By Nectar Gan and Ella Nilsen, CNN
November 15, 2023

US and China pledge to ramp up renewables in place of planet-warming fossil fuels ahead of Biden-Xi summit

Smoke stacks and cooling towers at the Jon Amos coal-fired power plant in West Virginia.
Joe Sohm/Visions of America/Universal Images Group Editorial/Getty Images

CNN — 

The United States and China have agreed to resume a working group on climate cooperation and pledged a major ramp-up of renewable energy, the two sides announced Wednesday ahead of a leaders’ summit in San Francisco, as the world’s two largest polluters seek to overcome their geopolitical tensions to tackle the climate crisis.

The announcement came hours before US President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping are set to sit down on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit for their first talk in a year – a highly anticipated meeting aimed at stabilizing rocky relations.

Cooperation on climate change has long been seen as a rare bright spot in an otherwise difficult US-China relationship strained by tensions over trade, technology, human rights and geopolitics. But even that bright spot had dimmed over the past year, with Beijing cutting off climate talks with Washington in retaliation for a high-level US visit to Taiwan last summer.

The statement on Wednesday, released separately by the US State Department and China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment, followed days of meetings between US climate envoy John Kerry and his Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua at the Sunnylands retreat in California earlier this month. The two envoys also met in Beijing for talks this summer.

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The two sides decided to “operationalize” a suspended bilateral working group to “engage in dialogue and cooperation to accept concrete climate actions” in this decade, according to the statement. That working group was first proposed by Kerry and Xie in 2021 at the United Nations climate summit in Glasgow, but has been on hold since August last year.

The statement also vows a major ramp-up of renewable energy including wind, solar, and battery storage to help run each country’s massive power sector – specifically to take the place of planet-warming fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas.

China and the US committed to “sufficiently accelerate renewable energy deployment” in their economies until the end of 2030 to speed up “the substitution for coal, oil and gas.” They also pledged to support efforts to “triple renewable energy capacity globally by 2030,” and said they plan to meaningfully reduce emissions from their power sector within this decade.

Both countries agreed to economy-wide reductions of all greenhouse gases in their international climate commitments for 2035, including carbon dioxide, methane and hydrofluorocarbons. The agreement involves attempting to cut emissions in line with keeping global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius – a crucial threshold above which scientists say climate change effects such as heatwaves and droughts will become difficult for humans and entire ecosystems to adapt to.

The statement marks the first time China has officially stated its intent to control the release of all greenhouse gas emissions – not just carbon dioxide as outlined in its current climate goals, said a Chinese climate scholar in Beijing, who spoke on the condition of anominity as he did not obtain approval to speak to the media.

Methane in particular is a greenhouse gas that scientists have homed in on in recent years as one to target for reduction, as its warming power is roughly 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide in the short term. Last week, China produced a plan to reduce its methane emissions, though experts have criticized it as weak and lacking no firm targets.

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“Under the current political environment, both parties have tried their best to find some practical and feasible points that can be advanced. It is very pragmatic,” the climate scholar in Beijing said.