ITIF’s Statement on the Lima Climate Change Negotiations

WASHINGTON – (December 15, 2014) International climate change negotiators announced a new framework for global climate policy in Lima, Peru today. In response, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) releases the following statement:

The framework climate agreement negotiated in Lima is the equivalent of raising the white flag. The new framework offers the same failed approach from over two decades of negotiations: resting our climate hopes on carbon targets. The result: the world has now locked in truly dangerous climate impacts.

After years of failing to produce a globally binding carbon target, international negotiators have settled on each country choosing their own voluntary target. While many – including U.S. negotiators - applaud this tactic as successfully moving talks forward, this bottoms-up approach is little more than a truism. Voluntary targets allow countries to set less ambitious climate goals as well as change or ignore those goals in the future. Countries already drastically change their climate and energy polices from regime to regime. So why wouldn’t countries comply when they can set their own target and receive no penalty for failure in the future?

It’s clear that the current international policy process is broken. Chasing after modest and potentially empty voluntary targets won’t produce meaningful cuts in carbon emissions. Instead, international negotiators must very quickly reset their focus on the only way every country – rich and poor – will take up low-carbon energy: clean energy innovation.

Countries aren’t hesitant to sign onto aggressive climate agreements because of a lack of political will. They’re hesitant to do so out of economic necessity: clean energy alternatives cost more than fossil fuels. Without a doubt, clean energy costs have rapidly decreased during the past decade, but not enough. More innovation is needed to make low-carbon technologies affordable to everyone, including in areas such as solar, energy storage, carbon capture and sequestration, nuclear, and bioenergy.

Unfortunately, innovation and technology policy have been completely ignored by international climate negotiations. But time is running out. The global community must expand beyond failed carbon targets and craft international solutions to support clean energy innovation.

For more information on international clean energy innovation policy, refer to Beyond 2015: An Innovation-Based Framework for Global Climate Policy.