 Our theme this afternoon is what action is China taking with regard to climate change? I think for policy makers on Capitol Hill for a number of years, there has been a huge issue in terms of policy discussions about climate, about energy, the role of China, the role of the United States with regard to international negotiations. So there have been many questions, issues throughout the years. It has affected much conversation, congressional hearings, many, many discussions. And we are now at another place as things continue to move forward, continue to evolve. And it's a very, very important discussion that is affecting us globally with regard to climate change, the actions of countries globally to address the impacts, to address the causes, to find ways to mitigate, to adapt. And so at this time, I am very pleased to introduce my colleague, Paul Jaffe, who is the Senior Foreign Policy Council for the World Resources Institute. Paul. Thank you very much, Carol. I'm pleased to welcome everyone to our panel on what action China is taking on climate change. Let me express our thanks to our co-sponsor, EESI, for their great work in helping us put this together. And I'm glad to welcome you on behalf of the China FAQs project of WRI. We call it the China FAQs project, facilitating a network of over 50 academic and think tank China energy experts available day in and day out to answer questions. Today's panel takes place at a pivotal moment only a few months ahead of the Paris climate conference and with time running out on the Earth's calendar. China and the U.S. are the largest emitters, of course, of greenhouse gases, but both are stepping up to the challenge. Today our focus is on China, but WRI recently released a report showing how the U.S. can meet the 2025 climate target using existing federal laws and state action. But for China, China has broken records and amazed the world with economic growth and lifting millions from poverty, but now it's at a turning point. Everyone has seen the pictures of the people in China cities wearing masks to try to avoid breathing the worst pollution. This is a driver of action, but so is the desire for energy security, the desire to avoid impacts on agriculture and coastal populations and to attain the economic benefits of a shift to low-carbon energy. So when people ask, is China going to take action, we don't really need to have much doubt that they are very motivated to take action, and of course have been taking action. In November 2014, in its joint announcement with the United States, China made its first pledge to peak emissions. In the years leading up to that moment, China put in place the foundation for its pledge with steps on renewable energy, efficiency, limiting coal and economic rebalancing. China's recently announced contribution, the so-called INDC, for the climate negotiations makes the November pledge official at the UNFCCC, that's the Climate Convention, and elaborates further on that previous pledge. Cooperation between China and the U.S. has focused on technologies and projects needed to boost momentum in both countries, and we're going to hear about that cooperation today as well. The experts on today's panel, and I was going to say we have distinguished group of experts here, I'm noticing we also have a distinguished audience. So we'll look forward to the conversation after the everyone has presented. Today's panel is well placed to help us move from the frequent misunderstandings about China to real knowledge of what is going on. In the past, it was sometimes said that China wasn't doing much of anything on low carbon energy. Today, certainly by now, we can put those misunderstandings aside. We will hear what China is doing and what it plans to do. We will hear about the real challenges and opportunities, the serious steps China is taking to address climate change contributing to the momentum for the global effort. And we'll hear about the prospects for the future. So to move to our panel, what we're going to do is have all the panelists speak first, ask you to hold your questions, and when the panel is finished, then we'll have discussion, and Carol is going to moderate that. I'm just going to mention who's on the panel to start out with, and then as we move to each panelist, I'll give you an additional sentence or two. So our first speaker is going to be David Vence Wagner, who's sitting right here to my left from the State Department. And our second speaker is going to be Professor Joanna Lewis on my right here from Georgetown University. And then Dr. Wang Tao, resident scholar at Carnegie Tsinghua Center for Global Policy in Beijing. And we really appreciate his being here, coming all the way from Beijing to be with us, and Clay Nessler on my left here from Johnson Controls. So we're going to begin the discussion with Vance Wagner. Vance serves as the China counselor in the Office of the Special Envoy for Climate Change, Todd Stern, at the U.S. Department of State. His work enables U.S.-China constructive, U.S.-China dialogue and collaboration on climate change in the context of the global climate negotiations, as well as bilateral cooperative initiatives, especially through the U.S.-China Climate Change Working Group. And beyond all of those titles and committees, he is the guy, the go-to guy, on U.S.-China collaboration. So we're interested in hearing your remarks, Vance, and we're going to have each of the panelists come to the podium, and then we'll do the Q&A from the tables. I might just mention there are some seats up here in the front. There's a whole row. Okay, thank you. Thanks very much, Paul. Good afternoon, everyone. It's really a pleasure to kick the panel off. It's a very distinguished panel with some good friends of mine. I'm going to start just by sharing some thoughts and perspectives on recent China climate developments looking primarily through the lens of U.S.-China engagement on this issue. Just to start with a little bit of the big picture and echoing what Paul said, China and the United States are the world's largest emitters of greenhouse gases. Together, our two countries emit over one-third of net global greenhouse gas emissions. What this means is that while we can't solve the problem alone, it's clear that any global solution to climate change will be a big part of what China and the U.S. are doing. And that's what we're doing in large part on what our two countries do. Fortunately, climate change dialogue and cooperation between the United States and China are stronger than ever. Both sides at the highest level see climate change as a high priority and a positive area in the bilateral relationship. And for evidence of this, one only needs to look to last a little bit more closely at the end of the day. And then President Obama and President Xi Jinping stood together in Beijing and made this historic joint announcement on climate change. Last November's joint announcement I think was widely seen as a success. I'm going to mention a couple of highlights from that announcement. First, the United States and China each announced respective post-2020 climate targets. China's emissions 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025 and make best efforts to reach 28 percent. China announced two targets. The first to peak CO2 emissions around 2030 with best efforts to peak earlier. The second target to increase the share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy consumption to around 20 percent by 2030. Both the U.S. and the Chinese targets are ambitious and achievable. And as noted explicitly in the text of the announcement are part of the longer-range effort to transition to low-carbon economies mindful of the global goal of two degrees Celsius. The joint announcement generated huge momentum in the global climate community for the two largest emitters countries that were historically seen as adversaries in the global climate negotiations for these two presidents to stand together and say we are both committed to doing our part to working constructively together to face the climate challenge. This had immediate impacts and that isn't just in an abstract way. So just weeks after the joint announcement at the climate conference in Lima, Peru, language from the U.S.-China joint announcement was actually adopted into the Lima Accord and was credited with breaking an impasse in those negotiations. And let me say a few words about the targets themselves in the joint announcement. They were announced last November as respective goals that each country is to achieve. Subsequently, as mentioned by Paul, these targets were formally submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the UNFCCC, in this form of UNFCCC speak, the INDC, the intended nationally determined contribution. The United States, we submitted our INDC at the end of March and China submitted theirs at the end of June. China's INDC included four targets. The two targets from the joint announcement, peak CO2, non-fossil energy, as well as additional targets on carbon intensity reduction and on A4 station. In addition, China's INDC includes a lengthy list of policies and measures that China attends to adopt to achieve those targets. And that list includes everything from a national cap and trade program to controlling total coal consumption, to promoting green buildings, increasing public transit and more. In fact, this is China's INDC as the longest to date. Now, I'm sure that all the other panelists are going to talk more in detail about these targets and these actions. What I'd like to say is that as a package, the targets and actions represent an ambitious effort that will require substantial new policies, economic reform and investments in clean technology, renewable energy, technology innovation. And achieving these targets will require substantial action by China that represents a significant derivation from a business as usual or a no-action scenario. Now, for the last part of my comments, I want to move away from the targets and talk about bilateral cooperation. It's important to remember the joint announcement, you know, the targets of the joint announcement got all of the publicity, but we shouldn't forget that the joint announcement also included expanded and deepened substantive on-the-ground cooperation across a wide variety of sectors. And this sends a clear message that the two countries are committed at the highest levels, not just to setting these in the future long-term targets, but by working side-by-side to achieve these targets, to support achieving these targets and complete the long-term transition to low carbon economies. Now, our bilateral cooperation on climate and clean energy with China is quite diverse and comprehensive. It's guided by several frameworks and mechanisms the premier mechanism for climate cooperation between the United States and China is the U.S.