The Institute of Energy for South-East Europe (IENE) organized on Wednesday, April 18, a business luncheon in honor of the U.S Ambassador in Greece Mr Charles Ries.
Mr Ries outlined the basic points of Washington’s plans to combat global warming. The Ambassador’s full speech is as follows:
Mr. Secretary-General, Ambassadors, good friends, ladies and gentlemen. Good afternoon. It is an honor for me to be here with you today at this luncheon. Mr. Stambolis, thank you very much for the invitation to speak and for your kind introduction. I would also like to commend the Institute of Energy for Southeastern Europe for the spotlight it has placed on regional energy issues. It’s heartening to see so many energy economists. Your events provide a much-needed forum for the discussion of matters related to energy and your publications are balanced and thought-provoking looks at energy issues.
Energy is a popular topic around the world today, partly because energy security is inextricably linked with national security and economic prosperity. Global economic growth and stability depends on adequate, reliable and affordable supplies of energy. President Bush summed up our position in his State of the Union address on January 23: "Extending hope and opportunity depends on a stable supply of energy."
The global nature of energy means that all nations are increasingly tied together. Net energy exporting nations need energy consuming nations for revenue as much as net importing nations need the energy resources for production. Energy consuming and producing nations alike need energy transit nations who help keep the paths of commerce open.
As this interconnectivity increases, however, so do the risks to security. Gone are the days when any nation could afford to ignore global energy developments – we live in an era of ever-increasing global stewardship and shared responsibility for the development of, and access to, affordable, reliable, and clean energy sources.
Greece is an exciting place to be in terms of global energy developments. Countries in the Caspian region are looking to export energy to the EU, and the EU is looking to diversify its energy supply. Both the Burgas-Alexandroupolis oil pipeline and the Turkey-Greece-Italy gas Interconnector will increase diversity of energy sources and transit, and thus they will also increase stability and economic prosperity for both the EU and Caspian nations.
But all of the concern about energy security, as crucial as it is, masks something that is an even greater threat to our global security. And that is climate change. If we ignore climate change, the debate about energy security could soon be irrelevant.
Countering climate change is crucially important to our global future. I would like to talk to you about what the United States is doing about -- and what the world can do about --countering climate change through the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.
Europe and the United States share the common goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, introducing cleaner technologies and cleaner fuels, and reducing the impact of human activities on the global climate system. All of us – together – are in a struggle to maintain the health of our planet. But the United States and Europe have decided to work towards this goal differently.
Europe has chosen to address the issues of climate change and greenhouse gases through the Kyoto Protocol. The EC has set some ambitious targets for greenhouse gas reduction, and is taking broad steps to achieve those targets. The United States, on the other hand, chose not to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, for reasons I will explain later, but the United States is nevertheless working effectively toward the same goal. We both seek to slow climate change and we both accept the imperative of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to do so. Our differences relate to the policy tools, not the goal.
The United States has been -- and is -- addressing climate change with a combination of incentive policies, support for research, and capital investments. We are making progress in cutting emissions growth that is comparable to other developed countries. In addition to the steps we are taking domestically, we are working multilaterally to support others in cutting global emissions.
I know there is a widely-held perception in Europe that the U.S. government doesn’t care about climate change. This perception seems to stem mainly from the fact that the U.S. did not sign the Kyoto Protocol. This perception is also completely wrong.
My government believes that the Kyoto Protocol is inherently flawed. Kyoto is a legally binding set of emissions targets for certain countries, but it sets no targets for developing countries. We have long believed that any treaty dealing with emissions needs to include China and India, whose fast-growing economies are leading to increased greenhouse gas emissions. According to the International Energy Agency, China will surpass the U.S. as the largest emitter of greenhouse gas in the world in 2009. But China, as a developing country, has no suggested targets under the Kyoto Protocol.
Instead of adopting the Kyoto ceilings, the U.S. pursued a different strategy to combat global warming. We have emphasized support for including on carbon sequestration, R&D, tax incentives for energy saving and renewable production investments, vehicle efficiency mandates, and international research partnerships. President Bush devoted a large portion of his State of the Union address this year to the subject of climate change and what the U.S. intends to do about it. We are breaking our patterns of energy use and we are addressing the issue of climate change. The new U.S. plan builds on previous initiatives to combat climate change, including the goal set in 2002 to reduce the greenhouse gas intensity of the U.S. economy by 18 percent by 2012. We are well on track to achieve this goal.
The new U.S. plan includes a comprehensive scheme to reduce gasoline usage in the U.S. by 20 percent over 10 years – or what we call 20 in 10. Transportation by truck and car is one of the largest sources in the U.S. of greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for over 22 percent of our emissions in 2004. The plan to reform fuel economy standards to make cars more energy efficient will reduce projected annual gas use by up to 32 billion liters in 2017.
America is already the global leader in the production of biofuels, but the U.S. plan also accelerates the deployment of renewable fuels. Under the new plan, we will raise the mandatory fuels standard to require the use of 132.5 billion liters of renewable and alternative fuels by 2017 – nearly 5 times the 2012 target now in law.
U.S. industry and consumers are already doing their part. There are more than 6 million Flex-Fuel vehicles and more than 200,000 hybrid vehicles on American roads today, with a million more expected each year. Flex-Fuel vehicles are designed to run on either ethanol or gasoline. In addition, the U.S. Postal Service has the largest alternative fuel fleet in the world, and the American company UPS operates the largest private alternative fuel fleet in its industry. The public and private sectors in the United States have already invested more than 29 billion dollars in climate change and clean energy technology programs.
