Michael de Laine

By Michael de Laine, Copenhagen, 16th December 2008

The nomination of Steven Chu as secretary for energy by US president-elect Barack Obama would be “positive news for Connie Hedegaard and the Danish government’s prospects of successfully striking agreement on a rigorous replacement to the Kyoto Protocol at COP15 in Copenhagen in December 2009,” the Copenhagen Climate Council said ahead of the actual announcement.

Together with his choices for other energy positions, Obama on 15th December said he had picked physicist Steven Chu as his energy secretary.

Obama said Chu was “uniquely suited to be our next secretary of energy” for his work on new and cleaner forms of energy. Chu, who runs the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, won the 1997 Nobel Prize in physics and is highly respected in energy circles.

“Not only is he a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and advocate of action on climate change, but since the beginning of 2008 he has been a dedicated and outspoken member of the Copenhagen Climate Council,” said Erik Rasmussen, the council’s founder and the CEO of the ‘Monday Morning’ weekly news magazine.

In a statement issued on 11th December, Rasmussen said, “Chu would be a bold and ambitious choice as energy secretary by Obama, proving that he is serious about tackling climate change during his presidency. Not only is Chu at the forefront of science and low-carbon solutions, but he is an outspoken advocate for swift and tangible action to combat global warming.”

Viewing the appointment of Chu as an important step forward in ongoing international climate negotiations, Rasmussen added: “Chu understands it is difficult for people to see climate change as a clear and present danger, and has been striving to challenge conventional wisdom and teach people to see how global warming is a crisis for our society.”

Only last month, Chu declared that if we do not act, the planet is threatened with “sudden, unpredictable, and irreversible disaster,” with catastrophic damage to ecosystems because of global warming “a significant possibility,” and that we can expect “disasters in orders of magnitude different from anything we’ve experienced thus far.”

The Copenhagen Climate Council is an international body of the world’s most renowned scientists, business leaders, and diplomats whose recommendations are delivered directly to the Danish government, which will take them forward to next year’s crucial climate talks in Copenhagen.

The Obama announcement came two days after the European Union’s 27 members states agreed on a new energy and climate deal that aims at arresting catastrophic climate change, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, improving energy efficiency and increasing the use of renewable energy all by 20 percent by 2020.

Dubbed ‘a 20/20/20 vision’, the bills that make up the package are expected to be approved when the European Parliament considers them on 17th December.

However, according to EUObserver.com, the fine print of the deal will see the vast majority of the emissions reductions made in the developing world instead of Europe and emissions permits given away for free to many industries, a move that critics say will deliver windfall profits to manufacturers but little in the way of CO2 reductions.

Over three consecutive meetings, delegations from the parliament and representatives of the French EU presidency finalised the informal negotiations on a directive revising the current EU emission trading system (ETS) - the heart of the climate package.

They also haggled over a decision setting ceilings for national emissions in sectors not covered by the ETS and considered a directive that would pave the way for the development of carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS), an experimental technology that could scrub emissions from polluters such as coal-fired power plants and steel mills and then store the CO2 underground or under the sea bed.

The agreement reached on 13th December calls for 300 million emissions permits in the ETS to be awarded to fund large-scale CCS projects in the EU.

Revenues from the sale of such permits should cover the construction costs of nine or ten such projects.

Member states agreed on 12th December to set aside 200 million allowances for CCS.

At COP-14, the UN climate conference at Poznan in Poland, former US vice-president and Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore called on the world to focus more on global warming.

Gore wants people to be optimistic about the possibility of concluding a new climate treaty at COP-15, the UN meeting in Copenhagen in December 2009.

He added that the election of Barack Obama as President would mean that the United States would once more “engage vigorously” with the negotiating process, while George W Bush absented himself from it.

“We have to overcome the paralysis that has prevented us from acting and focus clearly and unblinkingly on this crisis,” Gore said. He wants the world to aim for a new and much more stringent target for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, which cause global warming.

Gore added that the present target of 450 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere should be cut back to 350 ppm - a figure which the world has already passed, he claimed (the present level is reportedly more than 380 ppm).

The Poznan meeting was not good for the countries facing the biggest impacts of climate change, who are also the countries most poorly represented, according to 350.org, which wants to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to 350 ppm to avoid huge and irreversible damage to the Earth.

“With the static of the UN and the distractions of a 24-hour news cycle, the countries fighting on the front lines of climate change are struggling to get the attention they deserve,” the organisation said in a report from Poznan. “Last week, 49 of the world’s most vulnerable countries endorsed the 350 target that the latest science calls for. Instead of recognizing the importance of this call, some EU leaders have been back-pedalling on their already weak climate commitments.”

Per Meilstrup, Climate Director of the Copenhagen Climate Council, spoke to the Copenhagen Voice on the EU and Poznan climate meetings, and about Chu, before Obama’s announcement of Chu as his energy secretary nominee.