BREAKINGVIEWS-China hides climate ambition under a bushel

By Antony Currie

MELBOURNE, Sept 25 (Reuters Breakingviews) - The Beatles' track "Don't let me down" would have been the perfect hold music while waiting for President Xi Jinping to dial in to unveil China's 2035 greenhouse gas targets at the United Nations on Wednesday. A day earlier in a speech at the multilateral institution's New York headquarters, U.S. President Donald Trump had labelled climate change "the greatest con job in the world" and claimed renewables are "a joke. They don't work." Hopes that the People's Republic would step up to be the leader in battling global warming then appeared to take a hit when Xi said the country would cut its emissions by a measly 7% to 10%. But this looks like a clear case of consciously underpromising in order to overdeliver.

Along with all other countries that are a party to the 2015 Paris climate agreement, China is supposed to submit a plan every five years – called nationally determined contribution – updating its target for reducing fossil fuel pollution. It's a key step on the path to reaching net-zero emissions globally by 2050.

To be fair, a pledge from the world's second-largest economy to reduce its overall level of fossil fuel pollution is a first; until now it had only offered to reduce the emissions intensity of various products and processes. Developing countries had more leeway, given that Western countries were responsible for the majority of historical emissions at the time of the Paris Accord. China, for example, had earlier set 2060 for its net-zero target, and India 2070.

China now produces the largest amount of greenhouse gases on the planet, responsible for around a third of annual emissions. So a 10% cut would, in absolute terms, be more than the entire amount most countries individually spew into the atmosphere.

But Xi's commitment is still nowhere near enough to help limit the average global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels. That's liable to give climate change sceptics more ammunition to grumble that if China isn't pulling its weight, why should other countries?

Chances are, though, that China will breeze past its target. Hitting Xi's 2035 goal of 3,600 gigawatts of solar and wind capacity would, for example, mean adding just 200 GW a year. That's 44% lower than the 360 GW installed in 2024, calculates Lauri Myllyvirta, co-founder of the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), a number that's on course to be even higher this year.

Xi's new climate goal also downplays the role electric and hybrid vehicles already play: his Wednesday statement outlined that new energy vehicles would be mainstream in a decade, yet they already make up around half of all new car sales.

The clean energy industry is a clear bright spot in the economy, accounting for a whopping 10% of the country's $19 trillion GDP last year, per Carbon Brief. Beijing will want it to keep growing, not be curtailed. On the sector's current trajectory, reckons CREA's Myllyvirta, emissions could fall 30% or more by 2035.

Perhaps as with many leaders, Xi likes the idea of a target that's really easy to hit. Whatever the reason, he's hiding China's climate ambition and successes under a bushel.

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CONTEXT NEWS

President Xi Jinping on September 24 announced that China would reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by between 7% and 10% from peak levels by 2035 and would strive to do even more. It is the first time the country has offered to cut them.

The pledge is a key part of the country's updated climate targets submitted to the United Nations as part of the 2015 Paris climate agreement. All parties to the accord are supposed to submit these so-called nationally determined contributions for 2035 this year. So far around 50 countries have done so, while around 150 have not.

Xi also said China would increase the share of non-fossil fuels in total energy consumption to over 30%; expand the installed capacity of wind and solar power to over six times 2020 levels, targeting a total of 3,600 gigawatts; and make new energy – meaning electric and hybrid – vehicles mainstream.