Copenhagen, Denmark – The Business Council for Sustainable Energy (BCSE), an industry coalition of energy efficiency, renewable energy and natural gas businesses and trade associations, released today "The Post-2012 Opportunity: Clean Energy and the Low-Carbon Economy," a working paper developed to communicate clean energy business perspectives and recommendations for the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework on Climate Change (COP-15)/Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (MOP-5), which began this week.

Developed with the active participation of the Council's member companies and associations, the paper demonstrates through case examples how existing clean energy technologies — such as renewable energy, supply-side and demand-side energy efficiency, and natural gas — are today offering proven and effective solutions to meet the world’s energy and GHG emissions reduction challenges.  The paper explains how these clean energy resources, as they are fully deployed, will help diversify the portfolio of the world’s energy supply, reduce dependence on high-carbon and finite sources of fossil fuels, and create jobs and wealth worldwide.

Seizing on COP-15 as a critical opportunity for world leaders to signal to the private sector that the transition to a clean energy and low-carbon future begins now, the BCSE offers "The Post-2012 Opportunity" to highlight what the clean energy technology industries need from an international agreement and what they can contribute in terms of energy savings, GHG emissions reductions and economic growth. The Council, active in the international negotiations since its founding in 1992, calls for a strong outcome in Copenhagen that sets the stage for a post-2012 international agreement that includes:

Mid-term investment signals, in the form of targets, timetables and national actions or commitments by the year 2020; there must be common structures for emissions targets and common accounting practices for registries and inventories;

• Market-based approaches, such as the Clean Development Mechanism, cap and trade systems and carbon offsets;
• Continuity and a commitment to maintaining and reforming existing market mechanisms to assure businesses that their investments will be honored;
• An international financing framework that stimulates technology transfer and transformational investment in clean energy technologies and projects worldwide;
• Capacity-building initiatives that foster enabling environments attractive to clean energy investments;
• Strong intellectual property rights that reward innovation and spur investment in clean technology; and
• A private sector role in the design and implementation of post-2012 system.
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A copy of the paper is available on the BCSE website. 

The Council is an industry coalition that includes businesses and trade associations representing the energy efficiency, renewable energy and natural gas industries. For more information about the Council visit www.bcse.org.

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