China to announce landmark programme to limit greenhouse gases

President Xi Jinping of China will make a landmark commitment on Friday to start a national programme in 2017 that will limit and put a price on greenhouse gas emissions, Obama administration officials have said.

The move to create a so-called cap-and-trade system would be a substantial step by the world's largest polluter to reduce emissions from major industries, including steel, cement, paper and electric power. The announcement, to come during a White House summit meeting with President Barack Obama, is part of an ambitious effort by China and the United States to use their leverage internationally to tackle climate change and to pressurise other nations to do the same.

Mr Obama and Mr Xi will highlight the shared determination of the leaders of the world’s two largest economies to forge a climate change accord in Paris in December that commits every country to curbing their emissions.

Mr Xi’s pledge underscores China’s intention to act quickly and upends what has long been a potent argument among Republicans against acting on climate change – that the United States’ most powerful economic competitor has not done so. But it is not clear whether China will be able to enact and enforce a programme that substantially limits emissions.

China’s economy depends heavily on cheap coal-fired electricity, and the country has a history of balking at outside reviews of its industries. The country has also been plagued by major corruption cases, particularly among coal companies. But the agreement, which US officials said had been in the works since April, is China’s first commitment to a specific plan to carry out what have so far been general ambitions. The initiative builds on a deal Mr Obama and Mr Xi reached last year in Beijing, where both set steep emissions-reduction targets as a precursor to the global climate accord. Mr Obama, who has made climate change a signature issue of his presidency, announced the centrepiece of his plan this year. With his announcement on Friday, Mr Xi will outline how he will halt the growth of China’s emissions by 2030.

“It increases our probability of succeeding, and it increases the likelihood that we will have a more robust agreement” in Paris, one senior administration official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because officials were not authorised to preview the agreement.

The climate deal will be a substantial, if rare, bright spot in a wide-ranging summit meeting that is expected to be dominated by potential sources of friction between Mr Obama and Mr Xi. The two leaders began meeting on Thursday night with a working dinner at Blair House, across from the White House.

The president plans to raise a number of contentious topics on Friday, including cyberattacks on US companies and government agencies; China’s increasingly aggressive reclamation of islands and atolls in disputed areas of the South China Sea; and Mr Xi’s clampdown on dissidents and lawyers.

Under a cap-and-trade system, a concept created by US economists, governments place a cap on the amount of carbon pollution that may be emitted annually. Companies can then buy and sell permits to pollute. Western economists have long pushed the idea as a market-driven way to drive industry to cleaner forms of energy, by making polluting energy more expensive.

Mr Xi will pledge to put in place a “green dispatch” programme intended to create a price incentive for generating power from low-carbon sources, officials said. He will agree to help provide financing to poorer countries to help them pay for projects that reduce harmful emissions. And China, one of the world’s largest financiers of infrastructure projects, will agree to “strictly limit” the amount of public financing that goes toward high-carbon projects, one official said, in line with a 2013 commitment by the US Treasury Department to cease public financing for new coal-fired power plants around the world.

New York Times service