By Clay Nesler, V.P. Global Energy and Sustainability, Johnson Controls
By the end of day three, the hallway discussions about the leaked "Danish Text" seem to have subsided and parties were again focused on building consensus on items leading to a final consensus agreement. The initial COP plenary session included strong demands from smaller island states like Tuvalu and African states like Cape Verde that negotiations focus on legally-binding agreement for stringent and comprehensive than the Kyoto protocol. This demand, which was not supported by larger developing states such as China and India, led to a temporary suspension of negotations. This split in the position of the developing states is apparently a new twist in the COP negotations signfaling that this will indeed by a long two weeks in Copenhagen.
Another new development at COP15 is the fact that over 110 world leaders are expected to attend the conference starting as early as Wednesday of next week. What role the heads of state will take in the negotiations and how the organizing committee will accommodate these world leaders and their traveling entourages is not exactly clear. Some speculate that an agreement must be “in the bag” for this many heads of state to be participating. It certainly wasn’t clear from the discussions today that the agreement is a given by any stretch of the imagination. The most substantive business that was concluded today was the confirmation that Mexico would host COP16 (probably in Mexico City) and that COP17 will be held in South Africa.
One of the highlights of the day was a presentation by US EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson at the US Center. She talked about all the things that the EPA and the administration has done in the past eleven months to address global climate change. She also spent a fair amount of time discussing the recent endangerment ruling. She received spontaneous applause from the overflowing crowd when she made the announcement of the ruling. Her last question from the audience was about building energy efficiency and she said that it was a top priority for the administration but didn’t want to steal anything from Secretary Chu and other administration officials that would be talking about this over the next two weeks.
Speaking of building energy efficiency, there was a great side event sponsored by Climate Consortium Denmark entitled “Jobs-Energy-Climate: How do we reap the huge potential in energy wasting buildings.” Speakers from Rockwell International, the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) talked about the critical role of energy efficiency in addressing climate change and best practices form around the world. It is clear that Europe, and Germany in particular, is a leader in energy efficient buildings. Legislation in the UK will require new homes to meet “passive house” standards which are 25 kWh/m2/year. The European Commission has passed similar legislation for all homes by 2019. These standards could result in the saving of 460 Million metric tons of GHG emissions and the creation of 500,000 jobs if implemented across Europe.
The IEA, in completing a study of successful new construction and renovation projects believes that a factor four reduction (25% of business as usual) is possible given current technology and reasonable economics. A refurbishment project in Frankfurt, Germany resulted in a factor ten reduction in energy use. In projections of actions required to meet GHG emission targets by 2020, 59 of the 65 Gigatonnes to be reduced would come from efficiency. Finally, WWF shared results of a study of the most effective energy efficiency programs worldwide. Germany won hands-down with their “efficiency in buildings” program which includes an integrated set of standards, subsidies, loans, grants and retrofit programs. The German program provided the greatest amount of energy savings as well as high marks for job creation and ease of replication. The conclusion from Denmark was that we need efficiency now…it’s never been more important.
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
