*EPF513 12/03/2004
Text: U.S. Officials Brief Foreign Press on Climate Change Policy
(United States plans active role in Buenos Aires climate conference) (6020)

U.S. State Department and Department of Energy (DOE) officials gave international reporters an overview of U.S. global climate change policy December 2, in advance of the December 6-17 10th Conference of the Parties (COP-10) to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

At the Foreign Press Center in Washington, Harlan Watson, senior climate negotiator and special representative from the State Department, and David Conover, director of the DOE Climate Change Technology Program, answered questions about the U.S. approach to climate change, the Kyoto Protocol, U.S. expectations for COP-10, and the Bush administration's position on global warming.

The Kyoto Protocol is an amendment to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, an international treaty on global warming. Countries that ratify this protocol commit to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases linked to global warming or to engage in emissions trading if they maintain or increase emissions of these gases. The protocol will come into force February 16, 2005.

Watson said about 40 U.S. delegates would take active parts in the conference, representing agencies such as the State Department, DOE, the Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Agriculture, and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

The United States chose not to be a party to the Kyoto Protocol, Watson said, because "the terms that the previous administration had agreed to would require the United States reduce its emissions by approximately 30 percent, and there's no way the United States could have done that without severely impacting the economy."

Another issue, he said, "is that we do not believe the Kyoto Protocol is an effective measure because it excludes any obligations from developing countries, either now or in the future, to take actions to reduce their emissions."

Watson said the Bush administration takes the climate change issue seriously. "We're spending a lot of money on the science -- $2 billion annually to address the science and ... over $3 billion in a variety of programs, both research and development and deployment programs to address the problem."

Topics of particular interest to the United States at COP-10, Watson added, are adaptation to climate change and discussions for commitments beyond the 2008-2012 Kyoto period. Those discussions are set to begin in 2005.

"Climate throughout the ages is always changing in one way or the other, so it's very important that people are able to prepare themselves for floods, droughts and so on," Watson said, particularly in developing countries.

Because the impacts of climate variability are local or regional in magnitude, it is difficult to forecast potential changes and many technical issues exist in addressing adaptation to global climate changes. The United States wants to help the COP-10 move forward on the issue, he said.

In terms of negotiations beyond 2012, Watson said the United States thinks "[I]t's not advisable to move forward yet, for a variety of reasons."

Compared to the progress of other countries in reducing greenhouse emissions, Watson added, the United States is out in front. "During the period from 2000 to 2002, which is the time that this president could impact, our emissions have declined by approximately 1 percent," he said. "That's not a record many [countries] could match."

DOE's Conover added that preliminary figures for 2003 show a "slight growth" in emissions but a decline in greenhouse gas intensity. The intensity to which Conover referred is a measurement of greenhouse gas emissions per pound of production.

"We really believe we're making headway on reducing the growth of emissions," Watson said.

A transcript of the briefing follows:

(begin text)

WASHINGTON FOREIGN PRESS CENTER BRIEFING

SUBJECT: AN OVERVIEW OF U.S. GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE POLICY IN ADVANCE OF THE UPCOMING CONFERENCE OF THE PARTIES TO THE U.N. FRAMEWORK CONVENTION ON CLIMATE CHANGE

BRIEFERS: HARLAN L. WATSON, SENIOR CLIMATE NEGOTIATOR AND SPECIAL REP., DEPARTMENT OF STATE; DAVID W. CONOVER, DIRECTOR, CLIMATE CHANGE TECHNOLOGY PROGRAM, DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY

MODERATOR: PAUL DENIG, DIRECTOR, WFPC
THE FOREIGN PRESS CENTER, WASHINGTON, D.C.
1:07 P.M. EST, THURSDAY, DECEMBER 2, 2004

MR. DENIG: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Washington Foreign Press Center. As part of our series of briefings on environmental issues, we are pleased today to be able to provide an overview of the U.S. global climate change policy in advance of the upcoming conference of the parties, which will be taking place -- on climate change -- in Buenos Aires in December, from the 6th to the 17th.

