NUSA DUA (Indonesia), December 7: Washington will consider agreeing to binding caps on greenhouse gas emissions beyond 2012 despite opposing such limits under the UN’s Kyoto Protocol, the chief US climate negotiator said on Friday.

“We want to launch a process that will be open and doesn’t preclude any options,” Harlan Watson told Reuters during a 190-nation December 3-14 conference in Bali, Indonesia, at which the United States is isolated among rich nations in opposing Kyoto.

“That could be the end point of what occurs in 2009,” he said when asked if the United States, the world’s top emitter of greenhouse gases, might agree to binding emissions caps for the long term. “I cannot predict the outcome.”

President George W Bush has long favoured voluntary goals and investments in technologies such as hydrogen or “clean coal” instead of binding caps under Kyoto, which now groups all other industrial nations after Australia ratified the pact this week.

Bush’s administration will host new talks among 17 major emitters of greenhouse gases in Hawaii in late January, and Bush wants all to set new long-term emissions goals by the end of 2008 to help the world agree a new UN pact by end-2009.

Watson said that the administration had no intention of changing its climate policies despite pressure from Congress.

The House of Representatives passed an energy bill on Thursday that would boost vehicle fuel economy requirements by 40 percent by 2020, raise ethanol use five-fold by 2022 and impose $13 billion in new taxes on big energy companies.

“No,” Watson said when asked if that would make the administration shift policy. The White House has said Bush would veto the measure in its current form.

Watson said that any US energy legislation would have an influence on climate measures. “This energy bill will have a major impact on what is possible,” he said.

Bush says that Kyoto, which now obliges 36 developed nations to cut emissions by at least 5 per cent below 1990 levels by 2012 as part of a fight against climate change, would hurt the US economy. He says it wrongly excludes targets for developing nations.

Bali is meant to launch a two-year “roadmap” to negotiate a broader successor to Kyoto by the end of 2009 that would involve all nations to help limit ever more droughts, erosion, melting Arctic ice and rising seas from global warming.

A new global deal, including countries such as China and India, could plug Bush’s objection that Kyoto does not demand enough of the developing world.

Watson said the US delegation did not feel isolated in Bali despite Australia’s ratification of Kyoto. “We are the ones who are here, we are very involved in the ‘roadmap’ discussions. This administration is planning to take a positive role in that process,” he said.