-China Climate Change Working Group, the CCWG. The CCWG was launched by Secretary Kerry in April of 2013 and it now has grown to cover eight action initiatives on motor vehicles, smart grids, carbon capture, energy efficiency, GHG data, forests, cities, and boilers. In addition, we have worked with China through the CCWG on reducing hydrofluorocarbons, HFCs, and an extended policy dialogue, and we're always looking for additional areas to expand. Other U.S.-China mechanisms include the 10-year framework for cooperation in the energy and environment, which oversees the very successful eco-partnerships program, which some of you may be familiar with or may be a part of, that celebrates subnational actors, partnerships between the U.S. and China to share best practices, demonstrate innovative solutions. On top of that, we have the U.S.-China Clean Energy Research Center and the list goes on. Together, these initiatives paint a comprehensive picture of cooperation that engages across numerous sectors and engages with a variety of actors, not just the central and federal governments, but subnational governments, private sector, universities, civil society, NGOs, and more. Each initiative is structured differently. Some of them are focused mainly on national policy experience sharing through workshops, study tours, exchanges, and such. So, for example, our Climate Change Working Group collaboration with China on trucks and buses focuses on sharing U.S. best practice experience to reduce emissions, increase efficiency, improve compliance and enforcement. And I think this has been a contributor to what we've seen, which is major domestic policy progress in China in recent years in this sector. Other initiatives are more hands-on. Our Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage Initiative has six demonstration projects. Each demonstration project has a partner in the U.S. and the China working to demo and research and explore various new cost-effective CCUS technologies that most models assume will be a part of the long-term effort to meet the climate challenge. Final example, we're always looking for ways to leverage and highlight private sector engagement. I know Clay is going to talk more about this, stressing market and economic opportunities in climate mitigation. So, for example, our Energy Efficiency Initiative under the CCWG looks at the energy performance contracts markets in both countries. It's a market worth some $8 billion in the United States and $12 billion in China, and we're now entering into a phase to solicit private sector pilot programs that demonstrate innovative financing and contracting and measurement and verification in this energy performance contract space. So I'm wrapping up now. This is a good time for this discussion because three weeks ago we completed the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue, our annual meeting. The SNED our ongoing robust progress on climate change emerged from the SNED as a very positive story, and what I brought, I brought a bunch of copies of the climate change fact sheet that came out of the SNED, and I'd be happy to distribute that because it's a pretty good summary of the stock taking of where we're at and where we're going. So in conclusion, let me just repeat something I said earlier that U.S.-China climate cooperation is stronger than ever, but that doesn't mean that we don't have a huge amount of work to do. On the one hand we have a huge amount of work to do this year working with China and with other countries to achieve an ambitious successful global climate agreement this December in Paris. But on the other hand, in thinking about this bilateral cooperation we have an even more important role to play working together with China to achieve our targets, to achieve this long-term transition to low-carbon societies that science says we must achieve if we are to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. So President Obama said that the United States and China have a special responsibility to lead the global effort against climate change. And I think that the respective targets that we've set, the domestic actions that we're taking, and the bilateral cooperation we have underway demonstrates that we're living up to this responsibility. Thank you, Vince. I'd like to now introduce Professor Joanna Lewis, one of the foremost scholars in the field of China's shift to low-carbon energy. Professor of Science, Technology and International Affairs at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. And author of a recent book, Green Innovation in China, China's wind power industry and the global transition to a low-carbon economy. Well, worth time to take a look at that. And I won't tell you all of her career, but she has worked at the White House Council on Environmental Quality and was a visiting scholar at Tsinghua University in Beijing. So that, among many other credentials, and Joanna we're glad to have you speak today. Great, thanks, Paul. Good afternoon, everyone. So I'm going to sort of pick up on Vance's remarks and talk a bit about the specific targets that China has put forward in the last month in the context of its INDC. So as Vance mentioned, there are these four targets here, namely to achieve the peaking of carbon dioxide emissions around 2030 and potentially earlier. To lower carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP, this is the carbon intensity target, 60 to 65% from 2005 levels by 2030. To increase the share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy consumption to 20% by 2030. And then there's a fourth target to increase forest stock volume. I'm going to focus primarily on the first three. And so, of course, the first two of the targets, the non-fossil target in the peak year were part of the joint U.S.-China climate announcement last November, which was met by a lot of fanfare here in Washington around the world. And what I want to do this afternoon is review the targets based on what we know, the modeling studies that are out there, the scenarios and projections, all of which, of course, are based on the best information we have and are frequently wrong. But it's sort of the best we can do to try to understand what do these targets mean and to what extent they may or may not deviate from business as usual. Now, I think it's first of all important to point out that when looking at this question of whether China is still here, which is a question that I get asked a lot, this is in fact the first time that China has pledged an emissions peak. So even the mention of a peaking of emissions would have been unheard of, I think, several years ago. Most of China's targets up until the last few months were in intensity-based terms, starting with energy intensity targets back in the 11th five-year plan in 2006 and then more recently, the carbon intensity targets that were announced prior to the climate change in Copenhagen in 2009. And so we now have a new carbon intensity target, which continues and extends the push to decrease both energy and carbon intensity in the country. The non-fossil target is, again, something we've seen before, but nothing that has gone through 2030, and it will indeed require continued commitment to non-fossil energy deployment and the associated infrastructure that will allow low-carbon energy renewables in particular to be deployed at such a large scale, including increased transmission infrastructure and technologies to increase integration of renewables. And of course, now that we've seen the targets that were mentioned in November translated into the INDC along with the new targets, I think this is extremely important for momentum leading into Paris at the end of the year. So the question of when China's emissions will peak is certainly extremely important, so they've pledged to peak by 2030, and in fact, there have been very few studies that show that a 2030 peak was sort of likely, likely particularly under any sort of reference scenario or business as usual scenario. Most projections, including the most recent projection that was published by the U.S. Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration show China peaking under a reference scenario sometime at around 2040 or later. So in fact, 2030 or earlier is I think in fact a real deviation. There was one study by some of my colleagues at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab in 2011 which actually showed how a 2030 peak could be achieved if very stringent coal policies were implemented and various other sort of economic restructuring. But there are other than that, I think that you see very few scenarios showing that this could be done without much more aggressive actions. Of course, the level of the peak is also quite important and that's not something that China has specified. So we don't actually know roughly the timeframe but we don't know will the peak be here, will it be here. And you can see that different modeling studies again have different numbers for where that may be ranging from 10 gigatons of carbon dioxide to around 12 gigatons carbon dioxide and of course that difference is actually substantial in terms of the overall climate burden. I think one study that's quite useful to look at is the report that was released last year by Tsinghua and MIT because this study and the link I provide here actually had an accelerated effort scenario. So this is their most aggressive scenario under their modeling analysis and they show that essentially you could get to a 2030 peak if coal use peaked in 2020 in China. So we're now in 2015, you essentially are going to have to reach peak coal in China within five years to see peak carbon dioxide emissions within 10 years after that. Which is going to be quite, I think, a challenge. You know, you already see signs of China trying to slow the rate at which they're building new coal-fired power