And with us today we have two experts -- indeed, two gentlemen who will be down in Buenos Aires as negotiators. To my immediate left we have Harlan Watson, the senior climate negotiator and special representative from the U.S. Department of State; and to his left, we have David Conover, the director of Climate Change Technology Program at the U.S. Department of Energy.

Each of the gentlemen will have an opening statement to make, after which they'll be glad to take your questions.

Harlan?

MR. WATSON: Thank you very much.

And thank you all for coming. And I welcome the opportunity to be here with you today. I'd be pleased to answer any questions. I'll just make a few opening comments.

The conference of the parties, we're expecting, of course, several thousand delegates in Buenos Aires over the next couple of weeks. We'll be exploring a number of issues dealing with climate. We expect to take part in those discussions. We are very active members of the conference of the parties of the framework convention. We expect to engage all of the parties in a very cooperative and constructive fashion. We want to make sure that progress is made on the issue.

We also want to take the opportunity at this meeting, as we do at other climate meetings, on explaining our policy to the rest of the world. We believe it's often misunderstood. And quite frankly, we believe we have a good story to tell and are taking actions on many fronts which matches any -- match it against any other program in the world.

Domestically we are implementing the president's climate change policy, which he outlined in his speech of February 14th of 2002. In that speech the president set a near-term goal, a 10-year goal of reducing the U.S. greenhouse gas intensity -- that is the greenhouse gas emissions per dollar of GDP by 18 percent over the decade, over the 10-year period, 2002 to 2012. And then he also indicated that as -- the purpose of that was first to slow the growth of emissions, and then, as the science justifies, to stop and reverse that growth in emissions. We're well on our way. We're in our third year now -- excuse me, our second year. We've just completed our second year of working on implementation of the president's program. We're making significant progress.

We still have a ways to go, but we're very pleased with the progress we have made.

I might mention that this 18 percent reduction is -- in greenhouse gas intensity -- is about a 30 percent improvement over what we would expect under a business-as-usual profile over that same 10-year period. It would be roughly equivalent to saving 500 million metric tons of carbon emissions over that period. It's roughly equivalent to taking 70 million cars off our U.S. highways.

The second part of the program, which of course the president announced in 2002, was a robust -- robust investments in science and technology. We believe that there are still a lot of unknowns known about -- to -- there are still a lot of unknowns in climate science. We have been spending significant amounts of money since -- over the period since 1990, when the United States first initiated the United States Global Change Research Program. Since that time, since 1990, we have spent approximately $23 billion on climate change science.

Within the last year, of course, we did complete work on what's called our Climate Change Science Strategic Plan, which is a 10-year plan on addressing a number of the outstanding issues. And this is the first time, I might add, that there's been a comprehensive multiagency-coordinated budget for the climate change science program. It's just not a roll-up of a collection of what some 14 or 15 agencies are doing; really a well-structured, well-managed program. And I'd certainly like to commend Dr. James Mahoney, who couldn't be with us here today, assistant secretary of Commerce for science who heads that effort. He's done a marvelous job.

Internationally we are also engaged both on a bilateral basis and in a number of multinational technology -- science and technology activities. U.S. Department of State, where I've been engaged over the last three years, we have created partnerships with some 14 regional and individual countries, including both Kyoto and non-Kyoto parties. We have very strong partnerships working heavily in the science and technology of climate change and a number of other issues, certainly with our friends in the European Union, who we often have disagreements with on matters at least regarding the Kyoto Protocol; certainly with our strong -- we also have strong partnerships with Japan, with Russia, with our friends to the north and south, Canada and Mexico, and with large developing countries such as India, China and Brazil, among others. Overall, with the United States this group of countries as partnerships encompass well over 70 percent of the world's emissions and greenhouse gases.

Multinationally we also have a number of science and technology initiatives which we've undertaken over the past three years.

