Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues

Eleanor M. Albert: Today our guest is Joanna Lewis. She is the Provost’s Distinguished Associate Professor of Energy and Environment and director of the Science, Technology and International Affairs Program (STIA) at Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. She runs an active, externally funded research program and leads several dialogues and joint study groups facilitating U.S.-China climate change engagement. She’s also a faculty affiliate in the China Energy Group at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Joanna, it's a pleasure to have you today. I'm always happy to have you on the show!

Joanna Lewis: Thanks for having me.

Eleanor M. Albert: We're going to talk about what comes next for U.S.-China climate cooperation and look back a little bit, but top of mind is that COP29 (2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference) just concluded in Azerbaijan. With that context, what were some of the takeaways from this major climate conference, positive, negative or otherwise? What are your initial impressions? 

Joanna Lewis: The COP did end, and this was really a COP focused on climate finance. The big takeaway and what everyone was waiting for in the late evening hours of the conference was the final text on this climate finance decision. This is the so-called NCQG, if you like climate acronyms—it stands for New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance. The conference was scheduled to end Friday. As has become the norm, this text was finalized in the early hours of Sunday morning.

But the substance of this climate finance goal was that parties agreed to a new goal of essentially mobilizing $300 billion annually by 2035. This is a tripling of the prior goal, which was the $100 billion a year goal, initially discussed back in Copenhagen (COP15) and operationalized with the Paris Agreement.

What's interesting about this new goal, it's primarily public finance, right? Because the idea is that governments—particularly developed countries—should be on the hook for providing this finance to developing countries. So this number would include direct public finance, but also bilateral and multilateral finance potentially.

The big discussion over the course of the two-week conference was “this is not close to enough, and that the billion-dollar order of magnitude is wrong. We should be in the trillions of dollars.” This is not wrong, but of course, when you start talking about a trillion-dollar pledge for climate finance, this gets quite challenging for governments to really be able to put that kind of money on the table. There's actually language in the text that countries will work toward a larger goal of $1.3 trillion a year, and that this would essentially include private investment as well, which is out of the control of governments. But the hope is that any public investment would help to leverage higher amounts of private investment.

So this was a tense negotiation. It took until the last two days to even put dollar amounts on the table. It's a tough time to be talking about this with a lot of countries facing economic hardship. Then of course, the United States [is] likely to pull out of this altogether and potentially not contribute its share in the next few years.

A couple other things that came out of COP29: there were negotiations finished on something called Article 6, which is the text that establishes the standards for a new international carbon market and the general rules governing carbon trading across countries.

In terms of failures or things that were not in the final language, there was an idea that there would be text containing a reference to last year's agreement where countries agreed to transition away from fossil fuels, you might recall was a big issue back in Dubai, but this was not to be. And so it's basically been punted to next year at COP30 in Brazil.

Eleanor M. Albert: [A] mixed bag picture, but of course in terms of the financing, any financing is better than what previously existed. The realities of the scope of climate change are hard to grasp.

I wanted to ask on the U.S.-China dynamic within COP. Where did they position themselves and stand on this landmark climate financing language? Were they big participants? And then, of course, there was also a co-hosted summit at COP by the United States and China on methane and non-CO₂ greenhouse gases. Is there anything of note from that summit?

Joanna Lewis: Starting with the summit, this is the second year in a row that China and the United States have co-hosted a summit, along with this year, Azerbaijan, last year with UAE.

Eleanor M. Albert: The hosts.

Joanna Lewis: Yeah. These high-potent greenhouse gases as they're called, this is the methane and other non-CO₂ greenhouse gases. This is an area that China and the United States have focused a lot on in the bilateral agenda over the last several years. This is a way that we've seen the United States and China take what they're doing bilaterally, bring it back to the multilateral process, and try to push that forward. In that sense, I think that was a really constructive reflection of the outcomes of what we've been seeing in the bilateral relationship.

I think [the] U.S.-China relationship didn't dominate the news on COP29, which is maybe a good thing, because if they're disagreeing, as we've seen previously like at Copenhagen, that can really derail the broader negotiations. They, of course, are not anywhere near aligned on climate finance, and that I think the United States believes that China should be contributing.

