United States and China reach landmark carbon emissions deal - as it happened

The UK’s energy and climate secretary, Ed Davey, says the news shows countries are getting serious on climate change ahead of Paris. There’s also some bragging about UK role in the EU’s carbon target, though he omits the UK also fought efforts to make a related energy-saving binding and to reduce its ambition:

These climate announcements from the US and China are a clear sign that major economies are serious about getting a global deal in Paris next year.

The UK led the drive to achieve an ambitious new EU target, and others are now following the EU’s lead and putting targets on the table.

I’m looking forward to discussing with the US and China how we can achieve our shared goal of keeping the global temperature rise under 2C, and avoid the most dangerous effects of climate change.

Here’s some more UK reaction. Most commentators thing this is A Big Deal, especially in terms of the UN climate summit at Paris at the end of 2015, where countries are expected to agree a deal to cut carbon emissions post-2020.

Joss Garman, associate fellow on climate change at the thinktank IPPR, and a former aviation campaigner, said:

For decades a wall has separated political action from the scientific imperative on climate change. But with one handshake, the leaders of China and the US have breached that wall. When the world meets in Paris next year for a landmark UN climate summit, it may finally crumble.

Liz Gallagher, climate diplomacy programme leader at thinktank E3G, said:

These two countries shape the global emissions trajectory. Their collaboration makes the prospects of a deal in Paris a safe bet. But a G2 agreement won’t get us a good enough deal. Paris will be a negotiation, not an array of emissions reduction offers. This negotiation will need to include elements such as Finance, a long-term target, legal form, transparency and adaptation. Others can’t kick back and relax, there is still much work to be done ahead of December next year.

The Guardian’s head of environment, Damian Carrington, hails the deal as historic:

Be in no doubt, the agreement struck by the US and China on Wednesday to cut their carbon emissions is historic. It is the biggest step towards achieving a meaningful global deal to fight climate change in 20 years of tortuous negotiations. But also be in no doubt that, while absolutely necessary, it is a long way from being sufficient.

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The significance of the China-US deal is that they have now put their first serious offers on the table. In fact they have done so early – the deadline for these bids set by the UN was March 2015. The deadline for a final global deal is December 2015 in Paris. Until now, it was unclear that deal would be done. But the US-China agreement has injected that most precious and rare of commodities into global climate negotiations: momentum.

Reuters’ market analyst, by contrast, plays down the significance of today’s news:

The joint statement by the United States and China on climate change, issued on Wednesday, is more important for its political and diplomatic symbolism than any practical effect it might have in reducing emissions.

The statement reiterates policies China and the United States have been developing on their own and contains no new binding limits on greenhouse emissions.

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For China, climate action remains subordinate to the primary goals of economic development and political and social stability. The joint statement enshrines China’s right to tackle climate change in its own way and at its own pace.

Jennifer Duggan, who is based in Shanghai and blogs for the Guardian at China’s Choice, has been speaking to Ma Jun, one of China’s most well-known environmentalists and director of the NGO the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs. He says today’s announcement is very important and China’s well-documented ‘airpocalypses’ caused by coal-burning are part of the motivation:

It is positive for China for the first time to make a commitment on the peaking of carbon emissions. It is very important because the previous commitment was only on carbon intensity.

It will be challenging because China’s energy is very much focused on coal and the economy is very focused on heavy industry which is carbon intensive so restructuring won’t be easy.

But I think that the momentum generated to solve the local air pollution problem is a push for such a commitment. To deal with local pollution, China has put on the agenda the capping of coal, which has long been a sensitive issue.

I think the recognition that this is not sustainable globally to continue this kind of coal consumption and the recognition that the local environment also can’t afford it, this combination has helped to push for such a commitment.

It [coal consumption] will still grow quite a lot by 2030 so hopefully with a joint effort it could be achived even earlier. I think the momentum generated in China is quite major, people want blue sky to come faster than the original plan of 20 years.

Adam Vaughan here taking over from Matthew Weaver. You can tweet me (@adamvaughan_uk) and email me reaction.

Here’s what today’s US emissions target and China’s promise to peak emissions look like. The US was the world’s biggest emitter until China overtook it in 2008, and as this graph shows, even if Chinese emissions peak in 2030, they’re still going to be huge.

(The figure for China’s 2030 emissions is taken from a Chinese government adviser’s comments earlier this year).

Greenpeace UK appears to be more encouraged by the deal than its colleagues in East Asia.

Executive director John Sauven hailed the announced as a “major political breakthrough” that many thought impossible”.

Earlier Greenpeace’s East Asia’s senior climate and energy campaigner, Li Shuo, also welcomed the deal but said it fell short of a game changer and called for more ambitious targets.