plants and coal use is growing less rapidly than it was at the early part of last decade but it is still growing. And the, I'll stop there. In terms of the carbon intensity targets that China has put forth, they put forth this target again of 60 to 65% decline in carbon intensity from 2005 by 2030. And if you look again, this is the data that's publicly available from the Department of Energy, you can see that their reference case shows essentially a 58% decline in carbon intensity. So you're already ahead of that reference case to get to the 60 to 65%, which means that China will have to do more than their economy would naturally achieve through restructuring that might lead to more efficient use of energy and lower carbon intensity. And then finally, the non-fossil target, I think, is also quite aggressive. This is a study that was done by the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership. This is a project that pulled forward the academics and think tanks in China and around the world to model an aggressive renewable energy scenario for China a few years ago. There have been more studies done since then. And again, this study I think is useful because it shows the 2030 target. And their most aggressive scenario for renewables, they show that China could potentially get up to 26%, 27%, and the target is 20%. So I think that their middle scenario sort of shows 20% to 22% would be more achieved. I think China could do more on renewables and low carbon energy, but I think there's a lot of real reasons why they didn't put forward a more aggressive target, namely that there's a lot of challenges right now because deployment has been so rapid in China in building out wind power and solar power that you do see the grid having a hard time keeping up partly with transmission infrastructure construction and transportation. And you have challenges where in northern China in particular where you have excellent wind power resources, you're essentially balancing the wind with coal and you end up curtailing huge amounts of wind energy, particularly in the winter when heating is needed. So all of these challenges are certainly the government is making a lot of strides to address them and I think this is what's going to allow this target to be increased and ultimately I want to mention that I think that China has taken these targets not just to show to the world that it is serious about climate change but because they are actually in its domestic self-interest. Of course, we know about the need to adjust air pollution and there's a lot of co-benefits when most of the pollution is coming from fossil sources. If you are addressing carbon, you're also getting at local pollution challenges. Economy from an energy intensive, heavy industry dominated. Economy to more service-based and this is again all moving towards the direction of developing high-tech industries, things that use less energy and also this includes a lot of the technologies which they need to deploy in the energy sector. A lot of the low-carbon technologies, for example, have been identified by the government of strategic industries and are being supported for continued development and then finally, of course, China is trying to become more innovative society, less reliant on foreign technology and you see a lot of interest in low-carbon technologies being one of the key ways that their technology will evolve and their know-how in the sector. So you see sort of a combination of innovation policies and energy policies really pushing forward a lot of these low-carbon technologies. So I think that China's INDC targets really are a deviation for business as usual. They will require real and challenging domestic efforts to meet them. There's a lot happening at the local level in China. Now that these targets have been put in place at the national level, you see provincial governments around the country very seriously beginning to put forward policies to start to measure and regulate carbon dioxide emissions. This is something that most facilities in China have never done before because it wasn't regulated, it wasn't tracked, it wasn't measured, right? And we know that before you can regulate something, you need to know how much of it you have. And so there's a lot of attention being focused on inventories at the local level and of course, as Vance mentioned, China's working towards a national cap and trade program to control carbon dioxide. So there's a lot of excitement at the local level about building carbon markets and again that requires registries and inventories in order to track that. These intensity targets again are a deviation business as usual, I think particularly as we see GDP growth starting to slow in China. For example, the EIA scenario that I showed you where China's intensity target is going to decline shows GDP growth declining from I think it was to about 12% to 6% a year. So you're going to see a slowing of economic growth which makes it even harder to achieve an intensity target. And again the renewable energy targets I think while they could be more aggressive they are tempered probably just by the current challenges that are being faced and I think that as these are worked out you may see much more aggressive targets. In the past it's been very common for renewable energy targets to be put forward and then later actually increased once they realize that they could overachieve those targets. And finally all of these targets of course will require major decrease in coal use in China and this is not going to be easy. I think anyone who says that these targets are just business as usual and will be easy for China to meet are kidding themselves if you've seen if you're aware of how much coal is still being used in China and will continue to be burned in the absence of incentives and shifts to really to change that and you know this is of course good for air pollution to reduce coal use but it's not going to be easy for the local economy. A lot of people are employed in the coal industry in China and of course unemployment is a potential driver of instability and that is the last thing that the Chinese government would like to see. So I think this is going to be a bumpy road but something that the government is extremely committed to and so I think will be interesting to watch how they achieve it in the coming years. Thank you. Thank you Joanna and our next speaker is Wang Tao resident scholar Carnegie General Office at the Center for Global Policy in Beijing. He's an expert on climate and energy issues and runs a program at the Center for Global Policy examining China's climate and energy policies with particular attention to transportation and the international climate negotiations. He was previously a program manager at the World Wildlife Fund and a researcher at the UK's Tindall Center at the University of Sussex has a really global reputation on these issues. So Tao we're glad to hear from you today. Thank you Paul. It's really a privilege to be here and also thanks for coming. I'm very honored to be able to speak here. I think I really heard a lot from Wang and also Joanna about China's targets and also what China plans to do especially on the aspect of the energy and climate policies. So I think I will probably spend my 10 minutes on a few things that is probably wider on this and especially to addressing some of the white pictures in China's economy and potential risks and barriers we may face and I will give you some examples of that. I think I will spend my 10 minutes on three points first mostly the first one is China's economy is at a crossroad and this could lead to what we call a new normal but also if we didn't handle well they could also turn into a catastrophe in the economic side and that will also affect the energy demand from China. The second one is I'll talk about why Chinese government is so committed to these targets and the transitions. The third one I would make the point that it's imperative for China to success in those energy transition and there is huge risks if we didn't do well and there could be potential risks that economy and also other issues will gone off real and I will give you example of recent case developed in China and if I still have some time I will address a little bit on how US China could maybe cooperate on that and I'll give an example of my recent study. We all notice that the Chinese economy has slowed down dramatically from over 10 percent every year to now just about 7 percent as in the latest estimate of the economy growth is even lower than that. There are few even more worrying numbers from the energy indicators if you look at that as a more accurate estimate of what's going on in the energy and also in economy. The co-consumption in 2014 was for the first time decreased in China in nearly two decades and it was down by 3 percent. Mostly I think it's I wouldn't like to break it down. Basically I think there are joint forces from both the policies initiated by the Chinese government to improving the air qualities and addressing the climate change issues but also it's due to the over capacity of the heavy industries in China. There is over capacity and a huge competition among some of the heavy industries to then also contribute to the reduction of the coal and if you look further force a few energies the situation is almost the same. If you take crude oil as one example China's crude oil has increased so much over the last two decades and we are now the largest importer of the world overtaking US but the growth rate was down to 6 percent last year. We also much lower level in average and if you look into the details of that consumption it's more worrying because we only got the growth in certain category of the oil product like the gasoline that is reflected to the demand of the people buying more cars and driving out and that is understandable because the passenger car ownership in China are still much lower compared with other countries there is still huge room for people in the third or fourth tier cities to have their first ever car in their family history so they will drive more and they will embrace the new convenience being offered to them by cars but if you look at other product like the diesel in China diesel is most responsible for the construction machines agriculture sectors and also the freight road freight and trucks those