US Eyes Deal on Slashing Clean Technology Tariffs
CHINA: June 16, 2008
BEIJING - The United States hopes the world's major economies will agree to
remove trade barriers on clean energy technologies when they meet alongside
the Group of Eight rich nations next month, a senior official said on
Friday.
James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental
Quality, said the World Bank had identified 43 technologies the United
States and Europe proposed eliminating tariffs on.
"We think it is one of the most important and immediate signs of
seriousness, because climate change is an urgent issue and we can see a very
significant increase in the purchases of clean technologies if we eliminate
the tariffs," Connaughton told reporters in Beijing.
Solar panels and wind turbines are among the clean technologies the World
Bank identified.
At the July meeting, host Japan is expected to urge G8 nations to agree on a
target of slashing greenhouse gases in half by 2050.
The world's major economies will also hold talks on climate change, aiming
to push forward efforts to craft a framework by the end of 2009 to succeed
the Kyoto Protocol.
The UN-led talks in the Danish capital Copenhagen at the end of next year
aim to agree on a successor to Kyoto that binds all nations to emissions
curbs, depending on their circumstances.
The Kyoto pact, whose first phase expires at the end of 2012, binds only 37
industrialised nations to greenhouse gas cuts between 2008-12.
Connaughton said the World Bank has estimated the elimination of tariffs
could result in a 14 percent increase in the global trade in clean energy
technologies.
"That would be a very significant addition to the global uptake in
technology transfer of clean technologies," he said in Beijing, where he is
meeting Chinese counterparts to discuss climate change and the G8 talks.
The G8 meeting would also aim to agree means to speed the reduction of
greenhouse gases in key industrial sectors, as well as a financing and
technology transfer package that would include a new clean technology fund.
SECTORAL APPROACH
Connaughton said an industry-by-industry approach to reducing greenhouse
gases was "one of the most effective ways to engage internationally",
indicating US support for a sectoral approach that Japan has strongly
backed.
China's emissions of carbon dioxide are widely considered to have overtaken
the United States to make it the world's top emitter of the main greenhouse
gas that scientists say will warm the planet, causing seas to rise, glaciers
to melt and trigger more intense storms.
Beijing believes rich countries are responsible for most of the greenhouse
gases pumped in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution and they
should do more to cut their output and transfer clean technology to poorer
nations.
Despite differences, Connaughton said it was important to come to an
agreement to ward off a trade sanction-based approach -- something he said
China and other major developing countries strongly object to.
A US climate bill that was voted down in the Senate earlier this month would
have added a carbon tariff on energy-intensive imports from countries such
as China by 2020.
The Bush administration opposes such tariffs, but Connaughton said there
were bipartisan forces in Congress that would like to see such sanctions.
"There is still a temptation to be protectionist and still a temptation to
use trade sanctions as a tool, and that's not a very productive way
forward," he said. "It's an understandable tendency in the absence of strong
commitments." (Editing by David Fogarty)
Story by Lindsay Beck
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
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