Background Press Call by Senior Administration Officials Previewing Day Two of COP26
6:28 P.M. GMT
MR. PATEL: Hi, everyone. Thanks so much for joining us on this background briefing. This briefing, as I said, will be on background, attributable to “senior administration officials,” and this call will be embargoed until 5:00 a.m. GMT and 1:00 a.m. Eastern time.
Not for attribution — as I said, this call is on background — but just for everyone’s awareness, we have a number of folks on this call, some of whom will give some brief remarks, and others will be on hand for Q&A.
But joining us today are [senior administration official], [senior administration official], [senior administration official], and [senior administration official].
As I said, we’ll have some time for Q&A at the end, but first I’m going to pass it off to our first speaker.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Hi, everyone. Thanks so much for joining this call. It sounds like we got a bunch of you here that are both somewhere in a conference room in Glasgow, surrounded by no windows, like I am right now, as well.
So thanks, everyone.
Day one, we kicked off a really fantastic start to the World Leaders Summit. Flew in this morning on a — on, actually, a non-rainy morning, which was lovely when we got off the plane, and headed over to the conference venue and site, which is just really quite energetic for those that are here. There’s just a bustle of people and what I felt like was a really successful first day kickoff of the Leaders Summit and a return to COP, which has been delayed by a year.
And to bring everyone back and to have such a large showing of world leaders today on the stage and throughout the events, it was a really positive kickoff.
So I’m going to give you a quick rundown of day one and then turn to what you can expect for tomorrow.
So, today, the President spoke at the COP26 and called on leaders from more than 100 countries to raise our ambition to tackle the climate crisis. As you all heard in his remarks, he knows the world is falling short right now, and Glasgow must be the kickoff of this decade of ambition as well as this decisive decade.
The President made clear that within this growing catastrophe there is an incredible opportunity to invest in ourselves and, in the process, to create millions of good-paying jobs for our people.
The President also underscored that those who harness the power of the clean energy economy will own the future. It is in the interest of every single nation to act and to make a generational investment in our climate resilience and in our workers and communities, so exactly what the U.S. is doing. And it’s exactly the points he tried to raise today throughout his remarks.
So today, at COP — a quick recap. First, a few deliverables that you’ll see in the factsheet that went out this morning. We released the U.S. long-term strategy. This lays out the path the U.S. will take to reach a net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by no later than 2050.
We also made clear that the United States is going to help the rest of the world take action as well. And he launched what he jokingly called — you know, he’s not a fan of acronyms, but this is a fantastic one — called PREPARE — the PREPARE plan — to underscore that commitment, the U.S. whole-of-government approach to addressing the increasing impacts of the global climate crisis to help more than half a billion people in developing countries adapt to climate change by 2030.
He also announced a growing group — he announced 70 countries and growing that have joined the U.S.- and EU-led methane — Global Methane Pledge. This is the pledge to collectively reduce global methane emissions by 30 percent by the end of the decade, by 2030. And as many of you may know, methane is one of the most potent greenhouse gases. This is the single-best strategy to defeat the climate crisis that we have in the near term. And we’re seeing lots of momentum.
That 70 number — I can tell you here today, while we announced 70 and growing today, at this time today — so where are we at? 6:30 Glasgow time. That number is now over 90 countries, two thirds of the global economy, and half of the top 30 major methane emitters.
We also released and submitted our national — or, sorry, our new Adaptation Communication. This lays out how we will implement the global goal on adaptation as well as announcing our first-ever contribution to the Adaptation Fund.
Tomorrow — just a quick lay of the land for tomorrow at the COP: The President will launch a plan to conserve global forests. There’s probably two key themes for tomorrow you’ll see lifted up: one is on forests; the second is going to be around on innovation and key sectoral targets tomorrow.
So, on the forest side, in the World Leaders Summit, there’ll be a session — much like today’s Action and Solidarity session, there will be a session focused on forests the President will participate in. And the plan to conserve global forests, this is the first-of-its-kind whole-of-government plan that launches a decade-long effort to conserve forests and other terrestrial and coastal ecosystems that serve as critical carbon sinks.
The plan has four key components. The first is to incentivize forest and ecosystem conservation and forest landscape restoration. The second is focused on catalyzing private sector investment, finance, and action to conserve critical carbon sinks. The third is to build long-term capacity and support the data and systems that enhance accountability. And fourth is to dedicate up to $9 billion by 2030 of our international climate funding to support these objectives subject to congressional appropriations.
