Port of Spain Climate Change Consensus: The Commonwealth Climate Change Declaration

This Declaration of consensus by the Commonwealth nations seeks a binding international agreement to reduce greenhouse gases.

Energy-Water Nexus: Many Uncertainties Remain about National and Regional Effects of Increased Use of Biofuel Production on Waer Resources

This Government Accountability Office Report (GAO 10-116) dated November 2009 finds that the extent to which increased biofuels production will affect the nation’s water resources depends on the type of feedstock selected and how and where it is grown. For example, to the extent that this increase is met from the cultivation of conventional feedstocks, such as corn, it could have greater water resource impacts than if the increase is met by next generation feedstocks, such as perennial grasses and woody biomass, according to experts and officials.

The Impact of Sustainability on Commercial Real Estate Transactions

This BNA webinar features Holland & Knight LLP partners Amy Edwards (Washington, D.C.) and Jennifer Hernandez (San Francisco) in a discussion of their perspectives on the impact of sustainability on commercial real estate in the United States. This 90-minute Webinar will address:

Green building policies and climate change actions adopted in various states and regions across the nation;
Best practices for reducing GHG emissions from buildings;
Energy benchmarking methodologies;
Preparation of sustainable communities strategies.

Date: Monday, December 14, 2009
Time: 2:00 PM - 3:30 PM (ET)

Understanding the Decline in CO2 Emissions in 2009

This Report by the Engery Information Administration dated October 2009 finds that projected carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuels in the Short-Term Energy Outlook, October 2009, fall by 5.9 percent in 2009 compared with 2008 (Table 1). Coal accounts for 63 percent of the total decline in CO2 emissions from fossil fuels this year. Projected coal CO2 emissions fall by 10.1 percent in 2009, primarily because of lower consumption for electricity generation. Forecast lower natural gas and petroleum emissions this year make up 7 percent and 30 percent of the projected total decline in CO2 emissions from fossil fuels, respectively.

North American Leaders’ Declaration on Climate Change and Clean Energy

This Declaration by the United States, Canada, and Mexico dated August 10, 2009 reads in full:

We, the leaders of North America reaffirm the urgency and necessity of taking aggressive action on climate change. We stress that the experience developed during the last 15 years in the North American region on environmental cooperation, sustainable development, and clean energy research, development, and deployment constitutes a valuable platform for climate change action, and we resolve to make use of the opportunities offered by existing bilateral and trilateral institutions.

We recognize the broad scientific view that the increase in global average temperature above pre-industrial levels ought not to exceed 2 degrees C, we support a global goal of reducing global emissions by at least 50% compared to 1990 or more recent years by 2050, with developed countries reducing emissions by at least 80% compared to 1990 or more recent years by 2050.

We share a vision for a low-carbon North America, which we believe will strengthen the political momentum behind a successful outcome at the 15th Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC meeting this December, and support our national and global efforts to combat climate change. To achieve our low-carbon development goals, and consistent with our respective circumstances and capacities, we agree to the following:

We will work together as we set and implement our own ambitious mid-term and long-term goals to reduce national and North American emissions;

We will work together to develop our respective low-carbon growth plans;

We underscore the importance of developing and strengthening financial instruments to support mitigation and adaptation actions and welcome in this regard the proposal by Mexico of a Green Fund. We will conduct further work on the proposal and will consider other views presented for scaling-up financing from both public and private sources;

We will cooperate and exchange experiences in climate change adaptation in order to better integrate adaptation into national, sub-national, and sectoral planning to reduce vulnerabilities to climate change;

We will develop comparable approaches to measuring, reporting, and verifying emissions reductions, including cooperating in implementing facility-level greenhouse gas reporting throughout the region;

We will build capacity and infrastructure with a view to facilitate future cooperation in emissions trading systems, building on our current respective work in this area; and

We will collaborate on climate friendly and low-carbon technologies, including building a smart grid in North America for more efficient and reliable electricity inter-connections, as well as regional cooperation on carbon capture and storage.
Working in key sectors can help accomplish our emission reduction goals. With this in mind, we will:

