House GOP condemns Biden sending $28M to UN Green Climate Fund linked to China

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican, is criticizing the Biden administration for sending $28 million to the United Nations Green Climate Fund, saying the transfer raises oversight concerns and that the money goes to China, one of the world's biggest air polluters. 

President Biden has pledged to provide a total $1 billion for the fund.

"The fund, which has already pledged the disbursement of $100 million in taxpayer money to the [People’s Republic of China] PRC’s Shandong Green Development Fund, possesses no oversight mechanism and fails to provide any articulable reports reflecting the results of such climate efforts," McCaul and Subcommittee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman Brian Mast, a Florida Republican, said in a recent letter to Biden. 

"To date, this fund has disbursed $28 million to its partner fund in Shandong, with tens of millions of dollars yet to be distributed through 2042," they also wrote. "This opaque transfer of ‘climate initiative’ funds abroad to the PRC, a country that has knowingly and repeatedly shown an unwillingness to take tangible steps on climate initiatives, including carbon emissions, is unsound for many reasons.”

The lawmakers pointed out that China, the world’s “largest coal producer and largest source of methane emissions from coal mines,” had an increase in carbon emissions in 2021.

China's emissions have also hit a record high for 2023, according to a CarbonBrief.org report.

"These facts stand in stark contrast to the claim that such investment is appropriately disseminated to the PRC in the manner proscribed by the fund," the lawmakers also wrote. 

McCaul and Mast do not want any taxpayer money provided to the fund and said China has a "staggering record of increases in carbon emissions."

They also said China's environmental record is part of the reason the GOP-led House passed the PRC Is Not a Developing Country Act 415-0 on March 27. Despite the bipartisan unanimous vote, the bill has yet to pass the Democratic-led Senate.

The Obama administration sent $500 million to fund shortly before former President Trump took office. Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accord in 2017 and stopped contributing to the fund.