demand are actually very weakened. China has built up a lot of capacity to provide enough diesel for our demand for the past decades but now we suddenly see that the demand has decreased and for the two years in a row the diesel demand has declined and that is also quite unprecedented if you look at electricity in general electricity is also decreased in terms of the growth rate and that is also worrying figures most of the cofire plants even though we are still building more but the average working hours of the cofire plants in China are decreasing and significantly many of them are running at deficit so we are worrying figures on that but as a result of that there is increasingly share from the non-fossil fuels so at the moment over a quarter of China's electricity generated by the non-fossil fuels like the wind, solar PV, hydro and nuclear and that is at the same level as the European Union and about the double of the level of the United States so that is quite an encouraging sight for if you look at the renewables but then it's quite worrying for the non-fossil fuel investments the next one is natural gas natural gas has been identified as a kind of bridge fuel for China because it is much cleaner compared with coal million cities are actually force the cofire plants to move out of the cities replaced with gas like city in Beijing because of the air pollution and there is also huge subsidies given by the government to use the LNG in the lorries so you will be able to reduce both the emissions from the transportation the LNG is still cheaper in China compared with diesel but despite that the gross rate is still far lower than the expectations many of the Chinese state-owned energy companies signed large deals with the LNG suppliers in Qatar in Australia in Malaysia and also recently we signed the deal with Russia but then we realized the demand of the natural gas may not be as much as we expected so there is a concern about how the economy and I think there is a lot of to do with the recent efforts to clean up the air to improve the non-fossil energy share but also down to the competition of capacity of the heavy industries China is now at the point that we can no longer rely on the heavy industrialization investment anymore the second one is why Chinese government is so committed to that I think we already heard a lot of the reasons not to mention about they worry about air pollution from the major cities the middle class are really demanding the cities to all mayors or policymakers to respond to that and there is a huge pressure from central government to the local government to respond to that but there is also China's own plan to produce more and more clean energies in there first of all China still say itself as a rising power and in this process of rising to the global stage China wants to be seen as a more responsible power so there is pressure from the international communities and also for within them they want to do more so there will be better reputations when they become a power in the future there is also competitiveness consideration there China is particularly interested in building up its own industry capacities over the time so we will be able to become world leaders in some of the new technologies like the wind power the electric vehicles high speed railways or even third generation or fourth generation of the nuclear power those are kind of identified by Chinese government and also the scholars as the fourth generation of the fourth industry revolution we feel like we have missed all the three before and now this is the fourth one there is a good opportunities for China to catch up so there is a strong motivation even with themselves to take responsibility and also take measures to address that but as I said before there is a very strong risk associated with that we have talked a lot about China's economy translating to the new normal and there is a huge investment into the renewables and at the same time when the Chinese government the central and local are trying to fight the pollution by closing down some of the dirty industries sometimes by through the command and control command which is very strong and arbitrary and without much leverage there is no flexibility and that could cause problems for example there is a city in Shandong province called Lingyi Shandong province is the China's largest province with the largest energy amount and possibly the largest emissions and it's a very heavy industry based this city is a typical third fourth tier cities very poor but trying to catch up with the industrialization process and put into a lot of heavy industries and the previous mayors and post-makers attract them to make the investment into the cities by giving away some of the requirements of environment standards or help them to cut corners in certain investments in environment pollution protections then what happens to this new mayor is by the turn of this year the CCTV China Central Television they have a program called Dialogue basically go around and do some of the undercover video and check the situations and of course this day's air pollution is a big issue so they are looking at the industry say which are those polluters actually causing problems in Beijing so they kind of like undercover camera these cities which covered with brown and black smokes and very dirty images of the whole city and in fact the PM2.5 and air pollution indexed are also very poor for the cities always around the bottom of the country so somehow when this was broadcasted in the national media in the national television the mayor was so much humiliated and he was also caught up by his supervisors and got a talk with many people and he decided that he is going to lead examples of the campaign against the pollution so from January to May he's actually literally just stopped a lot of these factories in that cities by command asking them to stop the productions unless you can prove that you codified the environment qualities and standards and the command is very strong and almost immediate effect there is nothing left for the negotiation so he's so powerful in those command then a lot of businessmen run into trouble for example some of the steel industry they run with huge boilers the furnace which has to be maintained at a very high temperature and he just suddenly asked you you have to stop by certain day maybe just awake and then do all these renovations of your technologies and pollution control and literally this furnace is just broken down because you cool down too quickly and there's no maintaining for this temperature so the total loss for that particular steel mill is over 100 million 100 million Chinese R&Bs or about 20 million US dollars then it almost just kill this factory immediately and all together there are about 400 heavy industries in this city has been stopped and after 4 months about 300 of them are slowly recovering back and after they get the allurance and also get the codified and about 20 or 30 some of them are cut down immediately and about 70 of them are still recovering but during the whole process there are about 60,000 people lost their jobs because you cannot maintain with the same capacity and also there's a huge debt as I said to previous cases a huge debt to the companies to the industries and they are actually running into huge problems in terms of even the city's own financial revenues their taxations their income are all shrunked by these measures so now it's become an ongoing process in China people can see how harmful if you really become a very hard person on the business people in a very short time and without giving much weight to go out and I don't think this is going to end up like this because the cost and the moment is spared by local banks or local investors and also some of the industries but they will have to find a way to cover down a cost maybe they just run out of business but this damage to the local economy and also the job loss is already being made and they have to take years to recover and I don't know how this small city is going to recover from that but certainly they have been cleaning up their environment they have been better in terms of the air quality but then people are not really always compromised happy about all these changes so local people are quite pissed off so this is just to give you an example if the whole country turn into the same situation like this and turn very quickly if you think China used to be running very fast like a car in the straight way and now we are saying that we are going to turn into a more advanced and more consumption driven economy it's like a very steep turn and we have seen some of the signs that the car is already slowing down the speed which is good but we have not yet seen that the transition has been completed so this is exactly where China is at in terms of economy and there is all possibilities open at the moment we could crash or we could just turn over and then make the successful transition and this is exactly I think people will pay more attention too even though we have seen huge and ground road map to ramp up the investment in renewables in non-fossil fuels and also tackling climate change risks and I think policy makers in China are quite concerned about the last one I think if I still have maybe two minutes is to talk about what kind of corporations then China could work together in the US I will give you an example this is a research we done in China and it will be launched tomorrow in Carnegie so I jump into it and something called petroleum coke it's as an end product of the refinery of the petroleum product and refinery crude if the crude is heavy and also high in the sulfur content you will end up a large amount of the petroleum coke or otherwise known as pet coke and the pet coke is pretty much just carbon it could be used in either ways but then what we have to find out is actually being used in China as alternative to coal and also as in many other developed countries the world largest refinery capacity is in US and second is in China and when US import more of coal from Canada US end up with a huge pile of the pet coke within your own bank yard but then there is no way to use them so they actually export them to different countries including China, China is a larger destination but that is only a count of about one third of that and then there is