As international negotiators meet in Bonn to debate the next steps on climate change, business both in the U.S. and abroad is taking a leading role in mapping out options and priorities on ways to address global warming.

In our April 11 letter to President Bush, USCIB elaborated a forward-looking international action plan on climate questions under the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.

In industry’s view, an international course of action under the UNFCCC should formulate short and long-term actions to address the hundred-year challenge posed by climate change.  The objectives of such an approach would be to:

ü       Deal with the full basket of greenhouse gases, not a gas-by-gas approach;

ü       Deal with the full range of legitimate sequestration options;

ü       Ensure country flexibility to choose the most appropriate path to pursue emissions reductions;

ü       Enable market flexibility to facilitate capital moving to least-cost options for improvement; and

ü       Support development, evolution, commercialization, and dissemination of existing and new cutting-edge technologies worldwide.

Such a UNFCCC-based approach would: 

ü       Follow a comprehensive approach that includes all sources and sinks and does not single out individual gases;

ü       Maintain maximum national flexibility within a realistic compliance regime that is not punitive and recognizes national sovereignty;

ü       Permit unconstrained use and full fungibility of appropriate flexible trading and market-based mechanisms, without caps or taxes, with the ability of business to participate;

ü       Enable technology innovation, dissemination, and cooperation, without technology constraints and trade barriers;

ü       Improve enabling frameworks in developing countries (markets, rule of law, property rights, energy supply and access);

ü       Strengthen the infrastructure of developing nations to deploy, manage, and maintain advanced mitigation, sequestration, and adaptation technologies;

ü       Focus on how to provide the commercial energy that developing countries need to prosper in an environmentally sound way;

ü       Encourage R&D on long-term technological options and appraise future role of nuclear and renewable energy options;

ü       Establish a detailed and realistic compliance regimen where enforcement and liability are well defined to ensure that private sector transactions undertaken in good faith are not unraveled because of a country’s non-compliance;

ü       Define a process to develop longer term objectives for all Parties;

ü       Encourage coordinated national, bilateral and regional efforts; and

ü       Promote voluntary business actions, information sharing and exchange of good practices.

USCIB Environment Committee

ICC statement on energy and climate

Business Action for Sustainable Development