New deal 'not replacing Kyoto'
2005-07-28 10:34
Washington - The United States, Australia and four Asian countries including China and India agreed on Wednesday to create a partnership to deploy cleaner energy technologies in hopes of curtailing the growth of climate-changing pollution.
The agreement does not bind the countries - the others are Japan and South Korea - to specific emission reductions and is not viewed as a replacement for the Kyoto climate protocol, which several of the participants are parties to.
One of President George W Bush's early acts as president was to rescind US acceptance.
The arrangement was viewed by senior White House officials as a significant step toward establishing a framework in which rapidly emerging industrial countries will be helped to produce cleaner energy and blunt the growth of climate-changing emissions, especially carbon from burning fossil fuels.
In a statement, Bush called the deal a "results-oriented partnership" that will allow development and faster deployment of cleaner and more efficient energy technology.
Its result, he said, will deal with pollution reduction, energy security and climate change "in ways that reduce poverty and promote economic development".
He said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman will meet with their counterparts in the partnership to move the effort forward.
'A complementary framework'
"We are hopeful this will create a complementary framework (to Kyoto)," said James Connaughton, chairman of the president's Council on Environmental Quality.
The Kyoto pact mandates greenhouse gas emission reductions only among industrial countries, a crucial reason Bush pulled the United States out.
The pact deals with climate change through voluntary action and by emphasising the need to develop new technologies that reduce emissions and capture carbon.
The agreement is expected, as it develops, to use technology transfers and exchange of ideas to "harness in significant and greater ways the investments necessary to ... reducing greenhouse gases", Connaugton said.
The six countries pledged "enhanced co-operation" to deal with the growth of climate-changing pollution while still meeting their growing energy needs.
Participants plan non-binding commitments to develop clean coal, nuclear and hydroelectric technologies that are less carbon intensive.
The United States has been eager to find ways to get China, India and other rapidly industrialising nations to deal with climate change.
White House officials say that one problem with the Kyoto pact is that it does not require China and India, whose growing energy needs also will mean growing greenhouse pollution, to commit to emission reductions.
- AP