another two thirds of the pet coke produced within China because we also have large refinery capacities and then being burned together with coal or sometimes alone in small and heavy industries in the heavy sectors and that cause huge problem because the suffer content is very very high the normal pet coke we are talking about has about 3 or even to 5% of the suffer content and we know suffer dioxide is a major cause of the air pollution but average coal in China only concerns about 1% so you are talking about 3 or 5 times or even sometimes 7 times higher in terms of suffer dioxide contributions when you are burning pet coke it is not being recognized by Chinese government as a major source and there is also problems when China made the plan for reducing the coal consumptions for example we try to address the air pollution issues surrounding Beijing so we come out with very ambitious plan to reducing the coal consumption by about 6 million tons, 60 million tons around the areas in Beijing but in the same time there is no constraint on something like pet coke because it is unknown when you compare the source and also consumption of pet coke with the coal consumption you will realize the contribution from the pet coke could quite easily offset all the efforts China made in terms of reducing the air pollution sources of the suffer dioxide so this requires both government to work all together to make sure that we will find better ways to address the issue of suffer dioxide contribution from the pet coke not just simply export to one country and another country or maybe other different countries I think that is a good example how two countries can work together to address some of the issues but there are many areas I found interesting I would be very happy to answer your questions later on and thank you Thanks very much Thank you Tao and for our concluding speaker Clay Nestler who is Vice President Corporate Sustainability for Johnson Controls and in that role he leads the company's Global Environmental Sustainability Council and is responsible for environment and sustainability practices across the company's global manufacturing operations importantly for today among his many other credentials he serves on the Industry Advisory Board of the US China Clean Energy Research Center one of the projects at that center is building efficiency hugely important in both building energy efficiency hugely important in both China and the United States and he's going to bring a private sector perspective here to a number of these issues Thanks Clay Thank you How about we turn up the lights It's awful dark with the lights we have a better solution for that Thanks to EESI and WRI for the opportunity to represent the private sector in this important discussion today we're a proud partner of WRI and their new Building Efficiency Initiative part of the Ross Center for Sustainable Cities the director Jennifer Lakey is here and we have a cheering squad of summer interns so thanks for coming guys and if you haven't heard of us we're a 130 year old company based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin our founder professor Warren Johnson invented the room thermostat we are very active improving the energy efficiency of both buildings and vehicles and we have 170,000 employees in 150 countries about 42 billion dollars in sales so we are pretty active everywhere including China I've spent the last 30 or some odd years on the building efficiency side of our business we make air conditioning equipment we make controls and we do energy services in countries all around the world and actively in China so I'm going to focus on buildings why buildings we've talked about a lot of different things here today and I'm reminded of a favorite quote from Willie Sutton Willie Sutton was asked and he said because that's where the money is seemed like an obvious answer to a question and the reason we're focused on buildings is because 40% of greenhouse gas emissions on a global basis are in buildings and it's probably our greatest and lowest cost opportunity to mitigate the damaging impacts of global climate change so buildings it is but a tale of two countries in the United States buildings are all about existing buildings we tend to build one or two percent of our buildings every year there are some years like 2009 where we didn't build much of anything and then we'll boom a little bit so think one to two percent we'll also renovate our existing buildings at a rate of about one or two percent if you want to see what a city looks like in the United States in 2030 look out the window it's going to look pretty much the way it does today the big issue here is existing buildings we're going to jump on a plane for 12 hours or so and go to China what does a city look like in 2030 I don't know find an empty field and it'll be a city there's tremendous growth there in fact China has recently been growing about 2 billion square meters per year converted to feet that's about 20 million square feet think Canada think every year one one Canada two one Canada that's the scale of construction why buildings in China because they're going to build an awful lot and we're not talking about India and Brazil yet either so think of those kind of dualities there I did read through the very thick INDC very interesting document buildings energy efficiency mentioned a lot that's in stark contrast to when we went to COP 15 in Copenhagen when we looked at the draft text we figured out what square brackets meant we figured out everything was in a square bracket the words that weren't in square brackets or any brackets were energy efficiency or buildings the nice thing about INDCs is that countries are submitting very detailed action plans of how they're going to address this issue and they're being very specific a few of the specifics in China's INDC or in Section E improving energy efficiency of buildings intensifying energy conservation transformation for existing buildings promoting the construction of green buildings and the application of renewable energy buildings music to our hearts there really taking serious the opportunity and the challenges in their cities and buildings another quote, promote the share of green buildings and newly built buildings in cities and towns to reach 50% by 2020 50% of all buildings being green buildings which means high efficient buildings very aggressive and then finally Section J strengthen R&D commercialization and demonstration for low carbon technologies such as energy conservation so let's talk about that let's talk about R&D commercialization and demonstration as was mentioned earlier the acronym CERC stands for clean energy research center it's a US China initiative it's in its fifth year so this was announced about five years ago as a US China joint effort it was recently renewed last year by President Xi and President Obama for another five year term so we call it 2.0 or Phase 2 it is a cooperative agreement between governments between laboratories and institutes to give you a sense of the scale of this there are 1100 researchers in China and the US working on projects related to US China CERC it also includes a very active representation of the private sector in business it's focuses on innovation commercialization they've also made great strides in attacking one of the big challenges between cooperative research and development which is intellectual property it's been a very successful program it was highlighted last fall in the announcement and a lot of expectations going forward the US Department of Energy Energy Agency are all leading government entities in addition to many institutes they're focused on coal carbon capture utilization and storage clean vehicles, buildings and they're creating a new one over the next five years which is at the energy water nexus the buildings one which is the one we're involved in is led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as well as Mohrd the Ministry of Housing and Urban World Development the Ministry which is focused on building codes and standards and really looks after the built environment in addition to Johnson Controls Dow, UTC, 3M, Sengibon Sage, Lutron, Disney and Water Furnace are all active participants in the building energy efficiency we're not involved for philanthropy we're involved because it's in our best commercial interest all these companies have real estate they have activities manufacturing, view a big business opportunity in both the US and in China for the types of technologies that are being developed through CERC we are currently constructing a new headquarters in Shanghai it'll be our Asia Pacific headquarters and I have the pleasure of working one of the greenest corporate headquarters in the world probably in Milwaukee, Wisconsin four lead platinum buildings we're building what is at least as sustainable and perhaps even more sustainable in Shanghai it attributes integrated control, solar PV battery storage, advanced systems for air filtration lots of different things we've invited other CERC partners from both the US and China to come in to create a really demonstration and a test bed of the latest in sustainable technologies we're this building will use 50% less energy than a typical building built to western standards anywhere it'll be in Shanghai the second program I'd like to talk about US-China cooperation is the energy performance contracting working group that David mentioned earlier we are as well involved in that it involves DOE the US State Department obviously, NDRC and as part of the climate change working group it was also announced by President Obama and President Xi as an extension to the many other working group activities it leverages a contracting methodology called performance contracting energy efficiency is unique it's about the only area of energy where improvements in infrastructure can actually be paid over time so you can pay for the technology that is installed you can pay for the financing of the installation you can pay for commissioning the verification, financing costs everything can be paid over time it's a contracting mechanism it's the one that the US federal government uses federal ESPC energy savings performance contracting which it uses to make improvements in federal government buildings without using taxpayer or utility rate payer dollars it's not a particularly