Fostering improved, clean transportation has the potential to benefit the country enormously, and advances key goals of the Biden Administration.  The transportation sector is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, accounting for one-third of all emissions, and must be addressed for there to be any hope of meeting climate goals.  Transportation also affects every American's day-to-day life, from how they participate in their communities to how they pursue economic opportunity and empowerment, representing a significant opportunity to promote equitable growth.

The Blueprint is the Administration's most fleshed out vision for pursuing these goals.  The Blueprint outlines a comprehensive approach, addressing changes to every mode of transportation, and proposing to do so through virtually every policy lever available—a true "whole of government" approach.  It is consistent with, and further advances, key themes in the President's climate policy enunciated from day one, and further reflected in his signature legislative accomplishments, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). 

The Blueprint was a highlight of government speakers at the recent Government/Industry Conference for the auto industry, sponsored by the Society of Automotive Engineers:  In a keynote, Gabe Klein, Executive Director of the newly formed DOE-DOT Joint Office of Energy & Transportation, called it the "most important policy document in a decade."

Below are some of the key features:

• Multiple technological solutions will be needed, reflecting an evolving decarbonization path for several sectors.  To many, the electric passenger car is the symbol of transportation decarbonization.  But power demands and weight considerations, among other issues, may make it more difficult to use this technology in other sectors, including on-highway freight, maritime, and aviation.  The Blueprint recognizes that additional technology must be deployed, including those not yet fully commercialized.  It focuses on three:  battery electric, hydrogen fuel cell, and sustainable biofuel.

The continued prominence of liquid fuels in a transportation decarbonization plan is especially notable.  There remains active debate, even within the agencies which authored the Blueprint as to whether the types of "sustainable" fuels being promoted have the full range of climate benefits they claim. 

• But new technology is not the only tool.  In addition to developing and deploying clean technology, the Blueprint will promote measures to decrease transportation demand and increase transportation efficiency.  The Blueprint seeks to redesign the communities in which we live, so that people are physically closer to where they work, learn, and recreate.  Consistent with the Biden Administration's "whole of government" approach, this will involve policymakers outside of the four agencies who authored the report, including non-federal entities like towns, cities, and counties with jurisdiction over zoning laws that shape land use.  The Blueprint also stresses policies to encourage the most climate-friendly mode of transportation when movement is necessary:  For movement of people, this will likely result in renewed focus on mass transit and emission-free micromobility options. 
• A three stage timeline with interim targets.  Broadly speaking, between now and 2030, the Blueprint focuses most on research and investments to support deployment.In the 2030s, the focus is on scaling up clean transportation solutions, and the 2040s will be about completing the transition to a net zero transportation sector.  But there are plenty of interim benchmarks in between, such as a commitment that all new light-duty acquisitions for the federal fleet be zero emission by 2027, and 30% of private sales of medium and heavy duty vehicles be zero emission by 2030.
• Continued focus on equity.  Ensuring a just transition of the transportation sector is a cornerstone of the Blueprint.  Among other concerns, this will mean a focus on ensuring that zero emissions technology successfully penetrates all communities.  This could mean creating enhanced subsidies for acquiring electric vehicles, ensuring charging stations are meaningfully available in historically overburdened neighborhoods, and ensuring that transit service is fully accessible for the differently abled. 
• Interaction with advanced driver assistance technology (ADAS).  The Blueprint acknowledges that transportation will "dramatically change" in "ways that are hard to forecast," focusing in particular on another transformational shift occurring in the transportation sector:  the emergence of automation and connectivity, up to full vehicle automation.  Although such technology is often discussed for its appealing safety benefits, it may also reduce congestion and result in significant environmental gains as well.
• The continued role of agency-promulgated regulatory standards.  The Blueprint is clear that agency-promulgated, technology-forcing regulation has an important role to play in decarbonizing transport, even if the BIL and IRA focused mainly on incentive-based mechanisms.  The Blueprint specifically mentions renewable fuel standards, and emissions standards for heavy duty on-highway, off road, and fuel pipeline transportation.  More are likely in store, although the Biden Administration will have to tread carefully in light of recent Supreme Court precedent narrowly interpreting the agency enabling statutes that will serve as the authority for these rules.

