After Copenhagen, it is clear there will be winners and losers

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the U.S. energy-supply sector relies mainly on consumption of petroleum (37%), natural gas (24%) and coal (23%). Nuclear energy supplies 9% of domestic energy and, in total, other renewables supplied a mere 7% as of 2008. Of the 7% attributable to renewables, biomass and hydroelectric are the greatest contributors (53% and 34%, respectively), followed by wind (7%), geothermal (5%) and solar (1%). One crucial question is how the domestic energy supply sector will change following the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of the Parties last December in Copenhagen, Denmark.

The fundamental accomplishment of the conference was the Copenhagen Accord, an agreement negotiated by only five countries and outside of the U.N. process. It lays out the high-level agreement in principle of the largest greenhouse gas (GHG) emitters that are not party to the Kyoto Protocol: China, the United States and India. The Copenhagen Accord is a first-ever agreement with regard to some sort of GHG reduction by non-Kyoto parties, particularly China and the United States. And it offers $30 billion a year in financial support to poor countries with “balanced allocation between mitigation and adaptation,” growing to $100 billion by 2020, as the Copenhagen Green Climate Fund.