new methodology it's been around since the 80s but it is a dominant one in the public sector in the United States what's interesting is again parallel universes in the United States 85% of all projects from the public sector federal government, state government city government, schools, healthcare universities it's just the opposite in China 85% of the work is in the industrial sector and the private sector almost nothing done in cities so it's like the same idea has launched their ESCO market Energy Service Company market is actually larger than the one here but they deal with totally different sectors the real opportunity for us is to take these innovative models of financing from third parties, measurement verification bundling together projects in a retrofit and find some innovative models that would apply to each other's markets if we could come up with models and in fact we are currently working on pilot projects to demonstrate the success of these models over the next year if we can come up with innovative models they learn a little bit from them they learn a little bit from us come up with a model we could double the size of the market in the US and more than double the size of the market in China as well as attract third party financing there isn't enough public money there isn't enough public money in the world to address these challenges we need to bring in the financial institutions and we are all very hopeful that this might be a path towards that so finally in that lines up perfectly with the INDC Explore new investment in financial mechanisms for low carbon development such as public-private partnerships so again very consistent with what they've stated as their goals just in summary public-private partnerships will be a critical element in protecting the environment stimulating economic growth and providing a range of other social benefits because the challenges are so large the largest countries should individually and collectively leverage to the fullest extent possible their public sector, private sector and civil society resources in collaborative partnership to capitalize on the significant opportunities to mitigate the harmful impacts of global climate change thank you very much thanks very much Clay and thank you all for terrific presentations so let us now open it up for your questions and if you could please identify yourself when you ask your question who wants to start go ahead I'm Lisa Friedman from Climate Wire we're going to keep on summarizing here thank you guys for doing this this was all really interesting I have a short question for Joanna and also for David could I mention the volume of emissions when China is expected to be can you just repeat that because I wasn't sure about it can you give us a sense of how much emissions will be expected to grow before the peak happens? okay so the question is with regard to the peak and talking about that okay Joanna sure and I may be easy if I sort of break down the numbers and I can send to you as well but I had mentioned that what the modeling studies show is a peak in 2030 that number could range from 10 to 12 gigatonnes CO2 and so you can sort of look at the trajectory from now to there and you can also look at higher end ranges and earlier end ranges and I can send you those breakdowns if that would be useful so that would be in 2030 so not a total burden that's an annual number would you have any sense of how much the total growth would be before the peak happens? I'd have to look off the top of my head where they are, yeah, what the rate would look like yep okay did you have another question for okay great okay back here first I'm Eleanor Bastion I was wondering if via CERC or any of the other working groups there's been any notable progress in CCS on bringing the price down making it more economic or more deployable? okay so the question is with regard to CERC and progress in terms of making CCS more affordable yeah so I can start on this we have a variety of different projects that are CCS cooperation with China under the CCWG we have six under the CERC there are additional research projects focused on large-scale carbon capture utilization and storage in the joint announcement from November the president's announced an additional two projects which they're currently scoping out and intend to do the site selection of this fall I think that overall the scope of these projects probably focuses on the U of the CCUS which is the utilization part and let me start by saying I'm not a CCS expert and I'd be happy to help directly to our DOE colleagues on the ground implementing these but my understanding is that where the technology is at now is there's enough uncertainties that we need to jointly demonstrate a variety of different types of applications and the way that we make that cost effective now is with the U and what that means is using carbon capture for some other purpose like enhanced water recovery or enhanced oil recovery and a lot of our projects are focused on combining innovative technology demonstration with enhanced water, enhanced oil recovery so it's an actually a cost effective project and through the maturation of that technology then we start to look towards longer terms pure storage projects but I know the CERC has more pure research elements of it the two announced projects from last November one of them is a major large scale CCS so carbon capture and storage or carbon capture and sequestration project but overall I think they're focused more on that U so that we can demonstrate the technologies that will then be commercially applicable over a longer term time frame and by long term I mean long term most of these models in the 20, what percentage coal fired power plants or industrial facilities will be equipped with CCS by 2030 I think is debatable by 2050 or 2100 I think it's going to be I think it's undeniable that it'll be a much higher percentage Did anyone else want to add anything? Okay Okay, right here first Hi, yes, thank you I'm wondering a lot of what we've heard about today is the collaboration between the US and China and how fantastic that is and I agree as a reality that really a lot of the gains made only happen because of this collaboration but I'm wondering if in the unfortunate situation that the US has a president in 2016 that doesn't actually believe that climate change is happening if the panelists anticipate that China would maintain its trajectory in terms of cutting its emissions or whether or not they would feel less of an obligation to do so Okay, so the question is what happens in terms of all of the cooperation in the planned trajectory if the politics and the US change in the presidential election Joanna I'm happy to start, I think that's a great question and it's certainly true that the Chinese government is watching very carefully what happens in Washington that said every target that's in China's INDC is part of its 13th five-year plan and subsequent plan so these are committed in domestic law essentially these are going to be implemented China usually doesn't put forward targets that they know they won't come close to meeting because they would rather put something forward that they have an actual shot at and so I think that these two things the US and Chinese politics are certainly intertwined but they're not necessarily linked in that context I think that the fact that the Obama Climate Action Plan exists has allowed China and other emerging economies to be more constructive in the international climate negotiations so I do think that that's very important but I don't think that China would just withdraw its targets change them in any way as I mentioned I think there's a lot of reasons why it's in China's own self-interest to move its economy in a little carbon direction and it's not just because of Paris and COP 21 it's because of real challenges at home with the economy and with air pollution public health Vance? I'll just add a quick comment the structure of these targets are nationally determined and China from the beginning is very clear that it's nationally determined targets it's not conditional on anything that the United States or any other countries do and the targets that they've formalized in the INDC are not conditional so I wouldn't expect and I'm sure that China would give the same answer that these are their domestically established nationally determined targets that they're doing for their own domestic reasons and I don't expect that they would change the US-China climate bilateral cooperation I think could have could be impacted by a change of administration but the bottom you know this bilateral cooperation is designed to support enhance, accelerate progress particularly in China and if that were reduced you know we would miss some opportunities I think but China is still going to meet those meet their targets Thank you maybe just quickly add on another aspect I think it's important to understand what China promised as the two colleagues already mentioned is domestic measures and targets it's already itself legalized within China and also those targets are not conditioned on what other countries will be doing so there's no chance that China will withdraw its own targets if there is a change in the United States commitment to climate change nevertheless I think there is something we may have concern David already mentioned that the cooperation may be affected if there is less cooperative administrations from US on China but I would also say that China do all these things not only just for the air pollution not only for the climate change but also there is an industry policy concerning there there is a competitiveness of the national economy and also there's energy security concerning there so they hope to increase the share of the non-fossil fuel so they will be more safe in terms of energy supply and then it will be case when there is a peaceful and more friendly environment for China but then if there is anything going around between China or US and then suddenly there is a more hostile environment towards China's security of the energy supply then it's quite reasonable that China may have to return back to the most abundant energy source which is coal and unfortunately that will be a cost to both China and also to the world so if you think about in the better situations we could have more secured import of oil