There was a lot of discussion about this so-called donor base and what this means, and the term “developed” versus “developing.” But of course, in reality, we saw China actually admit for the first time numerical quantification of the amount of climate finance they've been providing. Although of course, they would call this South-South cooperation, and call it voluntary, and therefore not counted as official climate finance under the Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Eleanor M. Albert: Super interesting. We had an election recently this fall in the United States.; we're going to probably have a big change in thinking about what climate cooperation on an international level looks like. But before we look to the future, I wanted to look back at the Joe Biden administration's climate efforts.

We had John Kerry who served as the administration's first climate czar. He was in that position for a little over three years, and then Xie Zhenhua was his counterpart. Let's talk about those two and what they were able to achieve together. Was climate cooperation restored during their tenure?

Joanna Lewis: The Kerry-Xie relationship really goes back over a decade, back to Kerry's tenure as Secretary of State during the Obama administration. And during that time, he was instrumental in elevating climate change in the U.S.-China bilateral relationship by introducing a new high-level dialogue. There'd been a lot of engagement between the United States and China on climate and energy, but really not at the highest, ministerial level.

That engagement, which he really pushed forward when he took over a Secretary of State, resulted in the 2014 joint statement between China and the United States that many experts point to as really being instrumental to the global success of the Paris Agreement. This was the statement where China and the United States announced their climate targets under the Paris Agreement a full year in advance of the meeting. That signaled to the rest of the world how both countries were taking on serious commitments and really bought into a successful global agreement.

So under the Biden administration, when Kerry was in the climate envoy role, I think he and his counterpart, Minister Xie, were not able to do as much as they were previously in part due to the increased tensions in the overall U.S.-China relationship. For example, when former speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) traveled to Taiwan, and as we all know, that resulted in China suspending climate talks for almost a year, that really set back the attempts to invigorate the agenda after the Donald Trump administration had scaled back U.S.-China engagement on climate. You had this recovery of the agenda in Glasgow in 2021 (COP26) that immediately got derailed with the visit to Taiwan.

Eventually, the two were able to get back on track and move the dialogue forward on key issues, particularly as identified and formalized in the Sunnylands Statement, which was signed in November 2023. That was the culmination in many ways of their term. Kerry and Xie stepped down soon after, so (John) Podesta and Liu (Zhenmin)’s teams have been focused on implementing the Sunnylands agreement that was negotiated. I'd say, overall, it's a more modest agenda than we've seen in the past, U.S.-China climate and clean energy agreements, but certainly constructive.

Eleanor M. Albert: I'm curious what you make of John Podesta and Liu Zhenmin as being selected as the successors. You just harked back to the longstanding relationship between Kerry and Xie that comes from having been in top-level diplomacy efforts. This is not necessarily John Podesta's background, but Liu Zhenmin was a career diplomat who has long worked in IOs [international organizations]. You mentioned a bit more of a modest agenda, but has there been progress under their stewardship?

Joanna Lewis: There has. Both men are well-respected figures within their respective governments. They bring stature and credibility to the climate envoy roles. But there have been some challenges. Liu is a career diplomat. I would say he doesn't have quite the same technical background, especially on energy and climate modeling that Xie had given his role leading one of the top climate policy think tanks in China based at Tsinghua University, which has been a very crucial research institute for informing Chinese government policy.

Podesta, of course, is a longtime U.S. advocate for climate action. He's had multiple roles, but has actually been a very close follower of climate policy in China for a long time. I actually first met him in China a long time ago at a U.S.-China climate dialogue.

But I think his dual role in the Biden administration, where he was both overseeing domestic climate efforts as well as international, caused a few challenges, particularly with China. His cornerstone initiative has really been this climate and trade task force that he's been overseeing where he's been leading the development of measures like a CBAM—this is the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism—which of course China is publicly very opposed to because it could potentially penalize its exports in energy intensive industries. So this has created a situation where with Podesta in the climate envoy role, it puts trade tensions at the center of the climate agenda, which is challenging, and it's just made it more difficult to make progress on other issues.

Eleanor M. Albert: This is a perfect illustration of how we used to believe that we could put climate in a separate category and move forward in operating on a kind of parallel, siloed track. And here you have an example where in fact, the trade tensions and the climate efforts are almost hand in hand.