I'm going to turn to Mr. Conover to talk about the technology initiatives, but I will just mention a science initiative which is making great progress, and that is on Earth observations. On July 31st of 2003, the United States hosted the first Earth Observation Summit, and the purpose is to rally support for the establishment of a comprehensive, global and sustained Earth observation system over the next 10 years. There are many, many systems operated by various U.N. agencies and other groups of countries, but what's not happening is having all of this information tied together. And we feel that it's going to be very important to implement this system not only to address climate change but also many other environmental issues. We feel it's going to be a very valuable asset.

We now have over 50 countries. The European Commission and over 30 international organizations have joined the United States in this effort. And we have had a second Earth Observation Summit in April of this year in Tokyo, and we're looking forward to this all culminating in a third Earth Observation Summit which will be held in Brussels in February, where the 10-year implementation plan will be blessed.

And with that, I would like to turn over to Mr. Conover to talk about the technology programs. You might want to mention both what we're doing domestically as well as internationally, David.

MR. CONOVER: Thank you.

I'm Dave Conover. I direct the U.S. Climate Change Technology Program, which is organized under the President's Cabinet Committee on Climate Change Science and Technology Integration. This is a set-up that was established in the February 2002 announcement that Harlan referenced earlier.

We are a multi-agency R&D program that coordinates approximately $2.4 billion a year in investments in clean energy, carbon sequestration, measurement and monitoring systems, basic science, and the reduction of emissions from non-CO2 gases. In addition to that $2.4 billion in research and demonstration, we spend about $600 million annually on deployment on these technologies, particularly in the energy-efficiency area. And there's another $817 million in estimated tax credits for activities -- near-term activities in both energy efficiency and renewable energy.

The Climate Change Technology Program is organized around six goals: reducing emissions via energy efficiency and infrastructure improvements, reducing emissions from energy supply, capturing and storing carbon dioxide, reducing emissions from non-CO2 gases, improving our measurement and monitoring capabilities for technology validation, and fortifying basic science to undergird all of those efforts.

Within that portfolio of $2.4 billion, approximately 38 percent is spent on energy efficiency research and development and demonstration. We have a very diversified portfolio across the board. The president announced in January of 2003 the hydrogen fuel initiative, a $1.2 billion initiative to allow the first child born in that year to be driving a hydrogen-fueled vehicle by the time he or she was old enough to drive.

This year we've invested more than $350 million in hydrogen research and development projects, through public-private partnerships with DOE labs, academia, private industry.

We also released a Hydrogen Posture Plan this year, which integrates the functions of producing hydrogen from fossil fuels, renewable sources and nuclear.

We've released a carbon sequestration road map and are funding about $40 million worth of carbon sequestration projects, including 65 individual projects around the country.

Internationally, we have a robust program encompassing all areas of this issue, and starting with the International Partnership for a Hydrogen Economy, which has 15 nations as members, representing over 85 percent of the world's GDP and nearly 3-1/2 billion people and over 75 percent of the electricity used worldwide. This goal -- this organization's goal is to coordinate multinational research, development and deployment programs that advance the transition to a hydrogen economy.

The steering committee for the International Partnership for a Hydrogen Economy held its second meeting in Beijing in May of 2004 and initiated a Beijing action plan, which will, among other things, identify the role for the organization in setting codes and standards, a pathway forward for stakeholder participation, and compiling an integrated international partnership road map for the hydrogen economy.

The implementation and liaison committee of that organization met for the third time in September of 2004 in Iceland. And highlights from their 14-point action plan include the publication of scoping papers on high-priority activities; conducting international conferences on high-priority topics, including hydrogen production and storage and fuel cells; a world atlas on hydrogen and fuel cell demonstration; development of the road map for the international partnership; and establishing a safety codes and standards task force.

We also initiated in June of 2003 the Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum, 16 nations in the European Union in voluntary association to cooperatively develop and demonstrate technologies that will curb and eliminate carbon dioxide emissions. The objective is to make carbon capture and storage an internationally accepted alternative in dealing with greenhouse gases.

The Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum ministers met this past September in Melbourne, Australia, and approved 10 projects for joint activities under the partnership. These include technology developments involving all fossil fuels, not just coal, and five dealing primarily with carbon dioxide capture, before or after combustion; five with carbon dioxide storage, safe and permanent sequestration.

The most recent announcement this summer was the Methane to Markets Partnership involving eight nations, developed and developing countries alike, that will work on reducing barriers to the cost- effective capture and reuse of methane emissions. Methane, of course, accounts for about 16 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, but it's some 26 times more potent than CO2, making near-term reductions in methane emissions an incredibly important asset in dealing with the challenge of climate change and an economically valuable resource for the countries that can capture and reuse it.

We also are working with 10 nations in the Generation IV Nuclear Forum, which is designed to produce new nuclear reactors that are safer, more economic, more environmentally friendly and proliferation- resistant.

And finally, in January of 2003 the president announced we were rejoining negotiations over the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, otherwise known as ITER, which will harness the power of the sun and fusion energy, promising abundant, clean and virtually unlimited supplies of energy with no greenhouse gas emissions.

We're very proud of all of these multinational efforts. We believe we have an -- aggressive, positive and very well-funded initiatives in the climate change technology program, and I'm happy to answer any questions.

MR. DENIG: Thank you very much, gentlemen.

Let me remind you to please use the microphone and introduce yourself and your news organization.

Okay, let's start back there, please.

Q: (Name off mike) -- of the German Press Agency. Obviously you've mentioned you have a lot of critics out there, including some EU members, who are saying you're not doing enough and you're not joining the Kyoto Protocol.

MR. : Turn the mike on.

Q: Is it not on?

(Technical adjustments.)

MR. : Okay.

Q: So my question was, what's your response to the critics when they're saying that the U.S. is not doing enough to work on climate change?

MR. WATSON: Well, we recite -- what I do is to recite all that we are doing and challenge them to match us. And you know, we believe the true measurement is in results-oriented actions, not in agreeing to pieces of paper. So yeah, we have to challenge them to match us. As I say, we spend more on science and technology than anyone else in the world by far. In fact, our expenditure on climate change science is more than the rest of the world combined, and certainly our significant technology expenditures far exceed, I believe in almost all the technologies, anyone else -- anyone else in the world.

We're also aggressively taking -- in terms of our voluntary programs, we're making great strides with getting sectors and individual companies on board to help reduce the growth of their greenhouse gas emissions, again using a carrot rather than a regulatory stick. And we find we're making great headway there, and in fact over the last few years our growth in emissions are -- overall emissions are lower than many of our EU colleagues.

So that's my response.

MR. CONOVER: We find common ground on the technology issues. The European Union is a member of both the Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum and the International Partnership for a hydrogen economy. And in those areas what we're focused on are solutions to this challenge, solutions that will need to be developed regardless of the international regime that governs reduction of emissions.

MR. DENIG: Okay. Let's go here. The lady in the back, please.

Q: Yes, I am Ana Baron from Clarin, Argentina. No, I just wanted to know -- I haven't -- I'm not a specialist in this subject, but I wanted to know, if you are doing so well, why didn't you sign the Kyoto treaty?

MR. WATSON: Well, the terms that the previous administration had agreed to would, if we had tried to follow those, would require the United States reduce its emissions by approximately 30 percent from what they otherwise would have been. And there's no way that the United States could have done that without severely impacting the economy. So that's one of the problems we have with Kyoto -- a devastating impact to our economy if we're trying to meet an unrealistic target.

The second issue, of course, is that the -- we do not believe that the Kyoto Protocol is an effective measure because it excludes any obligations from developing countries, either now or in the future, to take any actions to reduce their emissions. So it's those two reasons that the president cited in March of 2001. That's why he said we would not go forward with Kyoto.

