The United States, like many other countries, has been participating in negotiations in the lead-up to the United Nations’ conference on climate change in Paris. The goal is to craft a policy framework that is going to engage all countries in combating global warming and establish institutions that can continue to spur more ambitious efforts over time.
The United States has pledged to reduce its emissions 26-28 percent below the 2005 level in 2025. This builds on its pledge at the 2009 Copenhagen conference to lower emissions by 17 percent below the 2005 level in 2020.
The U.S. pledge, officially called the Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC), details the progress made to date: emissions are on a downward trajectory, but reductions need to accelerate in order to realize its 2025 pledge.
The same document highlights some of the specific policies the U.S. is implementing to do this, including fuel economy standards that will double the efficiency of cars sold in America between 2009-2025, power sector carbon regulations that will cut CO2 emissions 32 percent below the 2005 level by 2030, ambitious appliance efficiency standards and potentially regulation of methane emissions from oil and gas operations.
Highlighting domestically binding laws and regulations aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions enhances the credibility of the U.S. pledge. But U.S. delegates going to Paris still face a complex set of negotiations.
Cracking Verification
There are two key challenges in the international negotiations. First, the international community needs to develop and implement a meaningful transparency-and-review mechanism to verify countries are meeting their voluntary pledges.
President Obama personally negotiated language on transparency during the 2009 Copenhagen negotiations, reflecting the importance of this issue to the United States. The United States advocated for a more sophisticated approach to transparency, in part, because of the poor track record of review and policy surveillance under the existing U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
