China and US join efforts to grow renewable energy

The world’s two biggest emitters of greenhouse gases have normalised their climate relationship after a hiatus since 2022, sending an encouraging signal to other countries ahead of COP28.

On November 15, China and the U.S. jointly published the Sunnylands Statement on Enhancing Cooperation to Address the Climate Crisis (the Statement), which builds on the earlier April 2021 U.S.-China Joint Statement Addressing the Climate Crisis and the November 2021 U.S.-China Joint Glasgow Declaration on Enhancing Climate Action in the 2020s. The new Statement highlights various key areas of cooperation, such as energy transition, methane abatement, the circular economy, and deforestation, among others.

Compared to the two previous agreements, the most notable addition in the latest Statement is that both countries agree to “accelerate the substitution for coal, oil and gas generation”. The Statement commits both China and the U.S. to supporting the G20 leaders’ declaration on tripling global renewable energy capacity by 2030. The Statement also proposes introducing an international, legally binding instrument for mitigating plastic pollution, as well as advancing “at least five” large-scale cooperation projects in carbon capture, utilisation and storage by the end of the decade.

The renewable energy business community will be paying close attention to how the two countries are likely to coordinate their bilateral renewable energy ambitions in the future, especially with regard to any potential disruptions to the supply chain. The detention of China-related solar PV components by U.S. Customs had only started to alleviate in Q1 2023, following several months of slowdown in solar panel installation in the U.S. Given China’s projected dominance in the global clean energy supply chain, any trade or industrial policies that target Chinese companies and manufacturing would significantly impede the timeline for a broader transition toward renewable energy at the international level.