The President is also going to announce a series of bold actions consistent with his vision that tackling the climate crisis is not just an imperative, but one of the greatest economic opportunities of our time.
He’s going to launch the first movers coalition. This is a platform for building private sector demand to speed clean energy technology innovation and confront the climate crisis. It’s launching at COP with more than 25 founding members, large corporates, key technology players like Apple, and others that will each make demand commitments — so, clean energy and innovation demand commitments — including some of the largest companies in the world across a wide range of industries with hundreds of billions of dollars in purchasing power.
The second, sort of, in this innovation space is the clean energy demand initiative. This leverages private sector commitments to deploy clean energy technologies by creating a platform for companies to send investment signals to key markets. Through the (inaudible), over 30 companies have signed letters of intent to procure renewable energy to offset electricity demand for multiple sectors, including technology, manufacturing, retail, health, and many more.
The renewable energy demand from over 75 interested companies has the potential to unlock up to $67 billion in power infrastructure as a complement to broader sectoral investments.
The President is going to focus on innovation across the board, including a sustainable agriculture sector and the next generation — and the next generation in nuclear technology, as critical enablers of growing the clean technology economy and tackling climate crisis while creating jobs.
So, that’s just a quick one-two punch about today and tomorrow. And let me now — we also had a few other kickoffs today, so, I think, later in the program my colleague will talk about the U.S. Center and the launch of that today. But in the meantime, let me hand it over to my colleague to talk a bit more about methane.
MR. PATEL: Thanks, [senior administration official]. Next, we’ll go to [senior administration official].
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Okay. So, methane is obviously a key issue for the U.S. The opportunities are amazing. And I’m going to have another of my colleagues talk about some general framing around this, but I want to explain some of the regulatory activity and also some of the disclosure-related activity and voluntary activity that’s part of the action plan that will be announced tomorrow to show the U.S. — to show that the U.S. is showing the way here in terms of methane reductions.
The major sources of methane in the United States are from the oil and gas industry. Thirty percent of the methane comes from oil and gas, upstream and downstream, so that includes the production, that includes pipelines all the way to the delivery into buildings and even emissions from buildings.
The second-largest industrial source of emissions are landfills. Another major source of ongoing emissions are actually abandoned oil and gas wells and abandoned mines. And then the agriculture industry is also a major methane emitter.
The action plan addresses all of these major sources of emissions. On the oil and gas side, tomorrow, EPA will be proposing a major new rule that the President pre-staged in his executive order on day one of his presidency, asking EPA to move forward. This is the rule that regulates leak detection and repair for the industry.
The new source performance standard that was put in place by President Obama was repealed by President Trump subject to a Congressional Review Act nullification, which returned that rule into place.
But EPA is going further than the original Obama rule for new sources of oil and gas and applying it to important new operations in the gas patch, including, for example and in particular, the regulation of associated gas; that is natural gas that is produced as a byproduct of oil production and that is frequently vented or flared.
Now, that will be subject to new requirements under the — under the proposed new rule, as will liquids unloading, gas-fired pneumatic controllers, and a series of other important operations that are demonstrated to be significant methane emitters.
Also, for the first time ever, the proposal is to regulate existing oil and gas operations for methane emissions. Under the Clean Air Act, this proceeds by identifying guidelines that states must implement, and the implementation will address the same type of major leaks that have been confirmed throughout the gas industry.
All told, the estimate is that about 75 percent of all methane emissions will be covered by this EPA rule — these reductions of about 75 percent.
The Department of Interior is also attacking the same problem on public lands. It’s going to be moving forward with a new rule that will disincentivize the waste of gas through venting and — (audio drops.)
MR. PATEL: I think we lost our speaker. Let me see, one second, if we can get them back on. I see them in the green room. One moment.
[Senior administration official], I think we lost you, but you should be back on and be able to unmute yourself now if you want to pick up right where you left off.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Okay. Can you hear me now?
MR. PATEL: Yep, we can hear you now. Go ahead.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: All right. So, I finished giving an overview of the oil and gas both from the perspective of EPA and Interior.
The other major regulator in the oil and gas space is on pipelines. The pipeline has a safety and management administration — PHMSA — and they are proposing a series of proposed rules that will significantly cover their 3 million miles of pipelines.
