Nov 1 - McClatchy-Tribune Business News Formerly Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News - Paul Wilson The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio

The United States will continue its focus on technology and research, not mandatory curbs on emissions advocated by many countries,to combat global warming, Bush administration officials said yesterday in Columbus.

"Regardless of regulatory mechanisms and timetables, nothing will happen without the technology," said Jeffrey D. Jarrett, assistant secretary for fossil energy at the U.S. Department of Energy. "We're focusing on lowering the cost of that technology."

Jarrett and other high-ranking administration officials spoke in Columbus during the second day of a weeklong meeting of the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate. The group consists of government and industry officials from the United States, India, Japan and South Korea.

American Electric Power, the Columbus-based utility and a group partner, hosted and organized the meeting.

The event came a day after the British government said failure by some nations to quickly cut emissions could wreak havoc on the global economy. The study appeared aimed at countries, including the U.S., that have refused environmental initiatives such as the Kyoto Protocol, which President Bush said would hurt the U.S. economy.

James L. Connaughton, Bush's senior environmental adviser, took umbrage when asked why the U.S. opposes caps on greenhouse gases. The administration favors limits on emissions for different economic sectors, but not across-the-board caps like the Kyoto treaty's, he said.

"It would be incorrect to say that we are opposed to targets and timetables," he said. "We like reasonable timetables and targets, not arbitrary ones."

One of the top priorities of the Asia-Pacific Partnership is to find ways to sequester carbon dioxide produced by coal-fired power plants. The U.S. Department of Energy announced yesterday that it is providing more than $450 million in the next 10 years to ensure that the "capture, transportation, injection and long-term storage of carbon dioxide" can be done safely, permanently and economically.

That's a good idea, but there will be a time when the U.S. will need to take on mandatory caps -- even if they're not exactly in line with the Kyoto treaty's, said Robert Burns, researcher at the National Regulatory Research Institute at Ohio State University.

"It just can't be something that allows us to continue to emit more and more carbon," he said. "The amount of carbon in the atmosphere is going up. The Bush administration, I think, is going to hold to their position for the next two years. We'll see what happens after that."

Klaus Lambeck, an energy analyst with the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, said the free-market approach should work, in part because of incentives passed last year for energy providers and large industrial companies.

It might not get the environmental results as quickly as enacting the Kyoto protocols would. But they will happen, and the technologies would be more sustainable, he said.

"Go slow and well-thoughtout," he said. "But do it. There is no excuse not to."

For the rest of the Asia-Pacific conference, participants will visit U.S. power plants, including one owned by AEP. The hope is that they will learn from the visits and from each other, said Michael G. Morris, the Columbus utility's chairman, president and CEO.

"Among the populations of all those (member) countries resides someone who will find the solution to global warming," he said.

paul.wilson@dispatch.com