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Beginning on Monday in Bonn, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change is holding a new round of negotiations. The goal is to get more clarity on an international agreement prior to the year-end talks in Copenhagen.

A couple weeks ago I posted on the document that is being discussed relating to possible changes in obligations from developed countries. The topic of this post is the document being discussed by the Ad-hoc Working Group on Long Term Cooperative Action.

This document is laying the groundwork for what the long-term limits should be for greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere as well as how mitigation and adaptation should be financed and verified in various contexts.

There are several propositions in the document for long term limit goals. The options under discussion range from stabilizing GHG concentration in the atmosphere at 450 ppm all the way to 350 ppm. Each number would be a significant goal. The current concentration is around 388 ppm and scientific models suggest that the number could more than double in the absence of a significant global mitigation effort.

On the issue of mitigation the document has a wide range of time lines and emissions reduction numbers. One provision asks developed countries to decrease GHG emissions between 20-45 percent from 1990 levels by 2020 and by anywhere from 75-90 percent of 1990 levels by 2050.

As a point of comparison: Obama has pledged to reduce US emissions down to 1990 levels by 2020 and then hit the 80% target by 2050. The Waxman-Markey bill is even weaker, calling for an 83% reduction from 2005 levels by 2050.

Also included in the document were targets for developing countries, including a reduction from “business as usual” between 15-30% by 2020 and an eventual 20% reduction from 2000 levels by 2050. Large developing countries like China have shown signs in recent days a willingness to deviate from business as usual; but any net emissions reduction obligations will likely be a non-starter.

It will be interesting to see how the various disparities get hashed out over the next two weeks in Bonn. This is really the first time we are starting to see actual numbers in the negotiation documents. Optimism is relatively high given the change in US administrations and the opening of a China-US dialog on the subject in recent months. How delegates from various countries react to the actual numbers in Bonn could give a sense of whether this optimism is nothing more than a chimera.

US President Barack Obama’s announcement yesterday that he plans to increase the fuel efficiency standard for automobiles and regulate their tailpipe emissions is quite significant.

After eight years of federal government inaction, Obama was able to get state goverenments, the auto industry, and environmentalists to agree on a plan that will limit greenhouse gas emissions, (perhaps) enhance the competitiveness of the beleaguered US auto industry, and reduce petrol consumption.

One of the things I found remarkable was the swiftness with which the auto makers abandoned their long-standing opposition to increasing the fuel efficiency standard.  Ever since California requested from the Bush administration a waiver to establish their own emissions standards under the Clean Air Act, the auto industry balked at how difficult it would be to follow a “patchwork” of different state standards.  They never had a reasonable response to the retort that they should simply adopt the more stringent, California standards on a nationwide basis.

Yesterday, however, the major auto executives stood behind Obama and praised the new regulations.  Whether this is a result of the industry coming to terms with the prospects of a dismal future or an example of Obama’s power of persuasion is uncertain.  Regardless, this is a significant development.

I’m surprised this hasn’t been picked up in the US press, but the Guardian is reporting that a bipartisan group of US functionaries held several meetings in the second half of 2008 with China’s top climate negotiator, Xie Zhenhua, to find common ground between the two countries.

The meetings apparently started in July and continued following the election of Barack Obama to the US Presidency. Many of the Democratic representatives were high level Congressional staffers or former Clinton officials who now have positions in the Obama administration. These include current White House science adviser John Holdren, Joe Biden’s adviser Jim Green, and long-time Democratic State Department hand, Frank Loy.

According to the Guardian, the group proposed that the two countries agree  to reduce emissions by 20% by 2010, cooperate on technological development of carbon capture and storage, and to commit to a global agreement in Copenhagen.  Apparently these terms were looked upon favorably by Xie.

While there has been no publicized agreement between the two countries, Hilary Clinton did announce a “clean energy partnership” with China during her visit there earlier this year.

This dialogue can only represent a positive move for an international climate agreement to be hatched in Copenhagen later this year.

Important negotiating documents for the successor to the Kyoto Protocol were released by the United Nations yesterday in advance of negotiating sessions scheduled for early June in Bonn. The documents are compilations of suggestions by various countries seeking to shape the international treaty expected to emerge out of the major negotiations in Copenhagen later this year.

It is interesting to see how these documents evolve during the months leading up to Copenhagen as they give the first concrete sense of many countries’ negotiating positions.

Two documents were released yesterday. One focuses on national commitments [.pdf] to greenhouse gas emissions reductions beginning in 2013. The second proposes systematic ways of incorporating land use into the Kyoto successor.

