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U.S. Companies Lobby for Technology Fix, Not CO2 Limit at Climate Talks
U.S. companies are lobbying at UN climate talks in Bonn for incentives to spur technologies that could slow the pace of carbon emissions, abandoning a push to encourage a cap on gas emissions, a business lobby group said.
The U.S. Council for International Business, whose members include General Electric Co. and Coca-Cola Co., said rules to cap CO2 emissions are unlikely soon, Norine Kennedy, vice president of energy and environmental affairs, said in an interview today. Instead, they want incentives encouraging technologies they’re promoting.
“The center of the action is technology,” she said at the United Nations climate talks. “There’s broad agreement that we won’t get to the mitigation targets without technology.”
Negotiators at discussions are struggling to agree on guidelines on how to finance promises to grant $100 billion a year to countries adapting to climate change. So far, CO2- cutting pledges made by countries including the U.S. are not enough to meet a goal of limiting an increase in global temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), environmental groups and businesses have said.
The U.S., the world’s second-biggest polluter, has yet to pass national legislation that would force companies and individuals to limit carbon output, effectively stalling progress on reaching a global pact on greenhouse gas emissions, Kennedy said.
GE’s Program
GE Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Immelt has pushed for a price for carbon and U.S. clean energy standards to increase sales of less-polluting equipment for nuclear power and coal- fired boilers. The Fairfield, Connecticut company, whose equipment generates a third of the world’s electricity, is considering expanding further into clean-energy industries.
Kennedy said companies should have a more formal role in the negotiations. She’s drafting a proposal for the UN on how companies can have more input.
Some of the money for adaptation as well as much of the estimated $26 trillion the International Energy Agency estimates will be needed for investment in power plants through 2030 will come from industry, she said.
For now, the UN talks are progressing slowly. In Copenhagen in December, delegates were planning to finish a two-year effort to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which limits emissions through 2012. Instead, they clashed over aid to developing countries, pollution-reduction goals and how to verify individual pledges. No binding treaty was adopted.
“Some negotiators won’t sign anything unless there is agreement on all aspects of a treaty under discussion,” said Artur Runge-Metzger, the European Commission’s lead climate negotiator. “There must be a spirit of compromise, which I don’t see in the room today.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Jeremy van Loon in Bonn via jvanloon@bloomberg.net
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