WASHINGTON — The new climate agreement between China and the United States could help bolster the U.S. economy through the use of American clean energy technology, says Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy.
“If you take a look at the technologies that are selling in China on air pollution; if you take a look at the monitoring equipment that Beijing just installed as a result of the push for better air pollution monitoring — those are all U.S. companies doing really good business,” McCarthy said Monday at a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.
The two countries announced the agreement last week, after two days of meetings between President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing.
Under the agreement, the U.S. will have to reduce carbon emissions by 26 percent to 28 percent by 2025, as compared to 2005 levels. China agreed to take actions that would slow carbon emissions such that emission levels would peak no later 2030. The country pledged to do this by increasing the use of non-fossil fuels to make up 20 percent of its energy consumption.
McCarthy says that in order to make good on these promises, China will have to “make significant economic changes in the structure of how they look at their economy.”
“It would require significant investment in zero carbon technologies or low carbon technologies,” she said. “It is going to result in the need for them to make an immediate shift in how they’re looking at continuing to grow the economy.”
Immediacy, McCarthy believes, is the key to meeting these objectives.
“This is a big change that requires a lot of action now. It can’t be done on a dime, but it needs to get done right away.”
The United States and China, the two biggest carbon polluters globally, hope the announcement of the accord will set an example for other countries around the world ahead of the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris.