112 / 145
THE STATE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION
112
environmentalists, the Waxman-Markey Bill
nevertheless constituted a strong signal of US
commitment at the UN Climate Change
Conference held in Copenhagen in December
2009. Action on climate change, however, ran
afoul of Republican attempts to polarise the is-
sue driven by both tactical motives and reasons
of principle. Climate change deniers, science
sceptics and opportunists built a wall of objec-
tions in an effort to block legislation in favour of
clean energy and energy savings. Despite this
resistance, Obama managed to establish new
standards for vehicle fuel efficiency and extract
a commitment from the US automotive industry
to promote electric cars. The fight against cli-
mate change, which was a key element of
Obama’s campaign platform during his run for
a second term in 2012, has become an increas-
ingly important point of his agenda.
Amongst the milestones in this shift in US
energy policy, three achieved in 2015 are par-
ticularly notable. The first was the announce-
ment of the Clean Power Plan in August 2015,
which constituted a decisive step towards re-
ducing carbon pollution generated by fossil fu-
el-fired electrical power plants and whose tar-
get of reducing emissions by 32 % by 2030
positioned the United States squarely in the in-
ternational fight against climate change. Aside
from their good intentions, the establishment of
these new reasonable standards and emissions
targets set by individual states led to the closure
of a number of fossil fuel-fired electric plants.
The country’s coal and natural gas sectors were
swift to qualify the plan as being too costly and
lament the loss of jobs it supposed –a line re-
peatedly touted by Republicans, who neverthe-
less failed to propose an alternative plan. In a
demonstration of the system of checks and bal-
ances that characterises US politics and govern-
ance, the US Supreme Court issued a stay order
that momentarily paralysed the implementation
of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean
Energy Plan, ruling that it could possibly violate
the competences of affected states such as
Wyoming and West Virginia. Nevertheless, it is
probable that the Supreme Court will eventu-
ally allow implementation to proceed after a
long process of deliberation that is expected to
last well beyond the presidential elections of
November 2016. The second milestone was
Obama’s rejection of TransCanada’s application
to build the Keystone XL pipeline, an environ-
mentally controversial project intended to pro-
vide a continuous crude oil transportation sys-
tem between Canada and the Gulf of Mexico.
This decision, which was of enormous symbolic
importance, supposed a definitive crossing of
the energy Rubicon. The third milestone of
2015 was the UN Climate Conference held in
Paris in December 2015 (COP21), to which we
will return at the end of this chapter, at which
US, European and Chinese leadership paved the
way for an agreement between 197 countries
to limit greenhouse gas emissions and build re-
silience against the effects of climate change,
breaking the deadlock in which the Copenhagen
talks had been mired. The United States made a
commitment in line with the Climate Action
Plan to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by
between 26 % and 28 % below 2005 levels.
What made an agreement possible this time
around? Paradoxically, it was not only the agree-
ment’s virtues but also its weakness (a large
margin of flexibility and lack of sanctions and
binding targets) that brought all parties on
board. Paramount to its success, however, was
a radical change in the energy policy pursued by
China.
In a departure from the failed Kyoto Protocol
of 1997, which sought to impose emissions re-
ductions exclusively on developed countries, the