I haven’t had a chance to read through the land use document, but the national commitment document is quite interesting. One of the sticking points at Kyoto was coming to an agreement as to which countries would have to reduce their emissions and by how much. With the Kyoto commitment period ending in 2012, this document essentially picks up where the discussions in Kyoto left off, with an eye for developing second commitment period targets.

There are several options being floated, with only one offering explicit country-by-country reduction numbers for the second commitment period. Most of the proposals simply put forward a time line for the next commitment period and an indication of which countries should be covered. One of the main issues that recalcitrant nations like the US had with Kyoto was the exclusion of developing countries, like China and India, from having binding targets. Most of the proposals keep the distinction between the “developed” (termed “Annex I” under the Kyoto Protocol) and “less developed” countries.

Several, however, break down that distinction, suggesting that some countries may push for commitments from all signatories. This does not mean that all countries will have mandatory emissions reductions as Kyoto, for instance, set a precedence whereby some Annex I countries had obligations that exceeded their 1990 emissions.

The document also had some negotiating points on general, global emissions reduction targets. These included proposals to requiring Annex I parties to reduce emissions by 40% from 1990 levels by 2018 or 45% by 2020.

Finally, there was some mention of taking into account per-capita emissions levels. It will be interesting to see where this goes, given that the developing world (headed by China, Brazil, India, and others) argue that they should not be required to have any binding emissions reductions given the fact that per capita emissions are so small. It is the developed world that has the large per capita carbon footprint and should, hence, be most responsible for cutting emissions.

From the standpoint of the US, it is noteworthy that Obama’s target of reducing US emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 is much weaker than most of the proposals contained in these negotiating texts.

Reuters reports that the UN will be releasing another negotiating document in a number of days that looks to set forth long term (i.e. 2050) reduction commitments.

The Guardian reports that British climate secretary Ed Miliband believes that China is willing to negotiate on the issue of emissions targets given the change in the US position under Barack Obama.

China’s position has been that, given the fact that they have such low per-capita emissions, the developed world should bear the burden of absolute reductions.  This was always a deal-breaker for Bush who didn’t accept the equity argument of the Chinese.

Miliband–who just finished a series of meetings in Beijing–believes that Obama’s flexible stance on the issue has prompted China to perhaps agree to emissions intensity targets as part of an agreement coming out of December’s UN-sponsored talks in Copenhagen.

“Emissions intensity” refer to the amount of emissions needed to produce a unit of economic growth.  Under this scenario, China may agree to reduce their emissions intensity as opposed to actual number of total emissions.  This would go a long way towards giving Obama political cover at home where Republican critics of climate change negotiations keep on bringing up Chinese inaction as reason to oppose US emissions targets.

Today’s Chicago Tribune has an article discussing the problems facing residents of a new planned community in Oswego, Illinois–a growing suburb on the exurban fringe of Chicago.I am sure the story is not unique given the severity of the foreclosure crisis and the lack of regional planning that provides incentives for over-development in fast-growing suburbs like Oswego.

The story goes something like this: developer acquires former farmland and gets it zoned for redevelopment, acquires financing based on the assumption that the loan will be repaid with receipts from early sales, establishes homeowners association to fund the maintenance of common areas relieving the municipality from that burden, markets the new development as a “place where community thrives,” gets a few buyers but ultimately abandons the site because of lack of sales, leaves the residents with a mess of half-completed buildings and the bill for cleanup.

This seems to be a real hazard of master-planned developments in the midst of a real estate collapse. I don’t know if this is the case with Oswego, but exurban municipalities often count on developers to provide basic public amenities as a condition for the approval of projects. One of the complaints of residents cited in the article was that promotional materials from the developer indicated that parks, recreational facilities, and a community center were supposed to have been built. To finance those amenities apparently the developer was counting on revenues from early sales. When the developer abandoned the project, none of the amenities had been built.

Municipalities are in a tough position. It is in their interest to approve development which will raise tax revenue and to do it in a way which will minimize costs for the provision of public services. Costs of normal amenities are borne by the developer and the residents who directly benefit. However, outsourcing this activity to the market can result in these types of unintended consequences which could actually increase costs to the municipality in the long run: half-finished developments become eyesores and they could likely reduce property values in adjacent neighborhood.

Once the real estate market rebounds, it will be interesting to see if suburbs demand certain concessions from developers to stave off this type of problem. It is probably unlikely in the absence of regional planning since suburban municipalities will likely still be competing for developer investment and find it hard to resist their demands. There are ways that states and the federal government can provide incentives for more coherent regimes of planning on the part of municipalities–but I’ll have to leave that subject for another post!

In the meantime, if anyone has examples similar to what’s going on in Oswego, please send them along!