peabody will almost certainly be the only bidder and pay next to nothing.

WildEarth Guardians’ 2009 report “UnderMining the Climate” found that over the last 20 years, only 3 of 21 lease by applications had more than one bidder. Since Peabody knows it will face no competitive pressure, it can simply offer the lowest possible price, secure in the knowledge that if it doesn’t meet BLM’s absurdly low minimum price, it can just try again later. In fact, that’s just what happened with the South Porcupine tract; Peabody’s initial offer of just $0.90 per ton was rejected as too low by the BLM – so they simply held another auction a few weeks later and accepted Peabody’s offer of $1.11 per ton. In both “auctions” Peabody was the only bidder.

Now, the company is once again seeking cheap access to more of our coal, so it can strip mine it from public lands and export it to lucrative markets in Asia. (See: Will the Bureau of Land Management subsidize Peabody’s plans to export coal to Asia?)

Incredibly, BLM’s coal leasing program deliberately encourages this uncompetitive process. Allowing lease by applications was a key change made possible once the BLM moved to decertify the Powder River Basin as a coal producing region – even though it’s the source of almost half the coal mined in the US. BLM is supposed to manage this coal “in the best interests of the Nation,” and it has a process meant to determine the fair market value of a lease. But as Tom Sanzillo explains, the BLM’s methods dramatically undervalue the coal, so much so that it has amounted to a $28.9 billion subsidy over the last 30 years.

It’s clear that the BLM’s coal leasing program is deliberately designed to benefit a few coal mining companies like Peabody and Arch at the expense of U.S. taxpayers. This has become even more outrageous now that coal mining companies are seeking to dramatically expand exports of this taxpayer-owned coal. And that’s why Congressman Ed Markey has called for a Government Accountability Office examination of the BLM’s coal leasing practices.

Beyond the lost revenue, however, BLM’s undervaluing of this coal is helping fuel the devastating impacts to public health, the environment, and our climate system that inevitably accompany mining and burning this much coal. The BLM is facing a lawsuit from WildEarth Guardians and the Sierra Club because it ignores the impacts of the greenhouse gases that will result from leasing this coal.

And the amount of carbon pollution that will be emitted when this coal is burned is enormous.

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A round-up of the top climate and energy stories.

Emperor penguins depend on the sea ice that rings the continent of Antarctic, so it’s no surprise that global warming, which is expected to melt some of that ice, may be bad news for these flightless, 4-foot (1.2-meter) tall birds. [Live Science]

Carlo Rubbia, who shared the 1984 Nobel Prize in physics, says global warming is a much bigger problem than most people realize. [Xinhua News]

The government’s climate change envoy has warned that failure to take more action to invest in a low carbon economy is a threat to the future “prosperity and security” of the British people. [Guardian]

The leading scientists in the field have just calculated that if all the equipment entering the world market uses the newest gases currently employed in air-conditioners, up to 27 percent of all global warming will be attributable to those gases by 2050. [New York Times]

Siemens and British Gas have stepped up their presence in the fast-expanding European smart grid market. [Business Green]

A team led by researchers at Winrock International, a U.S. environmental nonprofit organization, has developed an estimate of gross carbon emissions from tropical deforestation for the early 2000s that is considerably lower than other recently published estimates. [Eureka Alert]

The House voted to instruct conferees on the highway bill to keep language in the House measure that would block the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) attempt to regulate coal ash. [The Hill]

Scientists have found evidence of a widespread loss of variety in plant communities across whole mountain landscapes. This is directly causing a reduction in the distinct identity of parts of the Scottish Highlands. [Phys.org]

EBay is continuing its green business initiatives by building the next phase of the company’s data center primarily using renewable energy. [PC Magazine]