Arvea Marieni, EU Climate Pact Ambassador, Director of Ecological Transition Engineering Solutions at BEAM CUBE, discussed the importance of China-EU collaboration towards climate neutrality goals. She emphasized the need for a level playing field and common rules for balanced economic relations, while acknowledging China's leadership in green technology.
00:00Our VIA, Mariani, is the EU Climate Pact Ambassador and the Director of Ecological Transition Engineering Solutions at Beamcube, joining us now.
00:11Thank you very much for your time.
00:13How significant is it that we're seeing really strong agreement between two such powerhouse regions?
00:19It is very important that the European and China are continuing working together towards the achievement of their respective climate neutrality goals,
00:33because the geopolitical interests of both Brussels and China are energy independence, decarbonisation, and development of new economic forces and high-quality economic models.
00:51And this is a very powerful point of contact between the two areas for productivity.
00:57The point is to find a level playing field and a common set of rules that allow us for a balanced economic relation.
01:07What we see at these COP summits very often is lobby groups getting together, and sometimes that can lead to bottlenecks to important climate agreements.
01:17Do you think that what the EU and China have agreed here could help clear some of those ahead as we move into the Brazil COP?
01:27Well, what we've seen over the past conferences of the parties, also last year in Mbaku, in Azerbaijan,
01:38is that the convergence of a multilateral group of actors, and that's very important because climate change is truly a global challenge
01:48and cannot be solved individually and cannot be solved individually, neither by countries nor couples or groups of countries together.
01:55But the cooperation between China and the European Union has helped enormously to overcome some difficulties, especially last year in Mbaku.
02:05China was openly praised by the European Union for stepping behind the traditional approaches, for instance, when it refers to climate financing and supporting local countries.
02:24I think it is very important, especially in very fraught times as we are today, with so much going on in terms of geopolitical confrontations.
02:35And even the fact that a joint statement was the outcome of this important meeting today is already a positive sign.
02:45Of course, it doesn't solve all the problems and the real facts of war, confrontations, economic conflict or issues remain on the background and need to be addressed to really find a solution.
03:03China, of course, is a leader in green technology.
03:06How much has China contributed to the changing approach to more, you know, more green energy generally in business and making it feasible?
03:19Well, there is a consensus globally that the acceleration of the manufacturing capacity of China over the past 20, 25 years has allowed for a lower pricing of technologies.
03:35We all depend on if we want to achieve the objectives that we have ahead for fast paced decarbonisation, which is absolutely urgent, considering the acceleration of the pace of climate change and the impacts in terms of disrupted ecosystems.
03:54For instance, only for manufacturing of solar photovoltaic modules, we've seen prices within 10 years going down 89% and they're still going down.
04:08The same is happening in the storage, in the sector of storage with battery technology, which have been again and are being scaled up by Chinese companies.
04:18Now, the point is to find a way for not only creating new bottlenecks with trade, potential dependencies, but to exploit jointly the potential economic development.
04:34For instance, how the Chinese companies investing and producing in Europe with a true and real exchange of technology, which is.
04:43Yeah, so important that unity on those issues.
04:48Thank you so much.
04:49That is Arvea Mariani, an EU Climate Pact Ambassador and the Director of Ecological Transition Engineering Solutions at BMCube.
