The U.S., Brazil and China All Set Major Climate Goals

The world got a major dose of climate clarity on Tuesday.  The U.S., Brazil and China — three of the world’s top greenhouse gas emitters — all released major commitments to reduce or at least slow their greenhouse gas emissions, protect forests and ramp up their use of renewable energy.

The flurry of activity comes with five months to go until major climate talks in Paris.  Those talks are considered critical for a global climate agreement and Tuesday’s news indicates a growing level of commitment to reduce emissions and the impacts of climate change.

The day started with a bilateral commitment between President Obama and his Brazilian counterpart, President Dilma Rousseff, on clean energy.  Capping two days of discussions, the two leaders announced that their countries will aim to get 20 percent of their electricity from non-hydropower renewables by 2030.  The exclusion of hydropower is notable because of it can be a major source of methane emissions.

The U.S. currently gets 13 percent of its electricity from renewables but almost half of that comes from hydropower.  Brazil also relies heavily on hydropower for electricity generation, but wind is the cheapest form of new power generation capacity in Brazil.  Though wind power is currently a smaller portion of Brazil’s overall energy mix, its low cost means it will likely be crucial to meeting the 2030 goal.

Beyond renewables, Brazil also agreed to restore nearly 30 million acres of forests.  That’s only a portion of the 148 million acres of deforestation that have happened in Brazil since 1970, but still represents a major climate benefit given tropical forests’ ability to sequester carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.  The Amazon currently sequesters up to a quarter of all human carbon dioxide emissions.

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