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US Status on Climate Change Mitigation

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  • Burtraw, Dallas

    () (Resources for the Future)

  • Woerman, Matt

    () (Resources for the Future)

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    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.

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    File URL: http://www.rff.org/RFF/documents/RFF-DP-12-48.pdf
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    Bibliographic Info

    Paper provided by Resources For the Future in its series Discussion Papers with number dp-12-48.

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    Date of creation: 16 Oct 2012
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    Handle: RePEc:rff:dpaper:dp-12-48

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    Related research

    Keywords: greenhouse gases; additionality; emissions cap and trade; Clean Air Act; carbon dioxide;

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    1. Morgenstern, Richard & Harrington, Winston & Nelson, Per-Kristian, 1999. "On the Accuracy of Regulatory Cost Estimates," Discussion Papers dp-99-18, Resources For the Future.
    2. Dallas Burtraw & William Shobe, 2008. "State and Local Climate Policy under a National Emissions Floor," Working Papers 2008-05, Center for Economic and Policy Studies.
    3. Linn, Joshua & Mastrangelo, Erin & Burtraw, Dallas, 2012. "Regulating Greenhouse Gases from Coal Power Plants under the Clean Air Act," Discussion Papers dp-11-43-rev, Resources For the Future.
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