Sauven appeared more encouraged, and urged the UK government to do more.

The targets announced are not yet as ambitious as scientists say they should be if we are to stop the worst ravages of climate change, but this a solid foundation stone for world leaders to build on. The EU should now lead the charge for greater ambition, building on its historical leadership and in the interests of its own clean tech sector.

For the UK government, this should be a wake-up call. The global race to a clean energy future and its huge rewards is on, and it won’t be won by pandering to the fossil fuel lobby and a minority of anti-wind and anti-solar Tory backbenchers.Slashing support for wind and solar isn’t just bad for the climate, it’s bad for Britain’s economy and our place in the world.

Finland’s prime minister, Alexander Stubb, is now hopeful of a meaningful climate deal in Paris.

Vox has a useful explainer on the importance of the deal and the questions that remain about it.

The agreement falls far short of solving climate change, it says, but it does suggests an end a diplomatic standoff on climate negotiations.

This deal is a step away from the long-standing deadlock between the two nations on climate. Many US politicians have long argued against cutting greenhouse-gas emission on the grounds that China would never act — so what was the point? And China, for its part, has long insisted that rich countries should cut their own emissions and give developing countries like China time to grow. With this deal, the two countries are beginning to cooperate rather than play an endless game of chicken.

For all the wiggle room in the language of the deal, it could prove a “watershed” moment, according to climate change analyst Ben Adler.

Writing on the US environment blog Grist, he says:

The US and China are the world’s two biggest economies, and showing that they will play their part in reducing emissions is essential to getting an international agreement at the next round of big climate negotiations in Paris in December 2015. Now the prospects are looking a lot better.

Adler also responds to those who point out that the US is making a bigger commitment than China.

Thanks to our longstanding development and wealth, the U.S. has produced 29.3 percent of global cumulative carbon emissions, while China has been responsible for only 7.6 percent. What China is planning — starting on a path of renewable development, so that it can transition from fossil fuels as quickly as possible without damaging economic growth — lays out a model for emerging economies such as India, Brazil, and Indonesia to follow.

Likewise, the U.S. is sending a message to those countries, and to the pro–fossil fuel governments in Canada and Australia, that we are serious about putting climate at the center of our international relationships.

The World Wildlife Fund said the deal sends a “jolt of energy” (presumably of the renewable kind) through talks to reach a new climate deal in Paris.

Its vice president, Lou Leonard, added:

This is further proof that President Obama understands that history will judge all of us by the actions we take today to face down the growing climate crisis.

Acting together is an historic step for the US and China, but to give the world a fighting chance to stay below 2C of warming, both countries need to stretch to reach the highest goals possible. In the case of the US, its earlier pledge to reach 30% reductions by 2025 should be a benchmark for any final Paris agreement.

Sweden’s former prime minister Carl Bildt, has hailed the deal as a “very positive step forward”.

But Bildt’s prolific Twitter feed links through to a sceptical article on the Interpreter news site.

It says:

It’s worth remembering that these are just targets (the UK set targets too, and is on track to miss them) which are not really enforceable. And given the long lead times (2025 for Washington to meet its new emissions targets; 2030 for Beijing’s emissions to peak), it’s going to be difficult to hold both countries to their commitments.

Then there is the sheer scale of what the two countries have agreed to take on. The US will have to double the pace of its carbon pollution reduction to meet the new target. As for China, the US statement notes that, for Beijing to meet its target of having 20% of energy from zero-emissions sources, ‘it will require China to deploy an additional 800-1,000 gigawatts of nuclear, wind, solar and other zero emission generation capacity by 2030 – more than all the coal-fired power plants that exist in China today and close to total current electricity generation capacity in the United States’. Given China’s demand for coal and the fact that renewables have not risen as a percentage of global energy production in the last decade, this seems like a tall order.

The global environmental campaign 350.org said today’s deal was a sign that Obama was willing to stand up to big polluters.

But its director, May Boeve, said it would be looking for proof of commitment to the deal warning that fossil fuel development such as the planned Keystone XL pipeline between the US and Canada, were incompatible with the pledge.

She added:

Today’s announcement also strengthens the case for fossil fuel divestment. The US and China reaffirming their commitment to limiting global warming to 2°C should send shockwaves through the financial markets, because the only way to meet that target is by leaving 80% of fossil fuel reserves underground. The industry’s business plan is simply incompatible with the pathways laid out today. It’s time to get out of fossil fuels and invest in climate solutions.

A Chinese government adviser let slip much of today’s announcement more than five months ago, points out Adam Vaughan editor of The Guardian’s environment pages.

