Analysis Of International Reserve Allowance Program In American Clean Energy And Security Act Under The Framework Of WTO

Every country has to face the dilemma of promoting economic development while maintaining ecological environment. They are committed to finding solutions to environmental problems such as global warming and natural disasters. The American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACESA), which is passed by the House of Representatives on June 26, 2009, puts forward a proposal on how to control the greenhouse gas emissions. The act adopts a market-based greenhouse gas regulation by using cap-and-trade system. In this system, the United States set a binding limit, of which the total amount will annually decline, for domestic industrial sectors which generate large-scale greenhouse gas emissions. The act requires related industries to submit allowance for each ton of their emissions of greenhouse gases. Such allowance could be traded and stored. The act is constituted by five chapters, clean energy, energy efficiency, reducing global warming pollution, transition to a clean energy economy, and agricultural and forestry related offsets. The act is mainly about promoting the development of renewable energy in electricity industries and transport industries, implementing energy-saving technologies to achieve energy efficiency in various fields, establishing cap-and-trade system to control greenhouse gas emissions, creating green jobs, setting up funds to help the developing countries accessing to clean energy technologies. The most controversial article is the International Reserve Allowance Program, which imposes restrictions on emission limits of imported products. This program required the covered goods with respect to the eligible industrial or that enter the customs territory of the United States to submit appropriate amounts of allowances for greenhouse gas emissions. In this paper, the author analyzes the International Reserve Allowance Program in ACESA under the Framework of WTO.The paper includes four parts. In Part one, the author focuses on the background of the Act, and introduces the main continents of the act and the International Reserve Allowance Program. In Part two, the author analyzes most-favored nation principle, national treatment principle, the general exception of trade measures in GATT, and discusses Article XX of GATT by reviewing cases concerned about trade measures related to environmental protection. In Part three, the author compares the International Reserve Allowance Program to the explanations and conclusions of Panel and Appellate Body on the application of Article XX(g) of GATT, to find out if the program is consist with Article XX(g) of GATT. In Part four, the author studies the relation ship between Article XX(g) and the chapeau of Article XX, compares the International Reserve Allowance Program to the explanations and conclusions of Panel and Appellate Body on the application of the Article XX, to find out if the program can be justified by Article XX of GATT. Finally the author achieves the conclusion that the International Reserve Allowance Program is well designed to be consist with WTO/GATT in form.