NEW YORK, Sept. 25 (Xinhua) -- China has made impressive progress in issuing green bonds in a bid to clean up the environment and transform itself into a cleaner economy, said Henry M. Paulson Jr., chairman of the Paulson Institute, on Wednesday.
China has made amazing progress in dealing with immediate and very visible priorities in clean air, water and soil, said the former U.S. treasury secretary at the Bloomberg Global Business Forum 2019.
"In terms of green bonds, I think it's pretty impressive," said Paulson, praising China's success in attracting private capital to protect the environment.
"They need to create vehicles to attract private capital and they've done a really good job," he said, noting that China is now the second largest issuer of green bonds in the world.
China has around 8 trillion yuan (about 1.12 trillion U.S. dollars) of green bonds to finance activities to cope with climate change, said Xie Zhenhua, China's special representative for climate change affairs.
It has introduced a number of really exciting green financing mechanisms, some of which involve financial technologies, added Paulson.
Clean coal plants even qualify for green bonds in China and "I think (it is) a great thing," Paulson said.
China will continue to focus on environmental issues, which is very important, he said.
He added that the United States and China will work together to eliminate tariffs on environmental goods and services.
"When I was treasury secretary, I pushed very hard to eliminate the tariffs on environmental goods and services, and this would be a win for the economy and the environment," said Paulson.
China is a trillion-dollar opportunity in terms of environmental goods and services and there is great room for energy efficiency and some immediate opportunities to realize big savings by investing in technologies to conserve energy, said Paulson.
Unless the United States leads in emission reductions, it's going to be very hard to get other countries to do their part, he said.
U.S. carbon emissions have been declining pretty nicely in many areas just because of things that have been done to improve energy efficiency at sub-national levels like cities and companies, the former treasury secretary said.
In 2011, Paulson founded the Paulson Institute, which is a think tank dedicated to fostering the U.S.-China relationship by promoting balanced and sustainable economic growth.
