Tag: Wuhan

Today, C40 announced the 35 finalists competing in ten urban climate action categories for the fourth-annual C40 Cities Awards, sponsored by Bloomberg Philanthropies and BYD. The winners will be announced on December 1, 2016, at a ceremony in Mexico City, held alongside the sixth biennial C40 Mayors Summit.

By Mark Watts, Executive Director, C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group

The United States of America and China are responsible for over one third of global greenhouse gas emissions. This month mayors and other urban leaders representing more than 60 Chinese and U.S. cities, gathered in Beijing at the second U.S.-China Climate-Smart Low-Carbon Cities Summit. These critical leaders in the fight against climate change came together to share strategies and lessons on how to get their cities, and therefore the world, onto a low carbon pathway.

China has made great strides in reducing its emissions in the past three years and it has shown strong leadership on climate change. With a reported 43 gigawatts of solar capacity at the end of last year, we are now leading the globe. Coal use in the power sector last year also went down, by 4.3 per cent, and Beijing recently said it would ratify the Paris agreement by September, showing our determination to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 18 per cent in the second half of this decade, as laid out in the 13th five-year plan. Read more from author Tang Jie, former deputy mayor of Shenzhen and special representative for climate change affairs in Shenzhen.

C40 cities Wuhan and Shenzhen will become the first in China to develop comprehensive greenhouse gas emissions inventories using the international gold standard, the Global Protocol for Community-Scale Greenhouse Gas Emission Inventories (GPC), after accepting C40’s recently launched [link to TA launch blog] Technical Assistance Programme support. This process, made possible with funding from the British philanthropy Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF), is a crucial step towards understanding and reducing a city’s emissions. 

Note: The following text has been adapted from Boston Mayor Marty Walsh's speech today at The Second China-U.S. Climate-Smart Low-Carbon Cities Summit in Beijing. 

Almost every country in the world is becoming more urban. We can say now, as much as ever, that cities are the future. 

This is a trend—one of many—that is bringing China and the United States closer together. As we become more urban, we become more connected: through technology, through economic relations, through cultural exchange. Therefore as cities, we take on greater ability—and greater responsibility—to collaborate, to innovate, and to lead together on the world’s hardest challenges.