I might say that sentiment was -- had been previously -- had previously been laid down by the United States Senate in 1997 before the Kyoto Conference, where the Senate, by a vote of 95-0, told the previous administration don't agree to any protocol or any sort of an agreement that would, A, cause significant harm to the U.S. economy, or B, did not include all countries. And Kyoto met neither one of those challenges. And of course you know, in our system it requires the ratification by two-thirds of the Senate, so there's no way that Kyoto would be "ratifyable," even if any president would try to push it forward.

Q: I have a little follow-up. In fact, I wanted to know what do you expect about the meeting in Buenos Aires then?

MR. WATSON: Well, we think that -- there are two items we know are of great interest on the agenda that -- in our conversations with the officials there. One, there's been tremendous interest on the subject of adaptation in recent years. The focus on much of the negotiations that have gone on since the Framework Convention entered into force in 1944 -- the focus was on Kyoto, it's been on mitigation and reducing emissions. There's been a growing recognition that whether or not climate change is going to happen, whether or not it is human induced or natural, that there's a strong role for adaptation in this process.

Climate throughout the ages is always changing in one way or the other, and so it's very important that people be able to prepare themselves for floods, droughts and so on. The United States is blessed enough to have a rather robust adaptive capacity. And there's obviously much interest in -- particularly in developing countries also in strengthening their adaptive capacities to adjust to either climate change itself or climate variability.

And so this has been an agenda which -- been of particular interest to developing countries, who finally got moved to the top of the agenda in New Delhi, in the Delhi Declaration, which was agreed to in 2002, and there's much interest in moving together -- moving more concretely on an adaptation package.

The problem we have with adaptation, of course, is that it's very difficult to define exactly what it is, and so there's much work to be done. The impacts, say, of climate variability or potential climate change tend to be very local or regional in magnitude. We don't really have a good way to forecast what those changes might be. Some changes may be some positive, some negative. So there are a lot of technical issues underlying that. But we certainly want to assist the presidency and (the consular ?) parties, who will be the Argentina environment minister, to move forward on that as much as possible.

The second piece, that there's much interest in a number of particularly Kyoto parties in moving forward to what we'll call the next round of negotiations. As you know, the Kyoto Protocol just covers the period 2008 to 2012. Under the terms of the protocol itself, the Kyoto parties are to initiate discussions on commitments beyond 2012 in 2005, which is next year. And so there's going to be interest on a number of the Kyoto parties, in particular, to move those -- to start those conversations, if not in Buenos Aires, to set the stage so they can be launched next year.

That is an area which we do not think is going to be particularly helpful and we, quite frankly, think it's not advisable to move forward yet, for a variety of reasons which, if you want to do a follow-up, I can get into. But it's those two basic areas that we think that are going to be highlighted in Buenos Aires, along with a whole raft of, say, weedier, more technical issues.

MR. DENIG: Okay. Let's go to Japan in the front, please,.

Q: My name to Toriosta (ph), with Nikkei newspaper. Why don't you propose Kyoto Protocol member countries to, as you said, to modify the Kyoto Protocol to allow the U.S. to enter the Kyoto Protocol, or to impose some restriction to China or India or other developing countries?

MR. WATSON: Well, from the United States point of view, there are many, many problems with Kyoto, of which the stringent targets and timetables are only one. I would commend you to read a report which the Ministry of Energy, Trade and Industry has put out, METI, has issued in October which examines a number of perceived flaws, even from their point of view, of the protocol itself. We just do not think the targets and timetables approach is anything that the United States will be able to accept in the foreseeable future, certainly nothing that's going to attract the participation of developing countries such as China and India.

Rather, we believe a more cooperative approach is going to be required. To go to China, India, other large developing countries and try to get them to enter into a Kyoto-type regime with strict targets and timetables is a nonstarter. It's a waste of time. And quite frankly, it's not a conversation the United States would engage in either.

MR. DENIG: Let's go here, please.

Q: Thank you. This is Agemya Shimoto (ph) with Kyodo News, Japanese wire. Let me ask two questions. And one is about the Bush administration position about global warming. It has been quite unclear whether or not global warming was caused by human activity -- it was quite unclear how the Bush administration looked at this matter. And could you clarify the present position about global warming, whether or not it is caused by human activity? And may I pose a second one? A second one is just about the number -- about -- (inaudible). Could tell me the number of delegation and who leads the delegation?

