The statement will be unveiled during Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to the White House. | Getty U.S., China to deliver new plan for climate pact

The United States and China will release a joint statement on Friday outlining their vision for an international climate change agreement — the latest signal that the world's two biggest greenhouse gas emitters are determined to help broker a deal at a summit in Paris later this year.

The statement, which will be unveiled during Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to the White House, will also include a handful of new policy announcements, chief among them a commitment by China to launch a national cap-and-trade system in 2017, according to senior Obama administration officials.


The announcement could help to counter criticism from conservative opponents of the Obama administration's efforts to fight climate change, who have contended that the United States shouldn't act because Beijing has done little to reduce its emissions. "By the way, China’s doing nothing,” GOP presidential contender Donald Trump said Thursday morning on CNN.

The new statement will build on the November 2014 joint announcement in Beijing between Obama and Xi in which the two leaders committed to curb their greenhouse gas emissions in the coming years. That announcement has been one of the few bright spots in the U.S.-China relationship, and has helped inject new life into foundering international climate negotiations.

Friday's joint statement is the product of months of behind-the-scenes negotiations between U.S. and Chinese officials. Administration officials briefed reporters on the broad contours of the joint statement, but declined to make it available because they didn't want to get out ahead of their Chinese counterparts.

An administration official said the United States and China "made significant progress on a number of core issues," but offered few details on the substance of the countries' joint vision for Paris.

The official said the countries have made progress in defining the different responsibilities countries will have in cutting emissions, long one of the biggest sticking points in the negotiations. Instead of clinging to the decades-old plan to divvy up responsibilities based on rigid definitions of whether countries are developed or developing, the official said the U.S. and China have come closer to agreeing broadly to a "form of differentiation which depends on countries' actual real circumstances.”

That could amount to a big breakthrough if China can convince other developing countries to follow suit. But the official acknowledged that "there are still countries that are not fully convinced," adding, "I think we are making progress, but I wouldn't say this is the end of the road.”

Many poor nations contend that industrialized nations who are responsible for the vast majority of past emissions should take the most responsibility for cutting emissions. But wealthy nations like the United States are pushing countries like India and China, which are still developing but nonetheless produce large amounts of carbon dioxide, to agree to major emissions reductions as well.

The administration official also said China and the United States agreed that the domestic pledges to fight climate change included in the Paris agreement must be ramped up over time, though they don't appear to have coalesced around a precise timeframe for reviewing the plans.

In addition to China's pledge to impose an emissions trading system, another administration official said the statement will include a commitment by the country to implement a “green dispatch” approach to its power sector that will "prioritize power generation from renewable sources." The two policies are the latest indication that China, the planet's largest greenhouse gas emitter, is working to curb its reliance on coal.

For its part, the U.S. will also make policy announcements, including a pledge to finalize and implement emissions regulations for heavy-duty vehicles as well as new proposals on energy efficiency and phasing down hydrofluorocarbons, the official said. Hydrofluorocarbons are powerful greenhouse gases produced by air conditioners and refrigerators.

The statement will underscore the importance of climate finance aimed at helping poor countries deal with the effects of a warming planet. The official said China will make a "very substantial" commitment on climate finance, but the official declined to give specifics.

The U.S., meanwhile, will not make a new climate finance pledge, and will instead underscore its commitment to securing the $3 billion it has already promised to the Green Climate Fund, the international bank that assists poor countries in adapting to climate change. Republicans have signaled they will block that money.