The Paris Agreement was a “big first step” in the global battle against climate change, but another major advance will be needed in a decade, and then heightened ambitions in the years after, U.S. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz said Wednesday.
As many as 155 nations are set to ink the accord on Friday, the first day it is available for signature, the United Nations said this week. The agreement, in which 196 governments last year offered national commitments to curb climate change, will enter into force when 55 parties, representing no less than 55 percent of global emissions, sign it and submit their instruments of ratification, acceptance, or approval.
Asked when he expects that to occur, Moniz said only that the number of nations expected at the signing event at the U.N. headquarters in New York illustrates that the process “is going a lot faster than many had expected.”
“I do think that we will see certainly the vast majority of countries working hard to meet their commitments,” he said during a breakfast forum sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor and Arizona State University. “Having said that, I do think we’re going to need, 10 years from now, we’re going to need another big step. We’re going to need increasing ambition because ultimately we will be talking at the mid-century and beyond time frame of very, very deep decarbonization.”
While he did not lay out a specific prescription for achieving this progress over the decades, Moniz made clear that legislative support and technological innovation, for both renewable and non-renewable sources of energy, would be crucial.
The United States, in its nationally determined contribution to the Paris Agreement, pledged to by 2020 reduce emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels, and by 2025 to drop them by 26-28 percent. The nation is on track to meet its 2020 commitment, but then will need to double the pace of decrease of carbon intensity to carry out its 2025 pledge, Moniz said: “So we do have to pick it up.”
Moniz noted that in the last six to seven years there have been 40 to 90 percent reductions in costs for onshore wind, solar, LEDs, and other non-carbon-emitting energy technologies. That trend will need to continue for both those and other technologies, and greater efficiency and innovation will also be needed in areas such as carbon capture and storage and nuclear power, he said.
In the end, the United States has the tools to meet its 2025 goal, including continued promulgation of efficiency standards for vehicles, buildings, and other emitters, according to the energy secretary. “But, again, the very deep carbonization is going to require more arrows in the quiver, and ultimately I believe will require a legislative economy-wide approach,” Moniz told the audience.
He acknowledged, though, that complete decarbonization by mid-century is “very, very hard to imagine.” While leaders must avoid setting goals that become discouraging, “it’s very important that we go as low as we can as fast as we can,” Moniz said.
In line with his comments, the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions on Wednesday released a paper laying out the “additional federal policies, technological advances that lower the cost of emissions reduction, and stronger efforts by cities and businesses” that will be necessary for the U.S. to reach its 2025 emissions reduction target.
In a late-morning speech to the National Coal Council, Moniz affirmed that carbon capture and storage would remain a central component of climate efforts in the United States and other nations. Ten countries’ INDCs to the Paris Agreement include CCS, he said. That list does not include the United States, but instead features Bahrain, Canada, China, Egypt, Iran, Malawi, Norway, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and the United Arab Emirates.
The Obama administration is exploring a number of avenues to promote the technology, including a planned campaign to offer up to $5 billion in tax incentives for CCS deployment, which has yet to receive congressional approval, Moniz said.
To highlight the importance of CCS, he noted an International Energy Agency finding that the technology would provide 14 percent of the needed global emissions reductions to mid-century if nations are to meet their target of limiting temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius or less. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change also determined that meeting the climate goal would be 140 percent more expensive without CCS, Moniz said.
Republicans in Congress have taken a dim view of the Paris Agreement and U.S. efforts to meet its commitments, and leading GOP presidential candidates Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas) have been vocal in their dismissal of man-made climate change.
At the Christian Science Monitor event, Moniz was asked what effect a Republican president would have on the outlook for the 2025 targets. After joking that he would not “discuss a hypothetical,” the DOE chief indicated the effects of climate change would make the threat increasingly impossible to ignore.
“Mother Nature will keep speaking to all of us,” Moniz said. He added: “I really believe that, after the heat of the current partisan divide, that we will continue to see solutions that drive us towards a low-carbon economy.”
