© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry shakes palms together with his Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua earlier than a gathering in Beijing, China July 17, 2023. REUTERS/Valerie Volcovici/ File Photo
By David Stanway
SINGAPORE (Reuters) -The United States and China will revive a bilateral working group on local weather and work collectively on points like methane, plastic air pollution and power transition, they mentioned in a joint assertion on Wednesday following talks this month.
The two greatest greenhouse gasoline emitters mentioned they help a declaration by G20 leaders to triple world renewable power capability by 2030 and promised to work collectively to curb forest loss and plastic air pollution.
The international locations’ high local weather envoys, John Kerry and Xie Zhenhua, met in Sunnylands, California on Nov. 4-7 to search out frequent floor forward of essential COP28 talks in Dubai beginning on the finish of the month.
The re-launch of the bilateral working group marks the normalisation of the local weather relationship between the 2 international locations following a hiatus triggered in 2022 by the go to of former House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan, a self-governing island that China claims.
It will concentrate on key areas of cooperation, together with abating methane and boosting effectivity and the “circular economy”, and trade info on insurance policies and applied sciences to scale back emissions.
China’s efforts to chop its personal carbon emissions might be in sharp focus on the COP28 talks, with the nation nonetheless approving new coal-fired energy vegetation in a bid to make sure power safety.
The two sides agreed they’d “accelerate the substitution for coal, oil and gas generation” however it did not point out phasing out fossil fuels, a purpose that China has described as “unrealistic”.
They additionally dedicated to advancing “at least five” large-scale cooperation initiatives in carbon seize, utilisation and storage by the tip of the last decade.
COP28 may also concentrate on a “global stocktake” to determine what nonetheless must be completed to satisfy the goal set within the 2015 Paris settlement to restrict temperature rises.
The United States and China agreed that the stocktake ought to present that “significantly more ambition and implementation” was required to satisfy the Paris objectives and embrace requires developed international locations to satisfy their local weather financing commitments.
