US Climate Envoy John Kerry opened his first major climate talks with Chinese officials in almost a year, as both sides pledged to work for tangible results despite deep tensions between the rival superpowers.
China is seeking “substantial” dialogue this week, the country’s climate envoy Xie Zhenhua said Monday, as officials gathered in Beijing to begin three days of talks. Those exchanges on climate and the green transition could make a contribution “to improving our bilateral relations,” he added.
Kerry, who arrived in Beijing on Sunday, said he hoped China and the US would take “big steps that will send a signal to the world” about how seriously both sides take the common threat to humanity.
“I hope we can work with the greatest purpose we have ever worked to try to get this done,” added the former US secretary of state. The two officials met for about four hours on Monday morning, according to state broadcaster China Central Television.
Negotiations between the world’s top two greenhouse gas emitters on how to tackle global warming were suspended last year, after then US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s controversial visit to Taiwan. Their renewed communication comes amid a broader Biden administration push to restore high-level dialogue.
Kerry, who was tapped to be the US special presidential envoy for climate two years ago, is the third senior US official to visit Beijing in five weeks. But while US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen left China mostly with pledges to keep talking, climate is an arena with potential for breakthroughs.
“China and the US share similar ideas and have a similar past in addressing climate change,” Xie said, speaking through a translator. He cited agreements in 2014 and 2021, as well as collaboration at UN climate summits.
Negotiations this week are aimed at making headway on a series of issues — including global climate targets, methane abatement and the use of coal-fired power. They’re also expected to lay the groundwork for potential pronouncements at the UN General Assembly in September, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders’ summit in California in November and the UN climate summit in Dubai at the end of the year.
“It is imperative that China and the United States make real progress in the little more than four months,” before the UN climate talks, Kerry said Monday. “The world and the climate crisis demand that we make progress rapidly and significantly.”
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Talks are set to proceed on multiple tracks, covering ambitions in addressing climate change, a new loss and damage fund for compensating climate victims and areas for possible bilateral collaboration. Those could include deploying more wind and solar power and handling the intermittent nature of those electricity sources, according to senior US State Department officials, who requested anonymity to discuss private details.
“In too many parts of the world emissions are going up,” said Kerry. “It is imperative that we work together — not competitively, but cooperatively — in order to reduce the impacts of unabated coal power in the world.” He urged both nations to partner to rapidly reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases such as methane.
Still, experts in climate diplomacy and US-China relations stress that even a formal joint statement from Xie and Kerry’s discussions that commits to keep talking — and to revive a joint working group they agreed to form in November 2021 — would be progress.
One potential source of tension is China’s approach on fossil fuels. China is by far the world’s largest installer of renewable energy — and already on track to beat President Xi Jinping’s own clean power targets. Yet the nation is continuing to expand its massive fleet of coal-fired plants and adding new natural gas deals to help avoid shortages that have plagued its electricity system in recent years.
The Chinese leader said last week China should accelerate its already world-leading adoption of cleaner electricity sources, though has frequently stressed the need to ensure energy security is guaranteed before dismantling fossil fuel capacity.
China’s solar power capacity has grown 150 times from its 2012 level and wind power capacity has jump six-fold over the past decade, Wang Zhongying, director of the Energy Research Institute at the National Development and Reform Commission, China’s top economic planning agency, told reporters at a separate event in Beijing.
Kerry praised China’s commitment to renewables Monday. “We look at China and we see the largest deployment of renewables of anybody in the world — more than the rest of the world combined,” he said. “But on the other hand, we see new coal coming online, which undoes the benefit of some of that.”
The US should also do more to combat the climate crisis, Kerry said. “I’m not sitting here with a one-sided argument,” he added. Xie and Kerry, who had a one-on-one dinner Sunday, have met more than 50 times.
China is balancing issues including still-rising energy demand, the energy needs of heavy manufacturing and its climate goals, Liu Yanhua, a former vice minister of the Ministry of Science and Technology, told reporters at the separate event in Beijing.
“For a running train to stop, it needs a process, so we need to keep control of the pace,” Liu said. “In the face of climate change, we can’t be too slow nor too rushed.”
--With assistance from Luz Ding.
(Updates throughout.)
Author: Jennifer A. Dlouhy
