Xie Zhenhua and John Kerry, the respective climate envoys for China and the United States, crafted a joint statement, released on April 17 in Shanghai, that sets the stage for potential longer-term Sino-US cooperation at a time when their overall relations are tense, having gone off the rails during the Trump administration, starting with tariffs and bleeding into pretty much everything else.
The wide-ranging climate change joint statement creates an opening for cooperation that could include emerging technologies in which the US has stated it sees China as an adversarial competitor.
The US doesn’t have to see China antagonistically — and hope lies behind the joint statement. There is a stake for Hong Kong too to seize the moment.
The two countries are to “continue to discuss … concrete actions in the 2020s” to decarbonize in such things as power generation, energy storage, grid reliability, carbon capture, hydrogen development, renewables deployment, green agriculture, energy-efficient buildings, low-carbon transportation, as well as aviation and shipping, and to cooperate in “circular economy” which redesigns production processes to reduce the use of virgin resources.
This long list of possible actionable items includes established technologies, such as renewables like wind and solar energy, to vital emerging ones, especially battery storage, carbon capture, and hydrogen as a new form of clean fuel that could be important for powering vehicles.
Xie and Kerry know fast-paced decarbonization represents a total revolution for their countries, and indeed, the world. There isn’t much hope of averting the climate crisis by mid-century if the two biggest carbon emitters and most influential countries do not cooperate.
The facts are sobering. The United Nations has spelled them out and they are not in dispute. To stop the climate crisis “from being a permanent catastrophe”, the world must cooperate to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The 2 degrees upper limit in the Paris Agreement, the multilateral climate treaty signed in 2015, is now seen as too high.
Decarbonization requires the massive redirection of investments from high-to-low carbon projects. The faster that Hong Kong can capacitate itself on this journey, the greater its impact will be on the global stage to fight climate change
This means every economy must quickly cut greenhouse gas emissions by a significant margin, and it makes sense that the effort must be led by the major emitters, especially the rich economies of Europe, Japan, Canada and Australia; and help must be given to emerging economies, especially India.
The UN wants governments to come up with new domestic plans by the time of the next global climate conference to be held in Glasgow in November — referred to as COP26 — that can help to reduce global emissions by at least 45 percent by 2030 compared with 2010 levels.
A step in that direction was taken at the Climate Summit hosted by the US on April 22-23, when America committed to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 50 to 52 percent relative to 2005 levels by 2030, and China pledged to limit the increase of coal consumption during the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) and phase down coal during the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30).
While the US commitment is its most ambitious yet, China’s pledge is also groundbreaking. As the largest coal user in the world, by phasing down usage within this decade, China will not only reduce its own emissions but will also help to push other major coal using countries, such as India, Russia, Australia, Indonesia, South Africa and even the US, in the right direction.
Understandably, critics want both countries to move faster still, especially China as the top coal consumer. Xie was right to emphasize that China’s pace toward carbon neutrality in 40 years is fast when compared to the time developed economies are taking.
There is another less discussed perspective too. China is the world’s largest manufacturing and exporting economy. Its ability to produce an enormous range of goods well and at reasonable prices has provided importing countries with many choices. The energy and resources used to make those products are counted as China’s emissions but they are made for people in other countries. So, whose emissions do they belong to?
Hong Kong has a role to play too. As a key finance center in Asia, the special administrative region can transform itself into a green capital raising hub to help amass funds for the low-carbon transition for China and the Asia-Pacific region.
Decarbonization requires the massive redirection of investments from high-to-low carbon projects. The faster that Hong Kong can capacitate itself on this journey, the greater its impact will be on the global stage to fight climate change. The financial regulatory bodies led by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and the Securities and Futures Commission have picked up pace, as has the stock exchange.
While there is little manufacturing in Hong Kong, the city has many entrepreneurs who have production investments on the mainland and all over Asia. Moreover, Hong Kong has a large property development sector. These businesses can be at the forefront of the energy efficiency drive for manufacturing and buildings if they see what the future holds, but the government must play the vital role here to tighten all relevant regulations as soon as possible.
The workforce in Hong Kong can embark on learning the basics of decarbonization because every business will need to account and report their environmental footprint sooner rather than later; and Hong Kong’s large service sector can have a head start if it moves fast. An all-hands-on-deck approach is essential.
China and the US will be working very hard to rally other governments to step up efforts ahead of COP26, starting a movement where nations and businesses start to advance their national decarbonization timelines and targets.
Thanks to the pace and direction set by Xie and Kerry, there is no time to waste for Hong Kong to be ready.
The author is chief development strategist, Institute for the Environment, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and is also a board member of CDP (Carbon Disclosure Project) Worldwide, London.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.