The White House pledged to cut carbon pollution by up to 28% on Tuesday, boosting the prospects for an international agreement on climate change at the end of the year.

With the US pledge, the countries accounting for nearly 60% of greenhouse gas emissions from energy have outlined their plans for fighting climate change in the 2020s and beyond, the White House said in a conference call with reporters.

“That’s a big deal,” Brian Deese, the White House climate adviser wrote in a blog post announcing the pledge. “The United States’ target is ambitious and achievable, and we have the tools we need to reach it.”

Deese told the conference call the US expected to achieve emissions cuts of 26% to 28% by 2025 relative to 2005 levels and was on track for an 80% cut in emissions by 2050.

The climate commitments would be “locked in” by the time Barack Obama leaves, and could not easily be reversed by a Republican president or Republicans in Congress, officials told the conference call.

“The undoing of the kind of regulations that we are putting in place is something that is very tough to do,” Todd Stern, the state department climate envoy, said. “The kind of regulation we are putting in place does not get easily undone.”



Some 33 countries have now committed to specific goals for fighting climate change, according to the United Nations agency overseeing the negotiations.

In addition to the US, the European Union, Mexico, Norway and Switzerland have outlined their plans to fight climate change after 2020, when the current commitments expire.



Those plans, and those of other countries offered over the next few months, will serve as the building blocks of an international agreement at Paris that is intended to limit warming to 2C, the threshold for dangerous climate change, Stern told the call.

Deese said the Obama Administration was on track to achieve those emissions cuts using existing legal authority, and that the US was on track to achieve emissions cuts of 80% by 2050, based on steps already set in motion by Barack Obama.

“We have the tools we need to meet this goal and take action on climate pollution,” Deese told the call.

However, Republicans in Congress said Obama would be unable to deliver on his commitment to the UN. “The Obama Administration’s pledge to the United Nations today will not see the light of day,” Jim Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican who heads the Senate’s environment and public works committee, and denies the existence of man-made climate change.

Most countries missed the Tuesday deadline for submitting climate change plans, agreed at the United Nations negotiations at Lima last December. A number of the biggest carbon polluters, such as Brazil, India, Indonesia, Japan , are not expected to announce their commitments until October.



Russia has offered to cut emissions 25% on 1990 levels by 2030.

Campaigners welcomed the US pledge - which had been widely anticipated - but said the Obama Administration needed to move decisively to finalise new rules cutting carbon pollution on power plants to keep up the momentum before Paris.

The power plant rule is the centerpiece of Obama’s climate change plan.

“The United States is signaling that countries should have confidence it can deliver. To maintain that confidence, a strong final rule this summer to cut carbon pollution from new and existing power plants will be critical,” the World Wildlife Fund said in a statement.



Oxfam said the US needed to make deeper emissions cuts to help keep warming below 2C. “While this contribution does move us closer to the 2C pathway, it does not represent the level of ambition needed to avoid catastrophic climate change.”

Among those countries that have come forward, the EU has agreed to cut its emissions by 40% by 2030, compared with 1990 levels. China has promised its emissions will peak by 2030 but it has not officially submitted a pledge to the UN.

Mexico, the first developing country to make a climate commitment, said it will cut emissions by at least 22% - and as much as 40% if certain conditions are met. Norway offered a 40% cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, from 1990 levels, and said it sought to be carbon neutral by 2050.

For the rest of the world, developed countries are expected to submit plans outlining substantial cuts in greenhouse gases after 2020, while most developing nations are likely to agree only to curb the growth of their emissions compared with “business-as-usual”, rather than make absolute cuts.

But the aggregate level of emissions targets proposed will be bitterly fought over by countries, experts and civil society. Based on the early submissions from the three biggest emitting blocs, global emissions would rise to a level that would see temperatures soar by at least 3.5C, according to some analyses, way beyond the 2C of warming that is widely regarded by scientists as the limit of safety, beyond which the effects of climate change are likely to become catastrophic and irreversible.

Birgit van Munster, of the Homo Sapiens Foundation, which has been analysing the pledges as they have come in, said: “If all humanity follows the example [of the first countries to submit pledges] we will be more than 700% over the likely emissions limit [needed] to limit global warming to less than 2C, and if this trend continues humanity will proceed to go beyond 5C, the end of human life on earth as we know it.”

Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the London School of Economics, said: “We can already see that the pledges for 2030 are likely to be significantly lower than a “business-as-usual” emissions pathway, but far in excess of 36bn tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, which the UN Environment Programme concluded last year was the level required for a pathway that offers a 50% to 66% chance of avoiding warming of more than 2C.”

It is unlikely that the pledges made in advance of the Paris talks will be enough to lower global emissions to a level consistent with scientific advice on 2C, as many participants acknowledge. However, many are hoping that Paris will provide a mechanism for the pledges to be upwardly reviewed in future years, according to each country’s ability.

“It is very important that the agreement in Paris includes the creation of a post-2015 process that raises the ambitions of countries’ planned emissions cuts,” Ward said.

Doug Parr, policy director at Greenpeace UK, told the Guardian: “Meeting the end of March deadline is an opportunity for major countries to demonstrate both urgency and leadership in the battle against climate change. But thus far we haven’t seen enough of either. Millions of people around the world are waiting for a signal that their political leaders are taking climate change seriously. They [the leaders] are still in time not to let us down.”

Once submitted, the 196 “Intended Nationally Determined Contributions”, as the plans are known, will be examined by the UN and other countries to decide whether they are fair and adequate. That process is likely to take until autumn, when the final preparations for the Paris talks will be put in place.