Tomorrow, for example, they will — they’re proposing new safety regulations covering about 400,000 miles of previously unregulated gathering lines. These safety requirements include the type of requirements that will mandate that companies know what’s going on with their pipelines; when there are leaks, that they respond to them; and, for the first time, will bring in oversight of methane leaks on those pipelines.
Also, importantly, PHMSA is moving out on transmission lines. Those are the big lines. And they are increasing the safety — they’re proposing an increase in safety requirements under 300,000 miles of transmission lines, including new requirements to ensure that there’s integrity in the management systems, new corrosion-based inspections, and obviously leak detection and repair.
And finally and importantly, the last part of the pipeline system in the U.S. is inside the city gate, so-called, which is basically in our cities. And there are 2.3 million miles of pipelines networking our cities that have not been regulated but that will be — proposed to be — next year in a gas distribution pipeline safety rule that PHMSA will be advancing.
And the estimate is that as many as 49,000 tons per year of methane that were lost in Boston alone. Some of you may have seen the Washington Post article from a couple of weeks ago on this.
Also coming up next year will be broader methane leak detection and repair requirements that will apply across the full jurisdiction of the Department of Transportation Agency, here at PHMSA. And also there’s a call in terms of — behind the city gate, a call by the President on mayors and governors and others to accelerate the replacement of old lines that are causing such a leak problem.
Finally, I’ll just mention quickly two other items. One is the plugging of old oil and gas wells and mines. Both of these items are significant methane emitters. Both of them are part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework that’s now on the Hill. The potential for significant reductions of ongoing methane super-emitter sites from these literally hundreds of thousands of wells is enormous.
We’re excited about the prospect of also putting so many Americans to work to fix the problem while also employment.
I should also say, by the way, that all that work on detection and repair of pipelines also is a huge job creator and also are cost-effective for the companies, because they’re already losing a lot of this gas and, now, will be able to capture it. So, the win-win-win is obvious.
Finally is agriculture. And some of you, I’m sure, have covered Secretary Vilsack’s climate-smart Ag and Forestry Initiative and his speech about a month ago at Colorado State, where he talked about a new climate-smart partnership with farmers that would essentially track agricultural practices along the entire food chain and establish standards — climate-smart standards — to reduce methane emissions and to increase carbon sequestration.
Again, the legislation on the Hill has significant investments that will advance climate-smart agriculture and, we think, (inaudible) methane reductions.
So, let me turn it over to another of my colleagues.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Thanks, [senior administration official]. We’re extremely excited, obviously, about the actions you announced, particularly EPA and PHMSA’s, rulemakings tomorrow. And critically, we are really just getting started.
Tomorrow, in addition to the two actions [senior administration official] outlined, we are releasing a U.S. Methane Emissions Reduction Action Plan outlining critical and commonsense steps to cut pollution and consumer costs while boosting good-paying jobs and competitiveness.
As you all know, the United States has a robust record of advancing commonsense technologies and techniques to reduce methane emissions as part of the fight against climate change. However, we also know that we’re in a decisive decade, and these efforts must be redoubled and our ambition must be raised.
The new set of actions outlined in the plan we will release tomorrow rests on a deep scientific understanding of methane emissions, their sources, and mitigation opportunities, and they leverage growing momentum.
In recent years, federal, state, and local agencies, as well as private sector leaders, have initiated a number of cost-saving efforts to reduce methane emissions while supporting innovation and technologies to detect and reduce methane emissions across the economy.
That’s why, tomorrow, the Biden-Harris administration, through the National Climate Task Force, is launching an ambitious, whole-of-government initiative to ratchet up our methane reduction commitments, create jobs, and catalyze innovation.
Through these actions, the U.S. is catalyzing similar actions around the world, working in partnership with the European Union to lead a Global Methane Pledge to reduce overall methane emissions by 30 percent below 2020 levels by 2030.
The U.S. methane emissions reduction action plan focuses on cutting pollutions here at home from the largest sources of methane emissions in the United States. It uses all available tools — not only commonsense regulations, but catalytic financial incentives, transparency and disclosure of actionable data, and public and private partnerships — to identify and reduce methane emissions.
