CEF Director Jennifer Turner Quoted in Xinhua News on Recent U.S.-China Commitments to November 2014 Climate Agreement

Commitments from China and the United States, the world's two largest economies, injected fresh energy into the battle against climate change, while bolstering prospects for an ambitious pact in Paris later this year, environmental experts said.

On Friday, Chinese President Xi Jinping and his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama concluded their meeting at the White House with a joint statement that outlines a series of domestic actions and financial pledges, including China's commitment of a 20-billion-yuan (3-billion-U.S. dollars) fund to help other developing countries combat climate change.

"I think this is very encouraging to hear details on how China and the United States each laid out some steps for turning the fall climate agreement into concrete action," Jennifer Turner, director of the China Environment Forum at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a Washington D.C.-based think tank, told Xinhua.

A highlight of the joint statement is that in 2017 China will launch a landmark national emissions trading system (ETS) covering power generation, steel, cement, and other high-emitting sectors, on which China has been working for about 20 years with some U.S. partners.

Although the seven ETS pilot programs that have been going on in Chinese cities and provinces are not universally successful yet, they are useful for helping experiment with what could work in China so the system can be expanded nationally, Turner said.

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