by Whitney Allen

After four years of congressional stalemate on efforts to slash carbon pollution responsible for climate change, the Natural Resources Defense Council released a road map to cleaner electricity this week that relies on existing executive authority rather than Congress.

NRDC’s new report describes how  the Obama Administration can make substantial cuts in carbon pollution from existing power plants, which are the single largest source of carbon pollution in the U.S.  Its strategy would employ Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act, which gives the Environmental Protection Agency the authority to “set state specific carbon emission rates that reflect the diversity of the nation’s electricity sector and fuel mix.”

This approach differs in a few important ways from earlier pieces of legislation like the 2009 climate bill sponsored by Representatives Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Ed Markey (D-MA) during the 111^th Congress. The proposal would set the initial pollution reduction standard for power plants by taking their state’s current energy mix taken into account. That is, a state with relatively low pollution would have a different target compared to a state with high emissions.

In addition, states would be allowed to create regional alliances, such as the ten-state Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), to work together to meet pollution reduction goals. This is crucial because the electricity supply from power plants frequently crosses state boundaries.

Under the NRDC proposal, states would develop a compliance strategy most appropriate for their mix of electricity generation, as long it achieves pollution reductions. They can develop state policy options that improve the efficiency of current plants, incentivize energy efficiency, shift production to lower-pollution natural gas plants and/or zero-emitting wind or solar generation.

NRDC estimates that its plan would cut carbon emissions by 26 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, and 34 percent by 2025. The accompanying reduction of other power plant pollutants would also save 3,600 lives and prevent nearly 1.2 million asthma attacks in 2020 alone.

These benefits create a significant return on investment. NRDC predicts that successful implementation of the plan could cost around $4 billion dollars in 2020, and lead to a return of anywhere from $25 – 60 billion due to reduced illnesses and other harms from climate change.

The NRDC proposal is already garnering interest. William Reilly, EPA Administrator under President George H. W. Bush, called it “an imaginative proposal that addresses some real needs. It deserves to be carefully analyzed and taken seriously by all the affected interests.”

Carol Browner, former EPA administrator and current distinguished senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, added “NRDC’s proposal is very thoughtful and should be part of any debate on how we build on the work already begun by the administration to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

CAP Chair and Former White House Chief of Staff John Podesta put the proposal in context:

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China's chief climate negotiator, Su Wei

by Melanie Hart

From many perspectives, China is a global powerhouse. China is the world’s second largest economy in terms of gross domestic product, the world’s largest energy consumer, and a global leader in renewable energy investment. China is also the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter.

It is no surprise, then, that when it comes to global climate change negotiations, such as the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change conference currently taking place in Doha, Qatar, many nations are looking for China to step up and play a role more in line with its global economic and emissions status.

From a U.S. perspective, that means demanding that China play by the same rules in a future climate treaty that will be developed between now and 2015, rather than treating it as a developing country on par with Chad or the Congo. Some parties want a new treaty to require legally-binding emission reductions for all (though not the same amount for all parties). Thus far, China has refused to endorse this kind of legal framework, and instead is sticking to the interpretation of “common but differentiated responsibilities,” which creates a firewall between the obligations of developed and developing countries. This puts the United States and other developed nations in one bucket, puts China in a separate bucket along with the poorest countries in the world, and allows the latter to make only voluntary commitments to reduce their emissions (as opposed to the mandatory commitments requested of the developed countries).

The United States has no problem allowing still-developing economies to make less-ambitious emission-reduction commitments. What the United States and other developed nations take issue with is allowing those countries to make commitments that are less binding at the international level than what is expected of developed countries. China, an upper-middle income country according to the World Bank, has a standing voluntary climate commitment under the 2009 Copenhagen Accord to reduce carbon intensity by 40 percent to 45 percent (based on 2005 levels) by 2020. The first phase of that commitment has been incorporated into China’s five-year economic plan and ratified by China’s National People’s Congress, so that commitment is legally binding in a domestic sense.

Unfortunately, those types of commitments from China are not enough to get the rest of the world to sign on to a new global climate treaty. Developed countries in particular want China to upgrade this commitment in two ways:

• Switch from an emission-intensity reduction target (reducing the amount of carbon dioxide emitted per unit of GDP) to an absolute reduction target;
• Commit to that target via the same form of international mechanism that will be expected to bind all countries equally, regardless of development status.

Negotiators have stated that the United States is unlikely to sign on to a new climate treaty until China commits to that treaty in the same way that everyone else does. But there is plenty keeping China from making a legally binding international commitment if that is what it takes to fulfill this expectation.

Whereas the global community generally views China as an economic powerhouse with plenty of room to maneuver on climate issues, the view from Beijing is vastly different. From China’s perspective, the past 30 years of rapid economic growth in no way guarantees that they will be able to easily traverse the middle-income trap and actually make it up into the ranks of higher-income economies. Chinese leaders have a deep fear that instead of transitioning smoothly from lower-income to upper-income status, their economy could follow the path of Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines and fall into a period of economic stagnation. China’s sluggish growth throughout 2012 clearly illustrates that the country is not immune to an economic slowdown, and it is important to remember that any major slump brings with it a very high risk that the Chinese Communist Party will lose public support and be forced to forfeit its authoritarian political power.

Within that context, Chinese leaders are not yet willing to take on international climate commitments that could reduce their flexibility to keep the economy growing. That does not mean there is no room for negotiation. It does mean, however, that in the near term China will continue approaching international climate negotiations with more caution than leadership. The negotiators now meeting in Doha will need to keep this in mind as they spend the next three years hashing out the terms of a new treaty with the ambition that it be equally “applicable to all,” in the terms of the Durban Platform.

Rising energy demand and consumption in China

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