Whether the Blueprint's lofty ambitions will be met remains to be seen, but the document is an important outline of the federal agenda to come, at least for the remainder of Biden's presidency.  The transportation sector is in the process of fundamental change, set to dramatically reduce where feasible uses of the internal combustion engine—the technology that served as its bedrock for over 100 years.  This process will create exciting opportunities and difficult choices, and the Blueprint provides important insight into federal priorities that should be thoroughly understood when engaging policymakers going forward and when making investment decisions.

COP27 was never going to be a ‘Big COP' in the way that COP26 in Glasgow was.  It was not originally designed to be one of the five-year ratchet reviews of NDCs set out by the 2015 the Paris Agreement and there were no major new climate change texts due to be negotiated.  Sharm's value is likely to be assessed, at least in part, on whether it effectively tees up important items for next year, including:

• the Global Stocktake (the technical dialogue will conclude in June next year, and the political phase at COP28);
• the Global Goal on Adaptation, due to conclude next year;
• the New Collective Quantified Goal on climate finance, due to conclude in 2024!and
• the increasingly important future discussions on loss and damage. 

However, COP27 remains an important waypoint – not least in how successful it eventually is in avoiding acrimonious debate and significant tensions over loss and damage.

Glasgow was a five-year review point.  But the UNFCCC assessed that not enough progress had been made by countries' emissions reductions targets towards the 1.5 degree target and required all member countries to return to COP27 with improved goals.  So COP27 represents an important departure from the UNFCCC's agreed timetable and in that sense demonstrates the increasing urgency of reducing emissions: an urgency juxtaposed against the record high attendance of representatives from oil and gas companies and the anguished debate about the role of gas as a transitional fuel.

And COP27 was set against a difficult geo-political and geo-economic backdrop.  Russia's invasion of Ukraine has caused upheaval in international energy markets and pushed inflation up to record levels.Central banks have responded by raising interest rates, pushing countries already struggling with the hangover from the pandemic to the brink of recession.  Europe's search for non-Russian gas has put pressure on developing countries, which have turned increasingly to coal as a cheaper alternative source of energy (and an increase in interest in exploiting Africa's untapped gas reserves), leading to the highest use of coal since 2013 and resulting in 2022's emissions being the highest on record.  Meanwhile, the UNFCCC has warned that the world is currently on target for temperature rises of 2.8 degrees by the end of the century (with the UN Secretary General warning colourfully that the world is ‘on a road to hell, with our foot hard down on the accelerator').

As if this set of circumstances were not unpropitious enough, this year has seen a sequence of climate-related natural disasters, with appalling flooding, wildfires and droughts afflicting countries across the globe.  The fact that COP27 was also billed as ‘The African COP' gave extra impetus to the calls from developing countries, which are bearing the brunt of the rapidly changing climate, for assistance with more than adaptation.  The issue of ‘loss and damage' (financing to address the actual impact that climate change is now having on developing countries) has been steadily increasing in importance: a shift developed countries have resisted out of concerns about potentially unlimited liability.

Initial negotiations around the content of the agenda (which took over 30 hours to reach an agreement) suggested a fraught and tense COP was likely.  But those negotiations resulted in loss and damage making its way onto a COP agenda for the first time.  Now that it is on the agenda, it is highly unlikely it will be removed at future COPs, meaning the developed world will have to address the issue eventually.  And in a welcome move on Saturday, John Kerry announced that the US was "totally supportive" of moves to address loss and damage and "100% ready" to discuss the issue in detail.

So COP27, which was supposed to have been about improved NDCs (though fewer than 30 countries came forward with revised offers), has been transformed into a COP which is all about the financing – both for adaptation and for loss and damage.  Whilst there is normally intense focus on the negotiations over UNFCC texts, with the focus on financing, such texts as were due to be negotiated were something of a sideshow, with negotiations only beginning late in the week.  This left negotiators working late into the night on Friday in order to try and finalize all decision texts before the closing plenaries of the Subsidiary Bodies on Saturday.