Work together under the Montreal Protocol to phase down the use of HFCs and bring about significant reductions of this potent greenhouse gas;
Cooperate in sustainably managing our landscapes for GHG benefits, including protecting and enhancing our forests, wetlands, croplands and other carbon sinks, as well as developing appropriate methodologies to quantify, manage and implement programs for emission reductions in this sector;

Reduce transportation emissions, including by striving to achieve carbon-neutral growth in the North American aviation sector in the context of global action;
Pursue a framework to align energy efficiency standards in the three countries in support of improved national energy efficiency and environmental objectives; and

Work to reduce GHG emissions in the oil and gas sector, and promote best practices in reducing fugitive emissions and the venting and flaring of natural gas.
In order to facilitate these actions, we will work cooperatively to develop and follow up on a Trilateral Working Plan and submit a report of results at our next North American Leaders Summit in 2010.

Wildlife and Forestry in New York Northern Hardwoods: A Gide for Forest Owners and Managers

This guide produced by the New York Audubon Society shows "how wildlife is related to different forest conditions in the northern hardwood forests of upstate New York. The manual supplies science-based information about how different methods of timber management (i.e., logging) change wildlife habitats, and how wildlife communities
change (and how they may be similar) across different forest conditions.

The Economic Effects of Legislation to Reduce Greenhouse-Gas Emissions

This Congressional Budget Office Report (Pub. No. 4001) dated September 2009 makes the following key points:

-Climate change is an international problem. The economic impacts of climate change are extremely uncertain and will vary globally. Impacts in the United States over the next 100 years are most likely to be modestly negative in the absence of policies to reduce greenhouse gases, but there is a risk that they could be severe.

-The economic impact of a policy to ameliorate that risk would depend importantly
on the design of the policy. Decisions about whether to reduce greenhouse gases
primarily through market-based systems (such as taxes or a cap-and-trade program)or primarily through traditional regulatory approaches that specify performance or technology standards would influence the total cost of reducing those emissions and the distribution of those costs in the economy.

-Reducing the risk of climate change would come at some cost to the economy. For example, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) concludes that the cap-andtrade provisions of H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (ACESA), if implemented, would reduce gross domestic product (GDP) below what it would otherwise have been—by roughly ¼ percent to ¾ percent in 2020 and by between 1 percent and 3½ percent in 2050. By way of comparison, CBO projects that real (inflation-adjusted) GDP will be roughly two and a half times as large in 2050 as it is today, so those changes would be comparatively modest.

In the models that CBO reviewed, the long-run cost to households would be smaller than the changes in GDP. Projected GDP impacts include declines in investment, which only gradually translate into reduced household consumption. Also, the effect on households’ well-being of the reduction in output as measured by GDP (which reflects the market value of goods and services) would be offset in part by the effect of more time spent in nonmarket activities, such as childrearing, caring for the home, and leisure. Moreover, these measures of potential costs imposed by the policy do not include any benefits of averting climate change.

-Climate legislation would cause permanent shifts in production and employment away from industries focused on the production of carbon-based energy and energy-intensive goods and services and toward the production of alternative energy sources and less-energy-intensive goods and services. While those shifts were occurring, total employment would probably be reduced a little compared with what it would have been without a comparably stringent policy to reduce carbon emissions because labor markets would most likely not adjust as quickly as would the composition of demand for different outputs.

-CBO has estimated the loss in purchasing power that would result from the primary
cap-and-trade program that would be established by the ACESA. CBO’s measure reflects the higher prices that households would face as a result of the policy and the compensation that households would receive, primarily through the allocation of allowances or the proceeds from their sale. The loss in purchasing power would be modest and would rise over time as the cap became more stringent and larger amounts of resources were dedicated to cutting emissions, accounting for 0.2 percent of after-tax income in 2020 and 1.2 percent in 2050.

-The expected distribution of the loss in purchasing power across households depends importantly on policymakers’ decisions about how to allocate the allowances. The allocation of allowances specified in H.R. 2454 would impose the largest loss in purchasing power on households near the middle of the income distribution. Which categories of households would ultimately benefit from the allocation of allowances is more uncertain in 2020 than in 2050. A large fraction of the allowances in 2020 would be distributed to households via private entities, and the distribution of the allowance value would depend on whether those entities passed the value on to customers, workers, or shareholders. In contrast, most of the value of allowances in 2050 would flow to households directly.