Joe Biden puts the climate heat on Scott Morrison, Xi Jinping

Joe Biden’s climate summit will pressure 40 world leaders to have concrete strategies in place ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference.

US President Joe Biden last week. Picture: AFP

Joe Biden’s climate summit will pressure 40 world leaders — including China’s Xi Jinping and Scott Morrison — to have concrete strategies in place ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference, as the US elevated climate change to one of its greatest ­national security threats.

The US President’s two-day virtual summit this week will act as a scene-setter before the UN COP26 conference in Glasgow, starting on November 1, which is considered the most important climate change meeting since the Paris Agreement in 2015.

The Australian understands the Morrison government is working on a suite of climate change priorities, which will be supported in the May 11 budget.

With increasing international pressure for China to take greater responsibility as the world’s biggest carbon emitter, Mr Biden’s climate envoy, John Kerry, secured an agreement with Beijing last week for the superpowers to co-operate in tackling the ­“climate crisis”.

Under the US-China climate change agreement, the nations committed to “concrete actions in the 2020s”, with a focus on technologies to decarbonise industry and power, through “circular economy, energy storage and grid reliability, CCUS (carbon capture, utilisation and storage), and green hydrogen”.

Energy Minister Angus Taylor, who will finalise the government’s long-term emissions reduction strategy ahead of COP26, said the US-China agreement was in line with Australia’s technology investment road map approach. “The US and China have agreed to work together on policies, measures and technologies to decarbonise industry and power, including energy storage, CCUS and hydrogen. These are three of the Morrison government’s top five priorities,” he said.

Mr Taylor, who has been in contact with Mr Kerry since his appointment, said Australia’s track record was “one of reducing emissions faster than our developed country peers”.

“Between 2005 and 2018, Australia’s emissions fell faster than Canada, New Zealand, Japan, Korea or the US. In that same ­period, half of G20 members increased their emissions,” he said.

“But achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement will require co-ordinated global action, including from the top three largest emitters: China, the US and the EU, which collectively account for more than half global emissions.”

The US Office of the Director of National Intelligence threat assessment last week included ecological and climate change as public health, humanitarian, social and political risks that could fuel “geopolitical rivalry”.

Opposition climate change spokesman Chris Bowen said the government must do more in outlining its path towards net-zero emissions by 2050: “The government promised a long-term emissions reduction road map two years ago — we’re still waiting.”