Copenhagen kicks off

Submitted by Grant Boyle Recently some of the largest GHG emitting countries announced greenhouse gas reduction targets, breathing some life into the 15th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC COP 15), starting this week in Copenhagen. The US pledged a 17% cut in emissions under 2005 levels by 2020 and China announced a plan to reduce carbon-intensity 40-45% by 2020 against 2005 levels ( although what this amounts to in terms of actual reductions remains unclear). There are now a number of commitments on the table. According to the Climate Action Tracker, the US, EU, Japan, Canada, Russia, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Norway, China, Brazil, South Korea, Indonesia and India have all announced some type of target. Unfortunately, these announcements may be the highlight of the summit. While there will be unprecedented attendance by heads of state at COP 15 and hopefully a promising political outcome, the actual negotiations at this much anticipated summit appear to be primed mainly for setting the agenda for negotiating a binding legal agreement over the next year. Very basic questions remain going into Copenhagen, including whether or not the UNFCCC's two tracks of negotiation will continue - one under the Kyoto Protocol(supported by most developing countries) and one under a larger group that includes developing countries and the US. The summit is likely to produce a series of decisions under the UNFCCC, but no new binding treaty that builds upon or subsumes Kyoto. Still, the Copenhagen summit will set the ball rolling for a process of negotiation that will quite likely lead to legally binding outcomes that will influence regulatory developments in North America in 2010. For example, emerging rules and frameworks for "prompt-start" finance, REDD ( Reduced Emissions From Deforestation and Forest Degradation, adaptation finance and Clean Development Mechanism reform will become increasingly important for Canadian emitters that eventually look to international carbon markets to meet emerging compliance obligations under a Canadian or North American cap and trade regime. Both cap and trade proposals in the US House and Senate allow for fairly extensive international offsets and the rules for what qualifies as an international offset or credit will at least party be decided by the Parties to the UNFCCC and those decisions will be determined by the trajectory set over the next couple of weeks in Copenhagen. We'll see what happens over the next couple of weeks...