Trump wrongly claimed that the Paris Agreement would allow China to “build hundreds of additional coal plants” and allow India to “double its coal production by 2020” but the United States “can’t build the plants.”
Trump wrongly claimed that the Paris Agreement would allow China to “build hundreds of additional coal plants” and allow India to “double its coal production by 2020” but the United States “can’ t build the plants.”
Strictly speaking, there’s nothing in the agreement stipulating which countries can and can’ t build coal plants. While the United States is held to a higher standard than developing countries, the two he mentioned — China and India — have agreed to climate measures that would preclude a major expansion of coal. And perhaps most important, new coal plants in the U. S. aren’ t economically feasible right now, due to lower costs of other forms of energy.
“You can’ t build them cheaply enough, ” James Van Nostrand, director of the Center for Energy and Sustainable Development at West Virginia University’s College of Law, says of new coal plants. Natural gas plants are cheaper to build, more efficient and cleaner. “It’s economics, it’s market forces.” Van Nostrand told us.
Trump made his claim on June 1 in announcing that the U. S. would withdraw from the Paris Agreement, which he described as “very unfair” to the United States.
The president has a point that the United States, and other developed countries, aren’ t held to the same standards as developing countries. The accord states that they shouldn’ t be, given their “different national circumstances.” Developed countries agreed to set economy-wide reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, while developing countries, according to the agreement, “should continue enhancing their mitigation efforts” with the aim of achieving economy-wide absolute reductions eventually.
The U. S., for instance, set a target of reducing its emissions by 26 percent to 28 percent below its 2005 level by 2025. That’s an absolute reduction. China, meanwhile, set a target that’s a ratio of gross domestic product, which means its total emissions will continue to increase as the country develops. China says it will lower its emissions per unit of gross domestic product within the range of 60 percent to 65 percent below the 2005 level by 2030. And the country set a goal of peaking its carbon dioxide emissions around 2030, with “best efforts to peak early.”
All 195 countries that signed on to the agreement were asked to submit “nationally determined contributions, ” which are voluntary targets for how they will contribute to achieving the agreement’s primary goal — to keep global average temperature “well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels.
