BRUSSELS — US President Joe Biden recently gathered 40 world leaders for a summit on combating climate change, a welcome sign of progress on forging a global strategy.
Back in 2009, for example, the US led the global effort to achieve the Copenhagen Accord at the COP15 climate-change summit, which was attended by more than 100 world leaders.
Biden, who was then vice president, faces a similar problem today: how to make good on his pledges while knowing that Congress will not approve any serious climate measure.
Since then, emissions have already declined by about 25 per cent, thanks to the substitution of shale gas for coal.
The EU also has chosen a convenient baseline, namely, its own peak emissions year of 1990.
Given that US per capita emissions are currently about twice the European level, achieving Biden’s pledge would reduce them only to the EU’s level of today by 2030.
The key to the Biden administration achieving its 2030 target is its pledge to make the US power sector emissions-free by 2035.
The cost of renewables has fallen greatly over the last decade, in many cases by a factor of five, partly thanks to these subsidies setting in motion a cost-reduction process as demand for solar panels and batteries increased.
Biden’s approach is instead best understood as a political strategy aimed at so-called battleground states such as Pennsylvania, where coal remains economically and politically important.
The European approach — with the ETS and its emissions allowances that can be traded across sectors and countries — looks much more sensible at first sight.
The entire burden of adjustment fell on power generation, where an increasing supply of renewables made it possible to reduce emissions by about a quarter over the last decade.
The US will not be able to rely on renewables providing all its power, and the EU will have to start putting pressure on its own industry.