These cost-effective actions will dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions; cut leaks, waste, and consumer costs; protect workers and communities; and maintain and create high-quality, union-friendly jobs.
The action plan includes a number of critical and commonsense steps to tackle methane from the oil and gas sector, which currently represents, as [senior administration official] said, the largest industrial emissions of methane.
In addition to the EPA actions [senior administration official] outlined that we are announcing tomorrow, the Department of the Interior is focusing on opportunities to tackle venting and flaring of methane from oil and gas operations and well closures on public lands.
And as [senior administration official] said, DOT’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration — or “PHMSA” — is implementing the bipartisan PIPES Act to upgrade and expand pipeline rules that will among other things require operators to cut methane leaks across the economy.
To address methane emissions from abandoned coalmines, the President’s Build Back Better plan includes support for the Department of the Interior to scale up its Abandoned Mine Land grant program and cut off the flow of methane from thousands of abandoned coalmines. This program will importantly put skilled laborers to work and employ displaced energy workers across the country.
The action plan also takes aim at methane emissions from landfills — as [senior administration official] said, the second-largest industrial source of methane.
Building on efforts earlier this year to put in place an enforceable federal backstop to ensure emissions reductions from large municipal landfills, EPA is ramping up an initiative to reduce the food loss and waste that serves as a major contributor to landfill methane emissions.
In addition, EPA is boosting its voluntary Landfill Methane Outreach Program to achieve a national goal of 70 percent methane emissions capture for all landfills around the country.
In the agricultural sector, the action plan leverages and expands important and impactful incentive-based and voluntary partnership programs.
The Department of Agriculture has initiated an incentive-based, climate-smart agriculture program that the President called for in an executive order, which will reward farmers and ranchers for reducing methane emissions and sequestering carbon across multiple USDA programs.
In addition, USDA is launching a climate-smart partnership initiative to explore the establishment of new markets for agricultural commodities based on the application of climate-friendly processes, including methane reduction techniques throughout the commodity supply chains.
USDA is also establishing an interagency Biogas Opportunities Task Force to facilitate the collection and use of methane for on-farm renewable energy applications. And as [senior administration official] mentioned, the administration is bolstering USDA’s climate-smart agriculture programs with a greenhouse gas measurement initiative to identify, confirm, and track methane and other greenhouse gas emissions, with a special focus on those associated with climate-smart agricultural practices.
The action plan also includes efforts at a number of other agencies with the same set of objectives: cutting pollution and consumer costs while boosting good-paying jobs and American competitiveness.
For example, the Department of Energy is advancing methane emissions reductions in heavy industry. They’re doing this work through its industrial assessment centers, as well as the new Hydrogen Shot initiative, which focuses on the accelerated deployment of affordable (inaudible) low-carbon hydrogen.
Additionally, DOE also launched an initiative for better energy emissions and equity — a national research initiative focused on deploying clean and efficient building, heating, and cooling systems.
And the Department of Housing and Urban Development will undertake an equitable green building and electrification initiative for HUD-supported buildings aimed in part at reducing methane emissions.
President Biden’s Build Back Better Agenda would accelerate many of these methane emission reduction efforts. The investment agenda would enable Interior to launch an even more aggressive program to plug hundreds of thousands of orphan oil and gas wells, including many that are still venting methane; funding historic remediation efforts that would result in dramatic emissions reductions from thousands of currently-leaking abandoned coalmines.
Finally, the investment agenda would turbocharge existing USDA efforts, providing farmers and ranchers with even more resources to tap the emissions reductions opportunities on the lands and facilities they manage.
Accelerating the pace with which we cut methane emissions will advance multiple aims.
First, we know that reducing methane will generate substantial climate benefits.
Second, the critical and commonsense steps we are laying out in the action plan tomorrow will create thousands of high-quality union-friendly jobs and spur innovative solutions that will boost U.S. competitiveness around the world.
Third, this initiative will provide improved public health and local air quality for many disadvantaged communities that have been living with the harmful effects of methane and its frequent companions, such as toxic volatile organic compounds and particulates.
And finally, the action plan reinforces U.S. international leadership to address methane emissions on a global scale.
We’re thrilled about tomorrow’s announcements and look forward to answering your questions.
MR. PATEL: Thanks so much, [senior administration official]. We’ll move on to Q&A now. So, if you folks have questions for our speakers, please use the “raise hand” function on their Zoom. And we will work through our questions.
