Energy Policy TV Video: White House’s Connaughton on Bali Climate Change Talks, Energy Bill, Light Bulbs and CO2

James Connaughton, Chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, told an Energy Policy TV Newsmaker hosted by the United States Energy Association and co-sponsored by BP America and PricewaterhouseCoopers that the recent U.N. climate change negotiation in Bali accomplished the U.S. objectives for the meeting and creates a “robust negotiating agenda going forward,” focusing on CO2 reduction, financing of technology to address climate change and technology itself. He also discussed the just-signed Energy Bill, with its emphasis on fuels, vehicles, appliance-efficiency and light bulbs. The video is available at no cost on Energy Policy TV: Connaughton.

Connaughton said that the text negotiated at the Bali climate change summit achieved the objectives held by the U.S. and other participants: the launch of new climate change negotiations; a “comprehensive roadmap” for those talks including the role of CO2-reduction technology and the financing of that new technology; and an “aggressive” schedule for those talks to be completed by the end of 2009, allowing ample implementation time before the Kyoto Protocol expires.

Despite portrayals of U.S. delegates blocking progress in Bali, they were in fact “happy to join the consensus” once the U.S. received assurances from large developing nations that their action plans would contain reductions that were measurable, reportable and verifiable. Connaughton also praised Sen. John Kerry’s (D-Mass.) input at Bali as “constructive.”

Those negotiations hinged ultimately on the location of a very small point of punctuation, Connaughton said. “It all came down to a comma,” he said, citing the book Eats, Shoots and Leaves.

The new Energy Bill signed by President Bush is a key component of U.S. plans to meet greenhouse gas reductions, Connaughton said. He emphasized new standards for fuels, vehicles, appliance efficiency and light bulbs in reducing CO2 and pollution.

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