We actually won’t know the final success or failure of Copenhagen until February. That’s because the last day of January is when each nation’s final pledges and commitments are due to be “written in” to the non-binding “bottom-up” Federal style Copenhagen Accord.
While analysis vary on how important being internationally binding is for implementation of international commitments; one advantage is flexibility.
For example, Europe, Australia and Japan had all put forth conditional pledges of deeper cuts dependent on international commitments – at least from the big emitters: China, India and the US.
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In the absence of a climate bill in the US it would be unlikely that these final commitments will be the higher ones, but we don’t know till January 31st. I think that two subsequent events make this at least a possibility.
It is still possible that at least Europe could go it alone, if they feel that there is a reasonable likelihood that the US could squeak through a climate bill after all by the next round of talks in Mexico in November of 2010. Europe’s pledge was for 30% below 1990 by 2020, with international agreement. Two events since the close of the talks make this still a possibility, even without that.
1. The collapse of carbon prices (currently $18 a tonne) on the EU market after the uncertain result of Copenhagen.
2. The unexpected passage of the US health care bill out of the Senate, against all odds, suggests that there could be a limit to the gridlock of the Republican filibuster that has paralyzed US legislation.
There is also the historical precedent. Europe went ahead with the binding, “top-down” Kyoto Protocol – despite no US, Chinese or Indian participation. While they would want to keep it as a negotiating position that they would not go to the deeper cuts without the US, in the past, they have gone to deeper cuts without us.
And it has led to Europe taking world leadership from the US in renewable energy industries such as wind turbine manufacturing and solar power.
Barclay’s Bank is saying that “The Copenhagen failure did little to alter the expected supply-demand balance under the EU ETS and it is not likely to have changed the underlying hedging pattern of power sector participants”.
Europe’s experience with their trading system has been largely successful in getting the transfer begun to a renewable energy economy without major economic disruptions. So, it is possible that Europe may have a surprise for the world by February.
Image: Andy Revkin, NYT
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