First, why don’t we go to — let’s go to Josh Lederman with NBC News. Josh, you should be able to unmute yourself.
Q Hey, yeah, thank you guys so much for doing this call. I just have to ask, you know, the President, throughout the day today, has been promoting Build Back Better as a key way the U.S. is going to meet its emissions targets under the Paris Agreement.
And just, you know, a few hours ago, on Air Force One, you know, the White House said that, you know, you were confident that you did have the votes needed to pass this due to the conversations you’ve had, you know, with the senators whose support you’d need.
You know, Joe Manchin just came out and made clear he’s definitely not in a position right now to support this legislation. And he called the, you know, accounting in the bill “shell games.”
So I’m wondering, you know, how — in the President’s meetings on his final day at COP26 — is he going to continue to make the case that, you know, all of this climate legislation that he’s counting on, you know, is as much of a done deal as he’s been portraying it over the last 24 hours? And what’s the White House’s next steps to try to get the bill passed?
Thanks.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Thanks, Josh, for the question. Appreciate it. Look, the President all day here has been talking to leaders from around the world about the United States laser focus, from day one, in advancing robust climate action.
You just heard from the team about steps that we’re going to take tomorrow — not down the road, but tomorrow — to tackle methane emissions here in the United States. And there are steps that are catalytic to the ambition of countries all around the world — 90 countries coming around this clarion call to move forward.
And that comes a month after we finalized regulations in a record pace at the EPA to implement bipartisan legislation that’s going to deliver, in the order of 100 million metric tons in 2030, to phase down super-polluting hydrofluorocarbons. That drives forward implementation of the Kigali Amendment internationally.
So, you got movement on methane. You’ve got movement on HFCs. And, look, you’ve got movement on clean energy and the solutions that are going to drive down CO2 from our energy demand all around the world.
The President has been engaging on this. He has been building political coalition and willpower to drive forward this historic investment. The Build Back Better framework represents an investment we need — not to meet climate targets, but to unlock the full economic upside of what it means to tackle the climate crisis, to unlock the good-paying jobs, restoring America’s competitive edge in manufacturing and innovating these technologies.
So, look, just as he has been today with leaders around the world, the President has been robustly engaging with folks all around Washington, bringing them together and driving forward action at a pace and a scale that meets the moment on climate.
MR. PATEL: Thanks. Next, let’s go to Ellen Knickmeyer with the Associated Press. Ellen, you should be able to unmute yourself. Go ahead.
Q Yeah, I’m sorry. Yeah, thank you for doing this. You mentioned at the outset of the call the global reforestation or forest protection plan and the Global Methane Pledge. Has the U.S. been speaking with China about joining either of these pledges? And it — will China join in when they’re announced tomorrow and sign up on the pledges?
And if not, what does that say about China’s level of participation with the international community on climate change? It had been instrumental in the 2015 Paris Accord. Has it — is it not cooperating? Is it not moving forward in conjunction with the U.S. and other countries at all on even the smaller measures anymore?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Thank you so much for that question. So, on the forest — so what we are announcing tomorrow is the U.S. plan to conserve global forests and it’s going to be part of the world leader summit forest day.
And I know that there’s other types of — there’s other declarations that are being launched that the UK presidency will be shepherding through tomorrow. It’ll be announced as well.
And so I don’t want to get out in front of their announcements for tomorrow on things like global forest finance pledge and some other pledges as well. So, more to come on which other countries have joined those pledges.
I know the U.S. has been joining some of these pledges, mainly because we really want to demonstrate our leadership on the global stage; we want to make sure that we are part of these key critical efforts around sectoral actions to demonstrate what we’re doing in terms of demonstrating concrete actions in this decade.
Again, we won’t speak to China’s actions in any way. You know, kind of, their actions speak for themselves. But, you know, our diplomacy with them has been consistent throughout this year, which has been: We’re keen to cooperate with them on key issues of national interest, such as climate change, and we’re also very much focused on competition. And Jake Sullivan, our National Security Advisor, and others have been very forthcoming with that perspective as we’ve gone forward.
But for, you know, this conference, we’re really, again, enthusiastically excited to see various countries putting forward these regional or multilateral or even, kind of, public-private partnership commitments that they’re announcing over the next — not just two days, but, you know, this conference is a 12-day-long sprint in some ways.