and gas and even from directly from US to help China to improve energy security then certainly there will be much more incentive of China to reduce consumption of coal but then if something happened then China feels that the oil supply are both and threatened and also the renewable will take longer time to compensate for this loss of the for example gases then there is an unfortunate choice maybe return to the coal so that also worth noting okay back okay back here first and then we'll make sure we get around okay go ahead yes you this is for Dr. Wang and could you identify yourself please are you seeing that China is setting the groundwork for a could these targets to be reached in a way that does not manage the coal way that you said that could disrupt their economy are they doing can you hear me yeah do you want to repeat her question then when you answer go ahead okay if I understand right you're asking that whether China is setting the targets purely based on the command and control measures so they will not upset the economy I was actually asking are they are they working towards meeting those targets having to use the command okay are they setting the groundwork so it can be done in a way that's not going to affect the so are the policies and actions that China is proposing being done in a way that would not require command and control are they setting groundwork that would not require no not in that way I think the usual way China most familiar with is actually through the command and control because of history if China become a country that's mostly rely on the market based instrument to reach and target then it will be quite good news for us to know they so it's actually the opposite it's China still very much rely on the command and control like the co-consumption targets you just have to reduce 30 or 40 million tons by 2017 and there's no economic incentives for them to achieve that so one area is I think that US and China could work together is actually US to help and also other developed countries to help China to better understand how to use market based instrument to achieve those targets with less disruption to the society and to the economy I think that would be much helpful for China to reach the targets but certainly this target and the moment I think China has very much in their mind they will reach this target through a combination of the market based instrument as well as command control but there is always room to improve the use of the market instrument and I think there is still a lot of areas that we are purely just rely on the command and control and increasingly prove that less capable okay we'll go to you first I'm David Ahm from the Center of Climate Strategies and I just had a general question we talked a lot about how China as a rising global power gives a lot more pressure in terms of its commitment towards IMDC does that have any bearing on how it sort of interacts with other large emitters that have yet to turn in their IMDCs as we only have 17 IMDCs in place I don't know if it's looking more outward towards India for such who hasn't put a pledge to the mission's peak year yet or is it going to sort of say domestic and keep things in place okay do you want to share Paul and do you want to kind of repeat the question yes I understand the question you're asking what is the momentum effect of the China decision on other countries and I guess I'll just provide a perspective on this because I don't think there is sort of one single answer to it countries react in different ways what they say is not only not always what they feel and of course countries have multiple spokespeople but one way to start answering your question is that countries often don't want to admit that they're taking action because of another country taking action they want to say it's for their own reasons and that's because domestically they want to be able to say that on the other hand countries are always wary of whether other countries will take action because in a situation where they think there's going to be potentially a competitive impact they want to be able to tell their constituents that we're not doing this by ourselves we're not moving unilaterally and that other countries are acting so on the one and India take India as an example going into Lima which was shortly after the joint announcement of the U.S. and China there were people in the Indian Government who said that no this wasn't going to affect them they had their own reasons and they were making up their own minds on the other hand the former environmental minister of India under the previous administration Mr. Ramesh said that the China U.S. accord had broken the log jam and no longer India no longer had anybody to hide behind so I think you can see what I'm saying they're going to be different optics but there's no question in my mind that it's easier for countries to move forward when they move forward together and so the dynamic here is entirely a positive one out of that joint announcement and the joint effort that's continuing to take place and there are examples of countries that have in fact the climate ambassador for the European Union Laurence Tobianus said that she thought it was having a very positive effect on other countries and that Europe itself would like to engage with China and since then I think it actually has reached some additional agreements and there are other examples go ahead I'll just make one quick comment about in the last two three months we've seen China come out with statements on climate change with India, China India statement with Brazil, China Brazil statement with the EU, China EU statement and I think that it's not that we started a trend, the US and China but I think we showed that there's a real opportunity for countries to come together have dialogue, stand up and say things like we are committed to working together to achieve a global deal, we are committed to sharing experience and working cooperatively to meet this challenge and all of these statements sort of have these broad themes and it doesn't mean that when it comes to the Paris negotiations that everything is easy and the path to a successful deal is clear because it's still very difficult and there's a lot of work to do in those negotiations but it does mean you have these overarching frameworks at the leader level really establishes trust in a sense that these countries are committed even though it's in the weeds it's very difficult but both countries are committed to achieving a global deal and sort of see the end game as the same thing and that's part of what's breathing momentum into the negotiations in the sense that this is really possible. Okay, there are two questions here and then up here back here, go ahead. Hi, I'm Katherine Balski with the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission I had two hard questions one was to a little bit to Messler You mentioned a couple of times competitiveness and China has made a mini-China 2035 with industry 4.0 and energy efficiency can give us a portion of that What support have you seen this far for developing those domestic funds? 12 5-year plan focused really on solar wind and then on the second part is market access there's huge opportunities for businesses in higher energy efficiency buildings all of that, the question is market access how much market access is available for foreign firms it's definitely not going to be 100% but that's what you guys think is the most important Okay, so two questions one, dealing with competitiveness sort of looking at sort of the fourth revolution and what does that mean particularly with regard to looking at vehicles and then the second question was to clay with regard to looking at market access and how much of it do you anticipate based upon what you're seeing Thank you for the question I think we mentioned about China necessities to transit economy and the way they want to transit economy is to change the driver from investment to consumption and also to upgrade its own manufacturing so we have done a lot of manufacturing and heavy industrializations in the past and now China feels like because of the environment constraints they want to upgrade their economy so they will be able to climb higher in the value chains in the manufacturers so this China my 2025 is exactly responding to that and also China wants to and has been investing heavily on the innovation on R&Ds through national subsidies and also national investment in universities and research labs they want to be able to transit to economy that is more based on based on the science based on the more high value industries instead of low cost competitions and very low skill level so this are I think this is just one example of how they want to do it this is a more comprehensive plan for that but to be honest this is also quite new to many of the people within China so they are still trying to figure out what exactly this means manufacturing upgrading strategies of course we have seen a lot of support from Chinese government in promoting some of the industries like the wind power, solar PV high speed railways and recently also on the electric vehicles through subsidized to the R&D and also subsidies for the installation and purchase and there are also R&D projects that have been designated to the universities to help them to improve their capacity all those things will be brought to the same framework and I think it's an ultimate goal for China to reach there they really aim at for example countries like Germany and Japan for its future industries but whether this is going to be that easy I think we still have to see I'm not sure how typical we would be we've been in China for decades so we've kind of grown with the economy there we take slightly different approaches in different sectors but that's probably key to success in some cases we have joint ventures with China owned enterprises in some sectors and in others we go direct with the manufacturing and distribution that's been in place for many many years within China so I'm not sure how typical that would be for companies entering China in this particular space of clean energy but that's been our experience okay thank you we'll take did you also still have a question okay all right so let's take you'll be the last two questions back here first and then to you Bob thanks Scott I guess