WASHINGTON – The United States on Thursday officially told the United Nations it will cut carbon emissions, predicting that Congress will move forward on climate change despite a tough political environment.

President Barack Obama's administration outlined US goals in fighting climate change in a submission to the United Nations, which was requested of all nations by the end of the month as part of December's Copenhagen summit.

The United States, long the industrial world's main holdout from climate change agreements, said it would cut carbon emissions "in the range of 17 percent" by 2020 compared with 2005 levels.

"The US submission reflects President Obama's continued commitment to meeting the climate change and clean energy challenge," US climate envoy Todd Stern said in a letter to Yvo de Boer, head of the UN's Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

"We expect that all major economies will honor their agreement in Copenhagen to submit their mitigation targets or actions," he said.

The summit had asked nations to report by January 31 whether they would associate themselves with the accord and join efforts to draft a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, whose legal obligations run out at the end of 2012.

The United States appears to be one of the first to formally submit its papers. The UNFCCC has indicated that it did not consider January 31 a strict deadline amid rancor around the world over how to battle rising temperatures.

The submission came hours after Obama made his first State of the Union address, where he urged a joint session of Congress to move ahead on climate legislation.

But Obama's Democratic Party last week suffered a stinging upset in which a Republican who opposes restrictions on carbon emissions won the seat held for decades by late liberal icon Ted Kennedy.

The Senate has yet to vote on climate legislation, which squeaked through the House of Representatives in June.

In the State of the Union address, Obama did not specifically ask the Senate to approve the House vision of a "cap-and-trade" system – in which companies must curb emissions and have an economic incentive by trading credits.

Instead, Obama focused on building a green economy and supported nuclear power and offshore drilling for oil and gas –measures opposed by many environmentalists but offered as a compromise to woo Republicans.

The two-week Copenhagen summit was marred by discord between wealthy nations and several developing states, which have pressed for more action from nations historically responsible for climate change.