He Jiankun, chairman of China’s Advisory Committee on Climate Change, told a conference in Beijing in June that an absolute cap on carbon emissions will be introduced.

“The government will use two ways to control CO2 emissions in the next five-year plan, by intensity and an absolute cap,” he was reported as saying in June.

He told Reuters that the country’s emissions were likely to peak at around 11bn tonnes CO2 equivalent – up from 7-9.5bn tonnes CO2e now – by 2030.

To put that in context global annual emissions were 36bn in 2013.

China’s other pledge of getting 20% of its energy from non-fossil fuels by 2030, also appears to lack ambition, according to some analysts.

Back in June, GlobalData predicted that alternative energy sources could account for more than 20% of China total electricity generation within the next six years - 10 years earlier than the new pledge.

At the time, Harshavardhan Reddy Nagatham, GlobalData’s analyst covering Alternative Energy, said:

Soaring energy demand, expeditious industrialization and international pressure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions have impelled China to increase its share of renewable energy.

The country has introduced Feed-in Tariffs at the state and provincial level in order to promote the development of alternative energy, which has contributed to substantial capacity additions over the last decade, especially those of wind and solar power. This growth is expected to continue thanks to the government’s ambitious targets for renewables.

Before we get too excited about the deal, our Beijing correspondent, Jonathan Kaiman, adds some words of caution on the scale of China’s commitment. He points out that for years researchers have projected that China’s c02 emissions would peak around 2030.

He adds:

China’s environmental authorities are notoriously opaque, making the true extent of its carbon emissions – and its progress in mitigating them – difficult to assess. In June, scientists from China, Britain and the US reviewed data from China’s National Bureau of Statistics and found that the country’s total emissions from 1997 to 2010 may be 20% (1.4bn tonnes) higher than reported.

I’ve just been speaking with Alexander Wang, a law professor at UCLA and an expert in the issues surrounding China’s carbon emissions.

Wang said China’s announcement that its carbon emissions would peak by 2030 was “a very big deal”.

“They’ve never been willing to say a date when they would peak, so it’s a big shift,” he said.

But he noted that details were still limited: “[The announcement] doesn’t tell us what level emissions would peak, how high emissions would be when they peak, and whether they will be able to reduce emissions after they peak; or whether they will plateau in 2030 and keep going at a high level.”

President Obama is already facing opposition to the deal at home from Republicans who fear his push to slash carbon emissions would see job losses in the coal industry and higher utility prices. China sees the climate challenge differently, he said.

“In China change is mainly driven by broader efforts at what they’re calling economic transformation. The sense is that the current model of heavy industry-based and export-based economic growth is reaching its limits. Those limits are pollution-based and energy-based,” he said.

“There’s a sense that that growth is reaching its end, so they’re trying to shift towards clean technology, biotechnology.”

But president Xi Jinping, too, might struggle domestically to implement some of the ambitious reforms announced today. “There’s a battle going on to shift from the old model to the new model. The big central state owned enterprises, the vast majority of them are based on these heavy industries - power, coal, steel cement,” Wang said.

“Both sides have their problems. In the United States, it’s a Republican party that doesn’t believe in the science of climate change. On the China side, I think the challenge is a fragmented government with a lot of powerful, diffuse interest groups that can thwart drastic change within the country,” he said.

The White House has posted the full details of today’s deal on its website. Here are the key paragraphs:

Today, the Presidents of the United States and China announced their respective post-2020 actions on climate change, recognizing that these actions are part of the longer range effort to transition to low-carbon economies, mindful of the global temperature goal of 2℃. The United States intends to achieve an economy-wide target of reducing its emissions by 26%-28% below its 2005 level in 2025 and to make best efforts to reduce its emissions by 28%. China intends to achieve the peaking of CO2 emissions around 2030 and to make best efforts to peak early and intends to increase the share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy consumption to around 20% by 2030. Both sides intend to continue to work to increase ambition over time.

The United States and China hope that by announcing these targets now, they can inject momentum into the global climate negotiations and inspire other countries to join in coming forward with ambitious actions as soon as possible, preferably by the first quarter of 2015. The two Presidents resolved to work closely together over the next year to address major impediments to reaching a successful global climate agreement in Paris.

The global scientific community has made clear that human activity is already changing the world’s climate system. Accelerating climate change has caused serious impacts. Higher temperatures and extreme weather events are damaging food production, rising sea levels and more damaging storms are putting our coastal cities increasingly at risk and the impacts of climate change are already harming economies around the world, including those of the United States and China. These developments urgently require enhanced actions to tackle the challenge.

At the same time, economic evidence makes increasingly clear that smart action on climate change now can drive innovation, strengthen economic growth and bring broad benefits – from sustainable development to increased energy security, improved public health and a better quality of life. Tackling climate change will also strengthen national and international security.

