Santa Fe's Ken Hughes will be among thousands of people from around the world descending on Copenhagen, Denmark, in a week for the United Nations Climate Change Conference.

Hughes will take annual leave from his job as a clean-energy specialist with the New Mexico Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department to go. "This is what nerds do on their off-time," he said. "It drives my wife nuts."

The dignitaries, negotiators and climate experts who gather in Copenhagen from Dec. 7 to 18 will be considering agreements for drastically reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, the primary cause of climate change, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Hughes' trip is sponsored by the local chapter of the Sierra Club. He's been the organization's conservation committee chairman for the last decade and will join the national Sierra Club's communications team at the conference. He'll be taking pictures, taping interviews and, he hopes, updating his Web site. Other Sierra Club representatives at the conference will be posting videos and updating through Twitter. He'll make a public presentation about the conference Jan. 19 at Santa Fe Preparatory School.

Hughes has traveled all over the world for similar meetings, including a visit to Copenhagen a year ago. The city generates 20 percent of its electricity by wind turbines. "They bit the bullet after the oil crisis of 1973 and invested in renewable energy," he said.

Every afternoon, representatives from different American groups will be briefed by official American negotiators who are working with other countries to hammer out a climate change agreement. President Barack Obama arrives at the conference Dec. 9, and Hughes is excited to see what he'll have to say.

The conference attendees will be debating major issues including how big, developing countries such as China and India will reduce their emissions and how far developed countries, especially the U.S., are willing to go in reducing theirs. Money and technological support to help developing nations adapt to climate change will be another negotiating point.

Negotiators are hoping to have a political agreement, if not a binding one, Hughes said. While that might disappoint people hoping for something tougher out of the conference, Hughes said even the Kyoto agreement — which bound nations to actions for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions — took five years. The U.S. did not sign the agreement.

Developing nations and small islands want to see developed nations cut emissions further than the Kyoto Protocol requires. They're asking for developed nations to trim emissions by 45 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. Developed nations have proposed reducing emissions up to 23 percent.

The U.S. is on a different track altogether, asking that internationally binding agreements like the Kyoto Protocol be replaced with national pledges that result in a total global reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions. The pledges might include some emissions monitoring and reporting and allow verification by other countries.

Hughes has worked on energy issues dating to the 1970s, when he worked with a U.S. Senate committee researching the transition from a fossil-fuel-based economy to a clean-energy economy. "The numbers now prove out what we found then," he said. "A clean-energy economy creates three times more jobs than a fossil-fuel economy."

To track official U.N. updates regarding the conference, visit http://en.cop15.dk/.

Contact Staci Matlock at 986-3055 or smatlock@sfnewmexican.com.