![[logo] US EPA](http://www.epa.gov/epafiles/images/logo_epaseal.gif){kind=logo}
Bilateral Partnerships and Activities
The United States has negotiated agreements with many international partners to pursue research on global climate change, deploy climate observation systems, collaborate on energy and sequestration technologies and explore methodologies for monitoring and measuring greenhouse gas emissions.
EPA has provided technical expertise and capacity building support through bilateral arrangements, including the following programs and activities:
- Energy Efficiency Promotion
- EPA supports several programs that promote energy efficiency in products
and buildings. EPA has worked with developing countries (primarily China
and India) to enhance their capacity to design and implement their own
effective, voluntary, energy efficiency endorsement labeling programs
drawing on the lessons, experience, information and tools available
from the successful ENERGY STAR program. EPA also supports the international
Collaborative Labeling and Appliance Standards Program (CLASP), an international
partnership to facilitate the design, implementation and enforcement
of energy efficiency standards and labels for appliances, equipment,
and lighting products in developing and transitional countries around
the world. To learn more, please go to the Energy
Efficiency Standards and Labeling Information Clearinghouse.
- ENERGY STAR International Partnerships
- EPA has engaged with government agencies in a number of countries to
promote certain ENERGY STAR qualified products. These partnerships are
intended to unify voluntary energy-efficiency labeling programs in major
global markets and make it easier for partners to participate by providing
a single set of energy-efficiency qualifications, instead of a patchwork
of varying country-specific requirements. The international partners
include the following:
- Australia
- Canada
- European Union
- Japan
- New Zealand
- Taiwan
- More information about the efforts of these partners.
- eeBuildings
- eeBuildings helps building owners, managers and tenants improve the energy efficiency of their buildings worldwide. eeBuildings forms partnerships with organizations such as multinational corporations, local businesses and NGOs and government agencies that share eeBuildings' goal of improving energy efficiency to save energy and money. To learn more, please go to the eeBuildings homepage.
- Methane Capture and Use
- EPA works with developed and developing countries to promote the capture and use of methane from landfills, coal mines, natural gas and oil systems, and agriculture. Through the Methane to Markets Partnership, EPA has established bilateral relationships to identify the largest relevant emission sources and to identify cost-effective opportunities and potential financing mechanisms to recover methane emissions for energy production. The program also seeks to improve the legal, regulatory, financial, institutional and other conditions necessary to attract investment in methane recovery and utilization projects, among other activities. To learn more, please go to the Methane International Activities page.
- Economic Modeling Workshops
- Since 1999, EPA has sponsored economic modeling workshops that assemble leading climate economic modelers from developing countries and the U.S. to discuss model structures, model assumptions, data and results. The workshops have given developing country modelers important feedback on modeling concepts from U.S. and other international experts. The workshops have also helped to build and strengthen relationships within developing countries and between developed and developing countries, and they have helped U.S. modelers improve their representation of developing country economies. To learn more, please go to the Economic and Environmental Modeling Activities page.
- Greenhouse Gas Inventories
- Drawing upon its expertise in preparing the national greenhouse gas inventory as required under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), EPA works with developing and transition countries to improve the accuracy and sustainability of their greenhouse gas inventories. EPA efforts target key sources, emissions factors, good practices, institutional infrastructure and use of the latest IPCC guidelines on greenhouse gas inventories. To learn more, please visit EPA's Greenhouse Gas Emissions home page.
- Integrated Environmental Strategies
- The Integrated Environmental Strategies (IES) program engages developing countries to build support for integrated planning to address both local environmental concerns and, additionally, to reduce associated global greenhouse gas emissions. The program promotes policy measures that have multiple public health, economic and environmental benefits. To date, government agencies and research institutions in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, China, India, Mexico, the Philippines and South Korea have participated in the IES program. To learn more, please go to the Integrated Environmental Strategies (IES) program site.
- Adaptation Support Tools
- EPA works with developing countries to increase adaptive capacity to changing climate and to improve resource management of climate-affected sectors. Specific activities include the assessment of potential consequences of climate variability and change (i.e., on human health, agricultural production, etc.) to support improved resource management, and evaluation of adaptation strategies to increase resilience to climate variability and change.
- FORCLIMIT-India
- FORCLIMIT-India is
a cooperative forestry and climate change mitigation project of the Ministry
of Environment and Forests (MOEF), the Indian Institute of Science (IISc),
and Indian Council for Forestry Research and Education (ICFRE), on the
Indian side; and EPA and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory from
the U.S. The objectives of the FORCLIMIT-India research network are to:
improve assessment of mitigation opportunities and costs for all of India,
and for two Indian states in detail; develop several village-level and
private-sector case studies of mitigation potential and issues; initiate
dialog among government, private, NGO, academic and local stakeholders
on technical issues; and disseminate findings.