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The US and China stated they might “intensify” their co-operation on changing coal with clear energy as high diplomats from the world’s two largest polluters met in Washington this week.
The indicators of co-operation observe the primary substantial assembly between US local weather envoy John Podesta and his Chinese language counterpart Liu Zhenmin, following the retirement of their respective predecessors, John Kerry and Xie Zhenhua.
A US state division readout of the talks stated Washington and Beijing had agreed to have interaction in “technical” exchanges throughout climate-related points, together with expertise to measure greenhouse fuel emissions and on methane emissions controls.
The 2 sides would additionally “intensify technical and policy exchanges” with one another on the roll out of renewable vitality and the section down of coal consumption. US officers stated they raised the significance of slowing the expansion of coal-fired energy crops in China with their Chinese language counterparts.
The conferences got here in opposition to the backdrop of rising commerce tensions between Beijing and Washington.
Podesta stated the conferences had been “in-depth and productive”. “We have to get the climate problem under control, and there are no more important countries than the US and China to lead the way — even as our overall relationship between our two countries has increasingly been characterised by fierce competition,” he stated.
State division officers stated the conferences had been pleasant, with Liu and his employees having dinner at Podesta’s home one night. Throughout the previous period of local weather diplomacy, Kerry typically boasted of his means to keep up relations along with his counterpart even in instances of geopolitical pressure.
Regardless of this closeness, local weather negotiations between the US and China at instances had been stalled by broader souring of the connection between the 2 international locations.
US and Chinese language diplomats had been prevented from assembly for a couple of yr when Beijing lower off local weather talks in retaliation for former US Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s journey to Taiwan in August of 2022.
There was a rapprochement forward of the UN’s COP28 local weather summit in Dubai late final yr, when the US and China reached an settlement, dubbed the Sunnylands assertion for the situation of the California assembly. This included a joint pledge to “accelerate the substitution” of fossil fuels with inexperienced vitality.
At COP28, international locations together with the US and China reached a deal to transition away from fossil fuels in an try to achieve world internet zero by 2050.
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