DAVOS, SWITZERLAND, JAN 24: World business leaders welcomed US President George W Bush's acknowledgment of climate change as "a serious challenge" and called on Wednesday for long-term emissions standards to help them plan. Bush declined in his annual State of the Union address to support mandatory caps on heat-trapping carbon gases that big US companies such as General Electric Co. have pushed for, instead backing new technologies to cut the amount of gasoline used in the United States.
While supporting the White House nod to alternative energies such as ethanol, wind, solar and nuclear power, corporate executives meeting at the Swiss ski resort of Davos said they wanted Washington to lock in stricter US emissions standards. "It is a good step, but we need to take many more," Duke Energy chief executive James Rogers said on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum meeting, where climate change is dominating talks among some 2,400 movers and shakers from around the globe.
Power plants being built today will be used for 50 years, so a sense of future regulations is critical for current investment decisions, Rogers said, explaining the business interest in more far-reaching US standards.
"We are not sitting on the sidelines waiting. A tremendous amount of work is going into being prepared (for a new regulatory regime)," Rogers said. Alcoa chief executive Alain Belda agreed, saying it was untenable for the American climate change agenda to continue to be set by individual states such as California.
"I think the country needs one rule," he told a climate change panel at Davos, noting such a standard could reduce the risks for companies of adopting new -- often expensive -- emissions-cutting technologies. He also said strong leadership from the United States, the top global source of greenhouse gases, could spur other less wealthy countries to tighten their emissions rules.
—Reuters