And so, we’re going to hear from all those other announcements throughout the week, as well as those from the rest of our Cabinet that’ll be arriving over the coming days to fan out throughout the summit here.
MR. PATEL: Thanks. Next, let’s go to Jean Chemnick with E&E News.
Q Thanks for holding (audio drop).
MR. PATEL: Jean, I think you just muted yourself again.
Q Can you hear me? Sorry.
MR. PATEL: Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead.
Q Sorry. Back to the 2030 target: To what extent do you think that the Supreme Court reviewing the Clean Power Plan throws doubt on the administration’s ability to deliver that stringent a target?
And if the Build Back Better legislation doesn’t survive and isn’t enacted, does that mean that EPA and other agencies have to take more stringent steps with things like the Clean Air Act and that they’ll have to double down on regulation?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Thanks for the question, Jean. It’s a good one. You know, when the President announced his 50 to 52 percent emissions reduction target in April of this year, he articulated it in a way and based on analytical grounding that showed multiple pathways for multiple sectors to achieve what the United States needs to to meet the scientific imperative here.
And, you know, one, I think we are incredibly optimistic about the tools that you just laid out and their utility in helping us drive climate progress forward here in the United States.
But, look, there’s no silver-bullet solution to the climate crisis that we face. That’s why this administration has mobilized action in every sector, in every level of government.
Today, there was a U.S. center at a United Nations Conference on Climate for the first time in several years. And it’s important we are at the table. And as we show up at the table — and I think this was an important element of the, literally, first event that we hosted at that U.S. center — when we show up at that table, we show up with state and local governments, with Tribal leaders, with leaders in labor and in industry who have been stepping up, time and time again, to help us make the progress that we need to make — both to meet the environmental imperative, but also the economic one.
So, look, bottom line: The President is vigorously pursuing all of the tools that are available to him. He is driving forward a robust legislative agenda to invest in unlocking the full economic upside of tackling the climate crisis. We’re doing all of these things and know that we need to continue to be inventive about approaches because, simply, we can’t leave anything on the field when it comes to this decisive decade.
MR. PATEL: Thanks. I think we’ve got time for one last question. So why don’t we close it off with Lisa Friedman with the New York Times?
Q Sorry, am I unmuted now?
MR. PATEL: Yep, go ahead.
Q Okay. Thanks. Thanks, everyone for doing this. There was a few announcements today from India, a little from Brazil. Can you tell me what you guys found notable from other countries’ announcements today or pledges? What — what’s the thinking, particularly on India’s announcement?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Thanks, Lisa, for your question. We are — this press call is really focused about trying to lift up what the President is doing today and tomorrow. And we — as you may know, we have [senior administration official]. [Senior administration official] and their colleagues are also here, and they can get into some of the details about individual country contributions that were discussed today.
Really, for us, this is, you know, day one of a 12-day conference. This is just the start. And we’re going to continue to press hard with all these countries to come to the table to increase our ambition and look for all the opportunities that we can work and partner with them to ensure that they have the capabilities and the will to bring forward the types of targets we need to see to keep 1.5 degrees alive and be aligned with a net-zero commitment. For us, it’s 2050, and it’s — you know, what the science is telling us where we need to go.
So, I’ll let that speak for itself.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: And this is [senior administration official]. I’m just going to add that Brazil today announced that they will be committing to end illegal deforestation by 2028, that they will achieve a 50 percent greenhouse gas emission reduction by 2030, and net zero by 2050 as a formal commitment.
And tomorrow, they will be joining the Global Methane Pledge to cut methane emissions at least 30 percent by 2030 globally, thereby eliminating over 0.2 degrees centigrade if the world succeeds in that new goal.
So, we see movement from key countries like Brazil in these crucial days here, in this crucial decade.
MR. PATEL: Thanks so much, everybody. Just a reminder on a couple things: First, this call is on background, attributable to “senior administration officials.” It is embargoed until 1:00 a.m. Eastern and 5:00 a.m. GMT.
Additionally, I know many of you have been pinging as the call has been ongoing about a factsheet. Yes, we will have one at some point this evening. I don’t have a more specific timeline for you than that, but just keep an eye out on your inboxes and we promise it will make its way to you.
Again, thanks so much for joining and we’ll talk to you all very soon.
7:06 P.M. GMT