Individual U.S. cities and states are also taking actions to address climate change. For example, New Jersey’s governor recently signed an executive order that sets statewide targets for stabilizing his state’s greenhouse gas emissions at 1990 levels by the year 2020. The bipartisan U.S. Mayors’ Climate Protection Agreement, signed by 409 mayors representing cities throughout the U.S., commits these leaders to take action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in their own communities.
Once renowned as the “oil patch,” it might surprise you to know that the state of Texas is the largest wind energy producer in the nation. Texas, with an installed wind capacity of 2,800 megawatts, installed some 750 megawatts just last year, which is roughly equivalent to the totaled installed wind capacity of Greece. Even so, Texas last fall announced a major public-private initiative to increase its wind production still further. Wind energy installations in the U.S. now exceed 11,600 megawatts, or enough energy to power 2.9 million homes..
Initiatives and plans are all well and good, but what’s truly impressive is when you look at what the U.S. has achieved. As you know, and one hears constantly repeated, the United States is the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide. But that fact is actually rather unremarkable. Our emissions are in line with our size. We are number one in greenhouse gas emissions primarily because we have the largest economy in the world. In fact, our emissions per unit of GDP are broadly comparable with other developed countries. But more important than current emissions is the fact that the increase of emissions is being controlled.
According to data from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, from 2000-2004 – the most recent time period for which we have good comparative data – U.S. greenhouse gas emissions increased by 1.3 percent. This is an increase, but a very modest increase, and impressive when you consider the fact that this period was also a time of rapid economic growth in the United States. Between 2000 and 2004, our economy grew by almost 1.9 trillion dollars, or more than 19 percent, and our population increased by 11.3 million people. And yet our greenhouse gas emissions increased by only 1.3 percent.
Unfortunately, despite high aspirations and a political commitment to the Kyoto limits, the EU actually has also not been able to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. A casual reading of the press would have you think that the EU would be leaps and bounds ahead of the U.S. But during this same time period, 2000-2004, the EU-25 actually increased collective emissions by 2.1 percent, despite slower economic growth. The newly-added EU member states actually helped improve the EU emissions number, since looked at alone, the original EU-15 increased greenhouse gas emissions even slightly faster – 2.4 percent – during the same time period.
To be fair, I have to say that even this 2.4 percent increase for the EU-15 during the period of 2000-2004 is really a very modest increase, and comes after reductions in some parts of Europe during the nineties. But I imagine that few people in Europe know that more recently the EU-15 has been increasing emissions at nearly double the U.S. rate. We’re all in this together and what matters are results.
Earlier, I mentioned economic growth rates. Of course, since greenhouse gas emissions have heretofore been directly correlated with economic activity, it is very, very difficult to obtain an actual decrease in emissions when both your economy and population are growing. More industrial production means more emissions, more people means more transport and more heat and electricity. To help us understand what is actually happening, we have also been assessing the greenhouse gas intensity of major economies, that is, greenhouse gas emissions per unit of GDP. To contain or reduce greenhouse gas emissions across the economic cycle, we have to drive this number down decisively. By this measure, and over the period 2000-2004, the EU-25 did reduce greenhouse gas intensity by 4.5 percent, while, as all our incentives and price signals have cut in, the U.S. reduced greenhouse gas intensity even more, by 7.4 percent in fact.
The Kyoto Protocol provides a target for emissions reductions. In order to actually reduce emissions – whether one is a Kyoto signatory or not – a country needs to put new and cleaner technology in place. The United States’ approach is producing concrete results even while our economy expands, which illustrates that the key is not cutting our economies, but making them cleaner as they grow. Nowhere is this more important than in the developing world. The only way for these countries to advance and to improve the human condition of their peoples, is through economic growth, but they must not do so at the expense of our environment. Currently, developing countries are some of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases. The carbon dioxide emissions from non-OECD countries are expected to exceed those from OECD countries by 2010.
The United States is working internationally with developing countries to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. We participate in 15 bilateral climate change partnerships with countries representing 80% of the world’s emissions. One of the most prominent of these is the Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate. This partnership, started a year ago, brings China, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia and the United States together in order to focus on complimentary energy, economic, and environmental goals. In just six months, APP task forces have identified almost 100 projects that will deliver the multiple benefits of reduced greenhouse gas emission, cleaner air quality, and reduced poverty levels.
The recent EC decision to reduce EU greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by 2020, compared to 1990, is also an important and ambitious goal. Accompanying that goal was an admonition to developing countries to decrease their collective greenhouse gas emissions by a similar amount. The report states that “international collective action will be critical in driving an effective, efficient, and equitable response on the scale required to face climate change challenges.”
Our global common objective is the countering of climate change through reduction of greenhouse gases, but there are multiple ways of getting there. Adoption of the Kyoto Protocol is one way some nations have chosen to address this problem, but it is far from the only solution. We must not confuse the process with the outcome. We cannot wait until 2012 or some other date in the future; we must continue to work towards our common goal and reduce greenhouse gas emissions now.
I hope I have left you with three key points: the United States is committed to the objective of cutting greenhouse gas emissions; it has a set of policies and actions that are producing concrete results; and it is working multilaterally to cut global emissions, particularly in the developing world. I also hope I have provided some information that will encourage you to think differently about the United States and our policies on climate change.