US Climate Envoy John Kerry opened the 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 superpowers.

China is seeking “substantial” dialogue this week, the country’s climate envoy Xie Zhenhua said Monday, as officials gathered at the Beijing Hotel. Those talks could also make a contribution “to improving our bilateral relations,” he added.

Kerry said he hoped two sides would take “some of the big steps that will send a signal to the world” about how seriously China and the US 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,” he added.

Negotiations between the world’s top two greenhouse gas emitters on how to tackle global warming were suspended last year, in the wake of 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 is the third senior US official to visit Beijing in five weeks. While US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen mostly left China with pledges to keep talking, climate appears to be an arena where the two sides can make breakthroughs.

“China and US share similar ideas and have a similar past in addressing climate change,” Xie said, speaking through a translator. Together, the two nations have made progress, he said, citing agreements in 2014 and 2021, and collaboration at UN climate summits.

Xie said he and Kerry had agreed to have “candid and friendly” battles as they discuss challenges on climate and the green transition over the next three days.

Laying Groundwork

Kerry, a former US secretary of state who was tapped to be the US special presidential envoy for climate two years ago, arrived in China on Sunday for three full days of talks.

The negotiations are aimed at laying the groundwork for potential pronouncements at the UN General Assembly in September, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders summit in California and the UN climate summit in Dubai.

“It is imperative that China and the United States make real progress in the little more than four months,” before the UN talks, Kerry said Monday. “The world and the climate crisis demand that we make progress rapidly and significantly.”

Read more: China’s Renewables Boom Fuels Its Coal Expansion: David Fickling

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 on arenas for possible bilateral collaboration. Those areas 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 also urged both nations to partner to rapidly reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases such as methane.

China is by far the world’s largest installer of solar and wind and already on track to beat President Xi Jinping’s clean power targets, yet the nation is also continuing to expand its massive fleet of coal-fired plants under efforts to bolster energy security.

“We need to partner in order to accelerate the reduction of these emissions and, my friend, we cannot allow the continued building of unabated coal-fired power plants,” Kerry told Xie, adding that the US also had more to do on its own energy transition. The envoys, who had a one-on-one dinner Sunday, have held about 55 personal meetings in recent years, the two men said.

Experts in climate diplomacy and US-China relations stressed that even a formal 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 represent progress.

Author: Jennifer A. Dlouhy