for David I'm sort of wondering looking at the 2020 timeframe for the whatever agreement they do in Paris at first at that time so we have this five year gap along the way the negotiators talked about also looking at some ambition in this period so it's not a lost time for action what do you what do you envision that time sort of being spent on in the sense that becoming more giving more and more apparent that this won't be a treaty in the sense that we require ratification at least here in the US but that was sort of the idea for having that five year gap so what should the nations be doing over that that five year period in your mind sure the question is about what nations should be doing in the 2015 to 2020 period and I think you're referencing to efforts to increase ambition in the pre 2020 time period before a new Paris agreement comes into force I guess the best way I can answer that is to say that most countries have put their 2020 targets on the table including the United States and China I don't expect that those are going to change so the first thing we have to do both countries is ensure that we have the policies and measures and technologies in place to achieve those commitments but looking longer term you can't evaluate the success of a deal just based on a single snapshot of where we're at in 2020 or 2025 what we need to look at is are we increasing ambition over time on a cycling system and does the deal create a system for increasing ambition over time accelerating the rate of change in a way that's consistent with long term deep decarbonization and the targets that the United States and China have established in the 2020, 2025, 2030 timeline I think meet those criteria the U.S. specifically our trajectory if you will looking through 2020 and 2025 puts us on a trajectory towards long term deep decarbonization on the order of above 80% reduction by 2050 which is sort of a widely used metric for where developed economies need to be China has not put forward a post-2030 there isn't really a post-2030 guide for China yet except I would point to China regularly uses language including in the joint announcement about long term low carbon economy about increasing ambition about being mindful of the two degrees and these are the kinds of signals that we need to see especially linked to one of the first questions is what's China's CO2 level going to be in 2030 it's a question we don't know the answer to one of the reasons is because there's so much uncertainty right now and how China's I think probably much more in China than the United States about how China's economy will grow and develop and restructure over the next 15 years that are going to determine not just what's that number in 2030 but what does that trajectory look like and the truth is if China levels off and if China adopts an economic growth model that levels off even at a lower level but doesn't change for the next 30 years that's not going to get us where we need to go right China needs and is working towards an economic transition that we'll see at peak and then following the peak to see a long-term decline and we're seeing that in the rhetoric and in the language and in the way that China adopts a low carbon economy as a fundamental driving principle of its development that I think are very encouraging so I guess that's you know 2020 I think we focus on meeting the targets enhancing cooperation but also showing those long-term signals to ensure that we meet our long-term agreed goals okay Bob I'm Bob Barthold from Senator Casey's office so in the United States we have the Department of Energy Energy Information Administration collecting all this information NREL what are the analogs for in China for collecting all this information is that level of detailed information available for what China is doing currently what are the analogs to data collection in China compared to like in the U.S. where we have EIA and NREL that do a lot of data monitoring capturing I can start and it's a great question I think that the main statistical agency in China the National Bureau of Statistics has a large energy statistics division so they would be the central authority for collecting data and they would work directly with the agencies in China that would be responsible so they would work directly with the National Development and Reform Commission to collect the data and then put it in their central system it's similarly with Minister of Environmental Protection and you know but to your question of sort of do they have comparable you know accounting in place not quite they're getting there and there's they are collecting it but it's a question of capacity and it's a question of accuracy and it's a question of scale so it's certainly being collected and I think you can see that signs that accuracy is improving and I don't know if you're talking about energy you're talking about carbon these are actually different things because energy data has been collected for a while but carbon data has not been collected at the facility level China has implemented a mandatory reporting for a large facility similar to what EPA did many years ago in the United States so the EPA is ahead of the game and the companies have been reporting for a long time in anticipation of regulation in the US and China is still catching up the fact that the government in China has announced the intention to implement a national emissions trading program of some kind has essentially meant they need a national registry they need all the big emitters and facilities within that registry so all the provinces have been tasked with putting that together some are have moved further along than others and it's what you would think it's the wealthier sort of higher capacity provinces like Shanghai which has a very rigorous registry system they're working with California and the European Union to make sure that that meets international standards whereas you know provinces in the west would be farther behind did you want to add? yes let me just end a few things I think the transparency of the Chinese energy data has always been a question to many of the researchers and also has been areas in China and together with China to try to work improving it for example the NDRC the economic planning authorities in China they have this own research called energy research institutes they have been working together with IEA the international energy agency for quite a long time to improving China's energy statistics there are also other sources then you can connect the energy data for example in China we also have this association of industries so you can actually connect the data not only from the regional level but also through the sector and then you will be able to compare the data when you end up all the regions and together with the sectors but then sometimes the data are not always matching up there is big divisions for the last few years data and that's also why Chinese Central the Statistics Bureau also announced recently a large revision of this data and upright they actually revised up the co-consumptions quite a bit for the last few years and that's also because of due to the different statistics and methods and also approaches and especially for co is very difficult but I think the improvement is being in place and they are trying to work on that and also there is difficulties in China's existing statistics systems people in developing world developed world are very familiar with this type of the categories and how you actually categorize different emissions and energy demand in two different sectors and when I was doing that research in UK I found that you China's energy statistics categories are never matched with that being used in the western world I gave a good example transportation in China being accounted as a very small in terms of share of energy consumption which is not correct but the reason being that is the transportation in China is only accounting for the transportation itself all the rates, low rates or even the company fleet are already attributed to the industrial emissions in different categories and how you've been connecting them and put them into different places so all these differences has to be addressed and China itself also has to slowly change and improve the categories they are using now to a more internationally coordinated and acceptable manner so that is also quite a challenging task but it sounds like it is definitely under way and that the government is committed to moving forward in that direction Paul did you want to make any do we have a minute? okay, okay, go ahead what did you make up? I think I just wanted to thank everyone for the superb panel and invite everyone to follow up afterwards I guess just as a closing 15 seconds I wanted to highlight something that a couple of folks said that China's own interest makes it imperative to undertake an economic shift that it's ended the phase in which it could follow its old model so it has very strong incentives to follow to avoid the risks that Tao mentioned although there undoubtedly risks there and as it is doing this and there are many interesting studies and so on out there to describe how this is taking place it's certainly suspenseful we don't know the conclusion yet but there is an imperative that the leadership recognizes and moving in this way it's setting an example for other countries and for the rest of the world and that may be partly an additional answer to the question that the gentleman asked earlier about whether there is uptake on this in other countries great Paul, thank you and this whole area is one that is fascinating it's extremely important it is continuously evolving and we plan to be following this as we move through the summer the fall through the Paris negotiations so that we can hopefully then at the beginning of the year come back and really look at what is sort of transpiring at that point what are the points of progress what new information do we have and at this time I want to thank all of you for being here and staying to hear our wonderful panel and I want to thank our panel very very much and of course our partners WRI so thank you all very much for coming thank you and the presentations the briefing will be up on our website within the next day or so so if you want to share it or whatever with others please feel free to do so thank you