Interests at the country level

Let's talk about country-level interests in climate negotiations!

There are really six entities that matter in climate negotiations. In roughly this order of importance, they are:

1) China
2) The US
3) The EU
4) Japan
5) India
6) Russia

You can argue about the order of importance of the last three. Quite possibly India should go above Japan, but I tend to think India appears to have more influence in this area than it actually does, because it can free ride off of some of what China does.

I tend to subdivide these countries into three groups, as follows:

1) Looking for Green Markets: The EU and Japan

Both of these entities have significant existing technological dominance in renewable energy technologies. This makes sense; both of them have little in the way of fossil fuel resources, and thus are particularly vulnerable to energy security issues. Therefore, both invested early and effectively* in green tech - the EU countries more in renewable energy, and Japan more in efficiency technologies, is my impression. This means both countries have two major interests in an emissions-reduction treaty: first, it will increase the market size for products where they have, at least at the moment, technical dominance. Second, with little in the way of domestic fossil fuel resources, they'll be among the first to be forced to transition off of fossil fuels anyway. Therefore, they have an interest in a treaty that will smooth out the potential competitive disadvantage of transitioning before everyone else by requiring countries to transition along with them.

2) Stalling for Time: The US and China

Both the US and China share significant domestic fossil fuel resources - especially coal - and up-and-coming renewables industries. It's in their interests (or their short-term interests, at least) to hang on to their access to cheap, plentiful coal for as long as possible. And even assuming both countries buy that it's in their long-term interests to do something about climate, it's still in their short-term interests to stall and emphasize research funding and innovation over emissions caps right now, since this could give them time to achieve a greater level of dominance in the renewables and efficiency technology industries, before those markets really take off.

3) Wild Cards: India and Russia

In the long term, India could look a lot like China; right now, it doesn't. China is thinking and working hard on making green technology a profitable future area for it. India isn't, or at least not nearly at the same level. Although India is talking a fair amount about renewables, it's lagging on actual performance; the only major Indian success in green tech is Suzlon, which is a mid-range player in the already crowded and fairly mature field of wind turbines. I don't get the sense that India has figured out how it would make money off a green "revolution"; how it does (or IF it does) will determine how it jumps in the long term. In the short term, it's clearly in India's short-term interests to be obstructionist on emissions reduction; it needs to develop, and has little to sell.

Russia is a wild card for a different reason - because it's hard to imagine what possible benefit Russia thinks it might get from action on climate change. Its economy is largely based off the sale of fossil fuels, and (while it may or may not be true) it's easy to argue that climate change's actual effect on Russia will be more mixed/equivocal than outright bad. Russia is a wild card because it's my belief that if climate change action ever gets going seriously, it could also be seriously destabilizing to Russia. I see only two rays of hope: first, in the short term, natural gas is cleaner than coal or oil, so if, in the short term, climate change action leads to a shift from these to natural gas as a first step, this will benefit Russia. Second, Russia does have some capital in nuclear power, which could be part of the solution.

So! Tomorrow, more on Russia. I have an entire book, which I'm halfway through, entitled Russian Renewable Energy: The Potential for International Cooperation, and it's by two very optimistic Scandinavians named Overland and Kjaernet.


* Actually, the US has also invested quite a lot in fossil fuel alternatives research; but not so effectively. I believe this is partly because corn ethanol turned out to be a very bad bet, but I'm unsure if that's the whole story.