A COP of Few Announcements:

Although this COP has delivered fewer eye-catching initiatives than Glasgow, there are a few worth noting:

• A new US proposal to reduce methane emissions from oil and natural gas operations;
• US support for early warning systems for extreme weather disasters in Africa;
• US-Egyptian agreement to support solar and wind projects and decommission gas power plants;
• A UN plan for the Biodiversity COP15, due to be held in Montreal in December, to be "a Paris moment for biodiversity";
• Support for proposals for a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty;
• Israel, Lebanon and Iraq announced plans to work together to reduce emissions;
• Norway postponed development of the world's most northerly oilfield exploitation;
• Israel and Jordan signed an MoU for a water-for-energy deal;
• The UK introduced "climate resilient debt clauses" by its export credit agency;
• France announced its support for the Bridgetown Agenda to reform the World Bank, to focus on providing climate finance;
• The US announced a new global carbon credit trading initiative;
• Barbados called for a global 10% tax on fossil fuel profits to fund loss and damage;
• China announced that Beijing and Washington are having ‘informal talks' and indicated potential support for a loss and damage fund;
• Kiribati, Rwanda, Malawi, Cabo Verde, Suriname, Barbados and Palau called for increased funding for loss and damage;
• The EU called for additional support for climate financing in the Global South;
• A new Report by Lord Stern estimated the cost of mitigation and adaptation in developing countries would be $2 trillion/year by 2030;
• The UK announced a doubling of funding for the Forest and Climate Leaders' Partnership to halt and reverse global forest loss by 2030;
• France doubled its domestic decarbonisation budget to help French heavy industry deacarbonise;
• The UN called for "red lines" to stop support for new fossil fuel exploration and overuse of carbon offsets;
• The UN called for the creation of a new "climate solidarity pact" in which rich countries would help poorer nations financially;
• New Zealand announced a climate fund for land and resources lost by developing countries to the effects of the climate crisis;
• The UN launched a plan for a $3.1 billion global early warning system for extreme weather events.

Comment:

The US position is clearly focused on mitigation on the basis that if not dealt with in a much more robust and accelerated way now and the world loses the opportunity to keep the goal of 1.5 degrees C within reach (it may already be in the rearview mirror), then the costs will continue to rise exponentially for adaptation and will make the feasibility of meeting those adaptation demands even more remote. 

The developing world also recognizes the importance of mitigation.  But their focus is increasingly on managing the impacts of climate change that they are already experiencing.  They argue they need financing now to address those impacts and there is frustration that the developed world is not doing enough to demonstrate recognition of and engagement with the climate justice issue of loss and damage.  Absent that recognition, the spirit of collaboration will be lacking: without that spirit, movement progress on mitigation is going to be slow at best, absent at worst.

John Kerry's Saturday evening comments about loss and damage are welcome as they demonstrate that the US recognizes the importance attached to loss and damage: that may be enough to open the door for progress. 

What that might look like is unclear, but one way forward would be a radical overhaul of the world's public financial institutions.布里奇顿议程引起全球关注,即世界银行需要将其业务焦点转向为发展中世界提供气候融资-以赠款形式而非贷款形式提供-这一变化将显示全球致力于为发展中世界寻找适应/损耗和损耗融资源,这可能解阻同样重要的缓解进展。 如果Gripsm实现这一点,我们毕竟会记住它为大COP.

• 鉴于欧洲绿色交易广度-覆盖题目包括可再生能源、能源系统、排放交易、碳和碳边界调整价格、税收、关税税、环境融资、公司环境披露和供资-公司从参与设计这些重要程序中受益aiden-Harris管理可能采取宏大步骤限制温室气体排放,包括重建美国作为全球气候问题领头机构,结束Trump管理局启动的监管回退,投资新技术,侧重于环境司法,并可能开发“Climate内阁”领导政府气候工作。