Alongside COP, Biden was in Brazil for the G20 and he had announced an additional pledge of funding for developing countries. In the context of that announcement and the COP financing agreement, how do the United States and China compare in their commitment to help funding climate efforts? You alluded a little bit to this, that China is definitely much more “We want to do this on a voluntary basis as part of our South-South branded efforts,” but how can we look at these two different countries’ approaches and what does it mean for the developing countries who are really facing the brunt of the effects of climate change?

Joanna Lewis: I think it's really interesting to actually compare what both countries are doing side by side. They're obviously coming from very different perspectives on this and different contexts. But if you start with the self-reported numbers, which are now in the public domain with COP29, the United States would say that since 2021, it has significantly scaled up its international public climate finance from an average of about $1.5 billion in fiscal year 2021 to $9.5 billion in 2023, which would be more than six-fold increase. And in fact, President Biden has pledged to further scale up the U.S. public climate finance for international efforts to $11 billion a year by 2024, plus an additional $3 billion for climate resilience efforts. This is showing a steady increase in what the United States has been able to deliver.

Turning to China's self-reported numbers, we actually saw China's Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang at the beginning of COP29 say that China's provided and mobilized project funds of more than 177 billion RMB or about $24.5 billion since 2016. This would be about $3 billion a year. This is money China has provided to developing countries specifically for addressing climate change.

This was significant that this is the first time that we've actually seen China's leadership address this issue and give an official dollar value of what they've contributed. Of course, it's hard to know how accurate that number is. It's not very transparent. We haven't yet seen the background into what goes into that number. Although I expect more details and analysis to be forthcoming. But this does seem to be around the ballpark of recent estimates that have been put out in academic and think tank reports in the last few months. There were two studies. One put the low end of what China's likely put forward to developing countries at about $1.6 billion a year, and the high end more like $4.5 billion a year. So, their mention of around $3 billion would be right in the middle there.

There's also some question about this distinction between public and private, and how you actually define that in Chinese terms because as we know, it's a gray area, particularly if you're talking about state-owned development banks and what are we considering this, public or private. The funding that China's been able to leverage through the BRI and other initiatives, a lot of that could be counted in these categories, which would put you towards the higher end of these estimates.

It is certainly the case that we know China has been contributing to quite a bit of climate finance around the world. It is, as I mentioned previously, considered voluntary under the Paris Agreement since China's still classified as a developing country. But I do see it as a positive step that the government is acknowledging their contribution to climate finance in the developing world. This may start to open up more space for constructive conversation, not just between the United States and China, but China and other countries in the coming months and years.

Eleanor M. Albert: Absolutely. You have to assume if they want to continue to invest around the world, especially in developing countries, having some provisions that account for perhaps any type of climate related impacts would be of significant importance.

What do you make of them using COP29 to announce that?

Joanna Lewis: It's not totally surprising. The spotlight was really on China to clarify its role in this whole climate finance discussion. You can't really have this conversation without China. And when you're starting to talk about mobilizing billions, if not trillions of dollars a year, China plays a very significant role and is potentially contributing a sizable share.

So while we did not expect to see China come forward and say “We want to be part of the accounting for the NCQG and be classified as a developed country”—we knew they were going to keep a hard line on that—I do think it was symbolic and constructive that they came forward with a tangible number at the beginning. I do think that helped move negotiations forward. This really was tagged as the climate finance COP. I think China always wants to be viewed as a responsible actor in these negotiations and to demonstrate they are acting on this even if they don't want to be part of the countries committing to the NCQG.

Eleanor M. Albert: Super interesting. I think this fine line of China and its identification as a developing or developed country provides it with some flexibility. I would presume that by still being a developing country, it would still be eligible for any type of financing for climate related matters domestically should it need them.

Joanna Lewis: I think technically that is correct, although I think there's not a lot of appetite globally. Clearly there's a lot more interest in the donor countries to support the countries that have less capacity to address their own, both the mitigation, and adaptation, and resilience efforts. China, of course, is leading in many of those areas.

Eleanor M. Albert: Of course, taking that type of money would also not be a great look either as it's trying to paint itself as a responsible country.

We've talked a good deal about China's role in all of this. I want to shift us to looking forward to the future in thinking about U.S.-China climate cooperation. Given the latest results of the U.S. election and Trump's victory, there are a lot of questions about the prospects for climate cooperation, especially in the near term. What are the signals that you are going to watch for to get some indication of what's to come?

