US Status on Climate Change Mitigation

Dallas Burtraw and Matt Woerman

RFF Working Paper Series from Resources for the Future

Abstract: In 2009, President Obama pledged that, by 2020, the United States would achieve reductions in greenhouse gas emissions of 17 percent from 2005 levels. With the failure of Congress to adopt comprehensive climate legislation in 2010, the feasibility of the pledge was put in doubt. However, we find the United States is near to reaching this goal; currently, the country is on course to achieve reductions of 16.3 percent from 2005 levels in 2020. Three factors contribute to this outcome: greenhouse gas regulations under the Clean Air Act, secular trends including changes in relative fuel prices and energy efficiency, and subnational efforts. Nonetheless, global emissions likely will be greater than if comprehensive climate legislation had passed because of the absence of offsets, and at this point the United States is expected to fail to meet its financing commitments under the Copenhagen Accord for 2020.

Keywords: greenhouse gases; additionality; emissions cap and trade; Clean Air Act; carbon dioxide (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H77 Q54 Q58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-10-16
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene, nep-env, nep-pke and nep-res
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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