MR. WATSON: Yes. Let me take the second one first, since that's the easier one. The leader of the U.S. delegation will be Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky. She will be there during the -- obviously, be there during the ministerial portion, which will be the second week of the meeting. I will be alternate head of the delegation prior to her arrival.

We're going to have senior officials from a number of agencies, senior officials as well as technical experts. I can't remember all the agencies that are involved. I know we're going to have certainly Department of Energy is going to be an important part of that, our Department of Commerce, our National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Environmental Protection Agency, our U.S. Department of Agriculture, our U.S. Agency for International Development will be among the major contributors there, and of course a large contingent of negotiators from the State Department.

We're going to have roughly the same size, somewhere in the neighborhood of 40, roughly the same size that we've had in the past, at these meetings. We also, obviously, will have some people that won't be directly involved in the negotiations that also will be participating in some side events and so on in talking about our policy.

With regard to your second question, let me first start it that we do recognize, and the president's made it very clear, that the United States does consider climate change to be a long-term issue, and we are committing to addressing it.

Now I'll go back to what the president said in his February 2002 speech. He referred to a -- shortly -- during -- after the president -- or almost simultaneously with -- when the president indicated we would not be joining Kyoto, he asked the National Academy of Sciences to produce a report on the state of the sciences -- science of climate change. And the national academy produced a report in 2001, and actually the president made reference to the results of that study in his February speech. And I'll just, you know, paraphrase -- I won't have the exact quotes of what he said, but basically what he said is that, again, referring to the academy report, that science tells us that the surface temperature of the Earth has risen by approximately .5 degrees Celsius over the past 100 years. Concentrations of greenhouse gases specifically, especially carbon dioxide, have increased since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Those are facts. There's no doubt about -- those are facts.

But yeah, when we get into the issue of how much is human-induced and how much is natural, the science also tells us that the projections of the future in an area as complex as climate change are subject to large uncertainties.

And so it's -- we -- there are -- again, it's many, many uncertainties how much is attributable to human activities, how much is attributable to natural impacts.

However, we want to emphasize that we are taking the issue seriously. We're spending a lot of money on the science -- $2 billion annually to address the science, to try to get a firmer grip on the science and, as Mr. Conover said, over $3 billion in a variety of program -- both research and development and deployment programs to address the problem.

MR. DENIG: All right. Let's go to the back there, please.

Q: Hello. Suzanne Presto with VOA. I have a question about the response to this week's article in Nature, where the scientists in Britain say that they can quantify how much the greenhouse emissions can contribute to freak weather events, and also they open up the idea of the possibility of lawsuits that could come from that. I was wondering what your reaction is to that.

MR. CONOVER: I have -- no, I'm sorry. I haven't seen the article.

MR. WATSON: But I believe it's just being published today.

MR. CONOVER: Yeah. Yeah. There were news reports about it --

Q: (Off mike.)

MR. CONOVER: Yes. And in general, the -- many of these studies and modeling efforts have large error bars. And the point that Dr. Watson was making is that we are spending $2 billion a year through a climate change science program to attempt to reduce those error bars and to better quantify those very questions -- What are the risks? What are the benefits? What's the interplay between adaptation and mitigation? -- but at the same time recognizing that that mitigation technologies are going to take some time to develop. We are aggressively working on the research and development of those technologies, which, in addition to having significant greenhouse gas management attributes, generally have great local health benefits, reduction of air pollution and energy security in the various countries in which they'd be deployed.

So we are working very hard in terms of reducing the cost of the mitigation technologies, as we're answering these questions on the science side.

MR. DENIG: Any other questions? Yes, Austria in the back.

Q: (Name inaudible) -- Austria Press Agency. You mentioned before, if I understood correctly, that climate change has also -- has not only possible negative but also possible positive effects. What do you mean? What are, in your view, these positive effects of the global climate change? Thank you.