Joanna Lewis: Right. Well, John Podesta held a press conference on the first day of COP29. Of course, many parties came to COP29 just a few days after the U.S. election wondering what this would mean for the international climate process. What Podesta said was “Trump said he will take the United States out of the Paris Agreement and we should believe him.” Of course, he did this before.

The real question is what will this mean for global climate action? There's questions about if the United States withdraws again, will other countries also withdraw? I think the good news is there's no sign of this. The recent G20 statement shows that the entire G20 is actually very committed to climate action. There are no outlier countries that were not willing to sign on to this ambitious statement that had some good language on climate action.

Maybe a more important question is whether other countries will be willing to play an increased leadership role. It'll be important to look for signals from the EU, from the UK. Even China might be willing to play an increased leadership role in the international realm. So I think we always ask this question, “What would that look like?” I think the EU in particular is going to need to play an enhanced role in bilateral climate engagement with China. So I'll be watching for this, assuming that the U.S.-China bilateral climate engagement will be scaled back substantially, if not completely.

But then I think the real question is what's going to happen domestically in the United States in terms of domestic climate policy and related efforts? There are concerns that the Trump administration will repeal existing pollution limits on automobiles, power plants, and other factories, manufacturing facilities. There's concern that agencies will give oil and gas companies easier access to federal lands for drilling, which could increase fossil fuel exploration and potential use, and then concerns about how Trump might work with a Republican-controlled Congress to repeal some of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which is Biden's signature climate change law.

But this is the one I have maybe the most question about. This is a law that has already resulted in quite a bit of investment to particularly red states that are already benefiting from clean energy financing, investment in new factories, new jobs. So I do think you have some buy-in already for the momentum that the IRA is bringing. This is also very much about competing with China in clean energy industries, which of course is something that I think the Trump administration will want to do. So it'll be interesting to see how that plays out.

There's a variety of different perspectives, and I think the states may fall along different political lines now that they're really seeing some of the benefit to clean energy development, again, particularly in these Republican-dominated areas. But there was an article in the New York Times which said the result of all this is that the United States will likely emit more greenhouse gases—not less—in four years, which may be the case, right? But I do think there's still much more to understand in terms of what the overall impact is going to be of any Trump administration policies, both local and global.

Eleanor M. Albert: I know you've also done some looking into cooperation between the U S. and China that doesn't take place at the country-to-country level, but that takes place at either a state to provincial level or more subnational, that had been a little bit more resilient to tensions in the past. Do you still have that kind of faith in the appetite for this type of cooperation to exist? Are the channels still there to be developed in the event that the national-to-national falls apart because of elevated geopolitical tensions?

Joanna Lewis: Yes, absolutely. During the first Trump administration, we saw a real mobilization of efforts, particularly at the subnational level on climate policy, both in terms of mobilizing U.S. climate action, but also in engaging bilaterally with China, as well as a lot of bilateral engagement in the track 2 space among academics, think tanks, NGOs, et cetera.

This has really stayed strong over the last several years. I think the partnerships, particularly in the non-state actor space between China and the United States, are actually at the highest point as they've been in years. We've really been able to see some positive signals of renewed incentives for research collaboration, again on climate energy issues. People are traveling again. Of course, there was the COVID[-19] pandemic, which also just made things much more challenging on top of everything else that was going on.

Just one thing I would mention is even the track 1—the official bilateral engagement with China that's been happening during the Biden administration—it's been designed a bit differently this time around, so that you actually have a lot of non-governmental actors included in, for example, the U S.-China working group on Enhancing Climate Action.

So, I would say that even if formal dialogue processes are shut down at the federal level, I think a lot of this engagement is absolutely going to continue. Already many of us are thinking about how to make sure the important issues are going to continue to be addressed, that we can continue to keep open communication, and transparency, and information sharing on this topic, which is just so important to both countries, and the rest of the world is going to be watching what China and the United States do in the next four years.

The views and opinions expressed are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the position of Georgetown University.

Outro

The U.S.-China Nexus is created, produced, and edited by me, Eleanor M. Albert. Our music is from Universal Production Music. Special thanks to Shimeng Tong, Tuoya Wulan, and Amy Vander Vliet. For more initiative programming, videos, and links to events, visit our website at uschinadialogue.georgetown.edu. And don’t forget to subscribe to our podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred podcast platform.