Hill Heat

According to the Associated Press, the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit set a voluntary target of reducing energy intensity (the ratio of energy consumption per unit of GDP) 25 percent by 2030. In addition, Australia and Russia announced an agreement on a “long-term global aspirational goal for stabilising and then reducing greenhouse gas emissions” and to “allow the supply of Australian uranium for use in Russia’s civil nuclear power industry.”

As the BBC explains, the reductions in energy intensity would not lead to any reduction in GHG emissions. In fact, a 49% reduction in energy intensity by 2050, given projected economic growth, translates to a rise in greenhouse gas emissions of about 15%.

Andrew Dessler has more at Gristmill on what he calls the “intensity scam.”

The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit is this weekend in Sydney, Australia, and President Bush will be there. APEC includes 21 countries surrounding the Pacific Ocean, including the US, Australia, China, Mexico, and Japan. A primary topic of discussion will be climate change, which the administration is highlighting.

On September 4, Bush and Prime Minister Howard released a joint announcement on climate change that “agreed today on the importance of confronting the interlinked challenges of climate change, energy security and clean development” and the goal of achieving an international agreement in Bali that “provides for effective action from all the major emitting nations toward the UNFCCC objective of stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system”. The upcoming APEC statement on climate change and the outcome of the Major Economies Meeting on Energy Security and Climate Change in Washington DC on Spetember 27-28 will indicate the US negotiating position for the UN conference.

What specifics are in the agreement?

• Fighting deforestation (i.e. getting credit under international agreements for forests, Australia’s Global Intitiative on Forests and Climate)
• Increasing free trade
• Expanded nuclear power (Generation IV International Forum and Global Nuclear Energy Partnership)
• reduced pollution technology investment (Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate)
• Coal gasification (the FutureGen International Partnership)
• Other multilateral partnerships (the Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum, the Methane to Markets Partnership, the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership, and the International Partnership for the Hydrogen Economy)

On the White House website EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson will be taking questions on Friday, September 7 at 12:45 pm EDT.

AVAAZ has a international petition calling for action on global warming at the APEC summit with over 400,000 co-signers.