UN general secretary Ban Ki-moon has summoned world leaders to a climate summit next week. Cue the international negotiations machine creaking into gear.

At the meeting, countries will be invited to clarify their visions for a new global climate deal, due to be agreed in 2015. To get the ball rolling, some big hitters are already announcing what they see as being the key elements of a new deal.

Last week, the UK released a document outlining its approach. Today, it’s the US’s turn.

In a submission to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) which oversees the formal negotiations but isn’t involved in the meeting next week, the US clarifies how it thinks a new agreement should work. Here’s the key bits.

Uniform contributions

Countries are due to outline what they’re willing to do to cut emissions by the end of March next year, known as intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs). The US thinks every country’s INDC should at least look the same, even if their level of ambition differs.

Among other things, the US calls for every country to outline:

• the timeframe for emissions cuts,
• the year cuts will be measured against, known as the base year,
• the sectors and greenhouse gases included in the pledge,
• the level of cuts as a percentage,
• details on how it will measure the reductions,
• what policies it already has in place to help cut emissions.

It even has a template for the form countries should use.

Hard deadlines

The US wants each country to review its emissions reduction pledges on a regular basis. Today’s submission doesn’t reveal how often this should happen. But the US says the first review should take place in 2025.

The EU wanted the first round of commitments to last until 2030, but the US thinks that could encourage countries to be less ambitious. It says:

“We think 2025 is advantageous because of ambition. If the end date were 2030, which some have suggested, Parties might be unsure about how ambitious they could be – and we might end up locking in ambition at a lower level than would have been possible had we first chosen 2025 and then made new contributions for 2030.”

It thinks all countries should work on the same timeframe as “ambition will be enhanced if all Parties update at the same time – that way, we all know that we will be under scrutiny and compared with others, so we will do our best”.

Unconditional elements

The US’s update doesn’t go as far as the UK’s in suggesting the level of emissions cuts other countries should aim for. It does outline some rules it wants all countries to abide by, however.

Every country should specify a part of their INDC that is “unconditional”, it says. That means countries would be committing to cut a certain amount of emissions regardless of the financial support it may receive. Other parts of the INDC can depend on how much financial aid developing countries are willing to give, it says.

It also says it wants the UNFCCC to be able to review countries’ efforts to implement their INDCs. The UN’s ability to oversee countries’ efforts to cut emissions was a sticking point in previous negotiations.

While the US’s submission isn’t as comprehensive as the UK’s plan, it gives a flavour of the sort of announcement we can expect next week and as the meeting in Paris in 2015 gets ever closer.