Read the full statement here

How much of China’s energy will come from non-fossil fuels, if they stick to their pledge to use 20% renewable energy by 2030? An extraordinary amount, Deborah Nesbitt tweets:

The US Secretary of State, John Kerry, has published this op-ed in the New York Times calling today’s climate-change deal a “fresh beginning” that could inject new momentum into negotiations on a global carbon emissions compact.

The United States and China are the world’s two largest economies, two largest consumers of energy, and two largest emitters of greenhouse gases. Together we account for about 40 percent of the world’s emissions.

We need to solve this problem together because neither one of us can solve it alone. Even if the United States somehow eliminated all of our domestic greenhouse gas emissions, it still wouldn’t be enough to counteract the carbon pollution coming from China and the rest of the world. Likewise, even if China went down to zero emissions, it wouldn’t make enough of a difference if the United States and the rest of the world didn’t change direction.

That’s the reality of what we’re up against. That’s why it matters that the world’s most consequential relationship has just produced something of great consequence in the fight against climate change.

He goes on:

There is no question that all of us will need to do more to push toward the de-carbonization of the global economy. But in climate diplomacy, as in life, you have to start at the beginning, and this breakthrough marks a fresh beginning. Two countries regarded for 20 years as the leaders of opposing camps in climate negotiations – have come together to find common ground, determined to make lasting progress on an unprecedented global challenge. Let’s ensure that this is the first step toward a world that is more prosperous and more secure.

Read the full story here

Domestic reaction in the United States is still rolling in, but already Republicans have indicated they will oppose the targets identified in today’s deal.

Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell says president Obama has signed an “unrealistic plan” that he will “ dump on his successor”, and which will ensure higher gas and electricity bills and fewer jobs.

“Our economy can’t take the president’s ideological war on coal that will increase the squeeze on middle-class families and struggling miners,” McConnell said in a statement.

My colleague Tania Branigan (@taniabranigan), who attended the announcement in Beijing, has sent this dispatch:

Speaking at a joint press conference at the Great Hall of the People, Obama said: “As the world’s largest economies and greatest emitters of greenhouse gases we have special responsibility to lead the global effort against climate change. I am proud we can announce a historic agreement. I commend President Xi, his team and the Chinese government for their making to slow, peak and then reverse China’s carbon emissions.

He said the US emissions reductions goal was “ambitious but achievable” and would double the pace at which it is reducing carbon emissions.

Obama added: “This is a major milestone in US-China relations and shows what is possible when we work together on an urgent global challenge.”

He added that they hoped “to encourage all major economies to be ambitious and all developed and developing countries to work across divides” so that an agreement could be reached at the climate change talks in Paris in December next year.

Let us know your thoughts in the comments below, or tweet me at @safimichael

Here’s an indication of why today’s climate-change deal between the United States and China has truly global ramifications:

The chief executive of the World Resources Institute, Andrew Steer, has this to say on the deal between the US and China - who together produce 40% of the world’s carbon emissions:

It’s a new day to have the leaders of the U.S. and China stand shoulder-to-shoulder and make significant commitments to curb their country’s emissions. They have both clearly acknowledged the mounting threat of climate change and the urgency of action. It’s heartening to see this level of cooperation, with climate change at the top of the agenda for the world’s top emitters.

The U.S. and China should be commended for putting their initial pledges on the table so early. This should inject a jolt of momentum in the lead up to a global climate agreement in Paris.

The U.S. target shows a serious commitment to action and puts the U.S. on a path to reduce its emissions around 80 percent by mid-century. This pledge is grounded in what is achievable under existing U.S. law. However, we should not underestimate the potential of innovation and technology to bring down costs and make it easier to meet--or even exceed--the proposed targets.

China’s pledge to increase non-fossil fuel energy and peak emissions around 2030 as early as possible is a major development—and reflects a shift in its position from just a few years ago. But it will be very important to see at what level and what year their emissions peak. Analysis shows that China’s emissions should peak before 2030 to limit the worst consequences of climate change.

The director of the WRI’s Climate Program, Jennifer Morgan, has also offered her thoughts:

Make no mistake, more needs to be done. The U.S. and China should strive to achieve the upper range of their commitments and go even further in the future. They can raise the bar to take full advantage of the economic opportunities of a low-carbon future. A growing body of evidence shows that climate action can bring economic benefits and new opportunities. International cooperation, around the CERC and other areas, can help unlock even greater levels of ambition.

The U.S. and China should make it a race to the top, catalyzing other countries to announce their targets and build momentum leading up to Paris. Today’s announcement is a big step in that direction.