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Environmentalists have welcomed China’s leader Xi Jinping’s commitment to accelerate emissions reductions in the world’s most polluting nation and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.
The ambitious goal, which surprised many experts, could help significantly slow global warming. However, they cautioned that Xi had offered almost no details, raising questions about the viability of the goals that remain years into the future.
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Xi’s promise is a tectonic shift in policy, not yet practical
China has long argued that, as a developing economy, it should not have to share the same burden of curbing emissions as developed nations whose pollution went unchecked for decades. China is now committed to leading by example, setting goals typical of a country that aspires to be a superpower.
Under the 2015 Paris climate accord, China pledged that its emissions would peak around 2030. Xi promised to advance that schedule on Tuesday, although he did not provide details. The biggest surprise, analysts said, was Xi’s promise to achieve “carbon neutrality,” meaning China’s net carbon emissions will reach zero, by 2060.
More than 60 other countries have committed to carbon neutrality by 2050, a consensus deadline that scientists believe must be met in order to have a reasonable chance of avoiding the worst climate catastrophe. Those countries are small compared to China, which now produces 28 percent of global emissions. Even if its target is a decade later, China now has a record of setting the target for the first time.
“I think it’s potentially huge, emphasizing both words,” Lauri Myllyvirta, principal analyst at the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air, said in a telephone interview from Helsinki, Finland.
China would need to reverse recent emissions trends
There are many reasons to exercise caution. In recent years, analysts have warned of worrying trends in the country’s commitment to fighting global warming in the face of the economic slowdown.
Coal consumption, which had declined from 2013 to 2017, driven in part by a push to improve China’s notorious air quality, began to rise again in recent years as the economy faced headwinds and the government sought to stimulate industrial growth.
The surge was interrupted by the Covid-19 shutdown, but China’s economy is recovering faster than others. Mr. Myllyvirta’s research has shown that in May, carbon dioxide emissions from power production, cement manufacturing and other industrial uses were 4 percent higher than the previous year. China also issued more construction permits for coal-fired power plants in the first six months of 2020 than each year in 2018 and 2019.
Xi, when laying out his country’s plans in a speech at the United Nations, did not elaborate on how China would meet the targets. Li Shuo, a policy adviser at Greenpeace China, said the lack of specificity was likely intended to leave the Communist Party leadership flexibility in the short term to seek an economic rebound after the pandemic.
The government’s next five-year plan, to be published soon, will be a key document detailing the necessary economic, industrial and environmental changes that will be required.
“They really need to roll up their sleeves from today to capture the level of ambition that we heard last night in our daily practices,” Li said in a telephone interview from Beijing, referring to Xi’s speech at the UN.
The impact could affect the 1.4 billion people in China
Li said the commitment to carbon neutrality requires a complete transformation of the Chinese economy.
“Think about it: the way we eat, the way we consume energy, the way we produce our food, the way we commute to work will have to be completely reorganized,” he said.
While China clings to coal-burning industries, it has also become a leader in clean energy technologies, including solar panels and wind turbines. It is the world’s largest manufacturer of electric cars and buses. That could leave the government well-positioned to transition away from fossil fuels, provided there is political commitment.
China could also step up its ambitions to build nuclear power plants to replace coal plants, although that would raise other environmental and safety questions.
Wang Wenbin, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, touted the growth of renewable energy, saying China’s capacity now accounts for 30 percent of the world total. Meeting the new goals “reflects China’s willingness to work with other countries to build a vigorous, clean and beautiful world and its responsibility to build a community with a shared future for humanity,” he said Wednesday.
Xi has previously pledged to increase government support for new technologies, while doing more to fight pollution, protect natural resources and expand the country’s national park networks.
Preserving the power of the Communist Party remains its first priority, but pollution and other environmental threats are increasingly seen as threats to the party’s position. That was evident in this summer’s devastating floods on the Yangtze River and its tributaries in central China.
“Humanity can no longer afford to ignore the repeated warnings of nature,” Xi said Tuesday, addressing the General Assembly by video.
China is under pressure to combat climate change
Xi’s China is generally impervious to criticism of its domestic policies, but his government has faced pressure to do more in the hot weather. China’s commitments were raised last week when he met with leaders of the European Union, which had threatened to impose carbon tariffs if China did not cut its emissions.
Europeans pushed China to reach maximum emissions by 2025, as most European nations have pledged to do. While Xi fell short of that, his promises to move the goal by 2030 and set carbon neutrality as a goal for the first time stood in contrast to President Trump’s climate skepticism, which was marked by the United States’ withdrawal from the agreement. Paris. .
Pledging to do more for the climate could at least counter the growing anger that China faces in Europe and beyond over its history of oppression in Xinjiang and Tibet, its territorial conflicts in the Himalayas and the South China Sea, military threats towards Taiwan. and a generalized repression. on the autonomy of Hong Kong.
“Europeans will be watching closely how serious Xi is, but it was a very smart and timely move,” said Janka Oertel, director of the Asia Program at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
Claire Fu contributed research.
