An American employee works on a solar panel assembly line in the Chinese-funded Wanxiang America Corp. in Chicago on June 8. [Xinhua]

LP Amina is a North Carolina-based environmental engineering firm that provides proprietary solutions for emissions reductions in coal- and gas-fired power plants. It developed a technology that prevents larger coal-dust particles from entering boilers, and so reduces NOx discharge by 15 percent, thereby significantly mitigating pollution from coal-fired power plants, while also increasing employment in the manufacturing industry. The China-U.S. Clean Energy Research Center (CERC) was founded in 2011. After LP Amina participated in this initiative, a coal-dust separator featuring this technology was installed at Fengtai Power Plant in China's Anhui Province. The positive results accruing soon induced the Chinese market to embrace this product, and LP Amina has since established a solid foothold in the country. CERC has also aided other transnational companies in finding success in the Chinese market.

As CERC's first five-year term (2011-15) nears its end, it has reaped a bounty of fruits from Sino-U.S. cooperation in research and development in terms of production of clean coal, clean-energy motor vehicles and energy-efficient construction. In November 2014, Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Barack Obama jointly announced their support for a second term of CERC cooperation, agreeing to invest no less than $2 billion from 2016 to 2020 to core development via resorting to a governmental and enterprise investment vehicle, and to add "energy and water" as new fields of cooperation.

CERC is one success story in the two countries' collaboration on clean energy and environmental protection. Leaders of both countries see climate change as a strategic issue in bilateral ties, and have set in motion extensive and intensive cooperation in this regard. A complete system encompassing framework, mechanisms and actions is now taking shape in their cooperation on climate and environmental issues.

Framework and mechanisms

Sino-U.S. collaboration on clean energy and environmental protection is operating under an authoritative and flexible framework and mechanisms.

In 2013, the China-U.S. Climate Change Working Group (CCWG) came into being to enhance policy dialogue and facilitate practical cooperative actions. The two nations reached agreement that year on implementation plans for the five initiatives launched under the CCWG, including emissions reductions from heavy-duty motor vehicles, smart grids, carbon capture, utilization and sequestration, collection and management of greenhouse gas data, and energy efficiency in buildings and industry.

Last year saw the launch of three more initiatives: climate change and forestry, climate-smart/low-carbon cities, and industrial boiler efficiency and fuel conversion. The two sides reaffirmed the agreement reached by Xi and Obama in 2013 on hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), pledging to take national actions and promote bilateral cooperation to achieve meaningful progress in phasing out HFCs. They also agreed to collaborate through enhanced policy dialogue, including information-sharing, for their respective post-2020 plans to limit greenhouse gas emissions. CCWG's priority in 2015 is the global climate change talks in Paris. It plans to organize bilateral and international conferences to better the chances of clinching a deal.

During the 2008 China- U.S. Strategic Economic Dialogue (S&ED), the two countries signed the Ten-Year Framework (TYF) for Cooperation on Energy and Environment, which mobilizes different government agencies on both sides. The focuses of cooperation under this framework include electricity, water, air, transportation, wetlands, nature reserves and protected areas, and energy efficiency.

The "Sino-U.S. EcoPartnerships" is a platform under the TYF for the development of specific paired relationships between the two countries' relevant local governments and agencies. This scheme encourages various local governments, enterprises, academic circles, institutes, administrative organs and training institutes, as well as other organizations, to voluntarily forge cooperative eco-partnerships. At the seventh S&ED in Washington, D.C. in June this year, the China-U.S. joint secretariat announced six new eco-partnerships in a signing ceremony.