MR. WATSON: Well, I believe that there are many areas in the world that perhaps -- that people inhabit don't think they have a particularly good climate. They might live in arid -- it might be too arid, it might be too wet, it might be too hot, it might be too cold from their point of view. The point is, it isn't all -- it isn't going to be all bad in all places. I know the way it's portrayed in the press is that everything is horrible, but there are winners and losers, and it's not a -- climate does not act uniformly across the globe obviously.

MR. DENIG: Yes, up there.

Q: Dietmar Osterman, German newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau. Can you give us some numbers? You said that you're on your way reaching that goal of the 18 percent reduction in intensity, and you also said that the growth in emissions is lower than in many or some of the EU countries. Can you just give us the numbers to that?

MR. WATSON: Well, let me give you a specific number that I can -- that the most recent submission that at least -- we did, and you can compare it with what other countries did. And this is -- each of the developed countries are required to submit an annual inventory of their greenhouse gas emissions to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. Typically it happens in the April to June time frame for most parties. And we reported in April, as did other parties, our 2002 figures, as well as any updates we might have had on past.

Let me just say that from 2000 -- the period from 2000 to 2002, which is really the time that this president could impact, our emissions have declined by approximately 1 percent during that period, and that is very, very -- if you would compare that to what's happened in many countries, by -- that's not a record that many could match. Now there are many reasons for that, but -- yes?

Q: Is it intensity or is it --

MR. WATSON: No, I'm talking about absolute emissions. Yeah, absolute emissions. And we have had some significant economic growth during that time, so our intensity has gone down.

But our emissions right now, as I say, in 2002 were lower than they were in 2000. We'll have to see; I believe preliminary figures in 2003 indicated that that they're, I think, right at --

MR. CONOVER: Slight growth, but intensity decline.

MR. WATSON: Yeah, very, very slight growth, yeah, but continued intensity decline. So we really believe we're making headway on reducing the growth of emissions. And again, I'm sorry I don't have exact numbers of the intensity decline, but we feel we're well on our target to meeting the 18 percent goal that the president set for us.

MR. DENIG: Okay. Japan, up front.

Q: I have a question to Mr. Conover.

MR. DENIG: Say your name and affiliation.

Q: Yeah. Toru Yoshida with Nikkei newspaper.

With respect to nuclear energy, what's your strategy to promote nuclear energy? And a second question is about ITER, you mentioned. Do you still support Japanese initiative, or do you change your mind to support European Union?

MR. CONOVER: I'll take the second question first and then the first question. We have found the Japanese site technically superior, but we support the ITER process and look forward to the conclusion of the negotiations and getting on with the work.

As to the first question, we have a varied approach to supporting nuclear power, both in the near term and in the long term.

We have a program called Nuclear Power 2010, which is designed to get nuclear power plants sited in the United States, dealing with a combined operate-and-construction license to move forward with getting that emissions-free energy source growing again in this country.

We also have a longer-range program, the Gen IV initiative that I mentioned before, the multilateral effort to create a new generation of nuclear power plants that are economically more attractive, environmentally more acceptable, deal better with the waste issue and are proliferation-resistant.

At the same time, we have an Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative that is designed to get a better handle on reducing waste so that those issues can be dealt with in a better fashion and allow us to move ahead with the large amounts of nuclear power that are likely to be needed to deal with this challenge over the next century.

MR. : You might want to just mention the relicensing at Yucca Mountain --

MR. CONOVER: We're -- and to deal with the waste here domestically, we are making progress with the Yucca Mountain waste repository. The relicensing process is going forward and the issues that are involved with the standards will be dealt with. We're very optimistic that that site will be opened up and able to begin receiving waste in the 2015 time frame.

MR. DENIG: Okay, this is our final question. No?

Okay, thank you very much, gentlemen.

MR. WATSON: Okay.

MR. CONOVER: Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

MR. DENIG: Thank you all.

(end text)

(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

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