By William Schaper, Global Head of Research
Bejing — In a historical joint announcement for international cooperative efforts to combat climate change, U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping, the leaders of the world’s top two green house gas (GHG) emitting countries, declared ambitious emissions reduction goals for their respective nations. Mr. Obama pledged to cut U.S. GHG emissions to 26-28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. Likewise Mr. Xi has proposed targets to peak CO2 emissions around 2030 for China, while making efforts to peak earlier, and to increase non-fossil fuel emitting energy production to 20 percent of all energy production by 2030.
The announcement is the culmination of bi-lateral talks that have been taking place for months and it has the potential to galvanize the dialogue on global GHG emissions reduction. It is ultimately hoped that it will set the stage for the passage of a successful international climate agreement at the UNFCCC COP 21 Summit which will take place in Paris next year.
Ban Ki Moon, Secretary General of the United Nations stated, “Today, China and the United States have demonstrated the leadership that the world expects of them. This leadership demonstrated by the Governments of the world’s two largest economies will give the international community an unprecedented chance to succeed at reaching a meaningful, universal agreement in 2015[1]”
Together the U.S. and China make up over one-third of global GHG emissions.
For more information regarding this announcement, read the official White House fact sheet here.
[1] http://www.rappler.com/world/global-affairs/74849-un-china-us-climate
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