Xi Jinping’s economic and industrial planners in Beijing are hammering out the final details of China’s new climate change targets.
Given that China is responsible for about one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions, these targets, mandated by the 2015 Paris Agreement, hold the potential to shape the future of the world’s fight against global warming.
The Chinese leader said in April that the country would announce its 2035 Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), covering all economic sectors and all greenhouse gases, before this autumn’s UN Climate Change Conference in Belém, Brazil.
“However the world may change, China will not slow down its climate actions, will not reduce its support for international co-operation, and will not cease its efforts to build a community with a shared future for mankind,” Xi said, in a thinly veiled criticism of President Donald Trump’s administration, which has drastically rolled back US climate change commitments.
According to analysis published in June by US think-tank the Asia Society Policy Institute, China must hit peak emissions immediately and reduce them by 30 per cent from current levels by 2035 to align with the Paris Agreement goal of limiting the average global temperature rise to 1.5C this century and to make the country’s 2060 carbon neutrality goal achievable.
However, when it comes to the headline target in Beijing’s NDC, many climate campaigners are bracing for a low level of ambition, possibly a 2035 emission reduction goal of 10-15 per cent, according to Yao Zhe, Greenpeace’s Beijing-based global policy adviser.
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And some observers, cognisant that China’s emissions targets, by the numbers, are likely to disappoint, are instead calling for the world’s biggest polluting nation to strike a tone of ambition.
Li Shuo, director of the China Climate Hub at the Asia Society, says the “landing zone” for China’s future climate target is likely to have already been decided by Beijing, and is “very much determined by the energy, political, and economic realities”.
However, Li is optimistic that the NDC could be framed as a “floor” with an “upward-moving spirit”, meaning that as technology allows or economic conditions improve, then the commitments could be enhanced and, in the end, deliver more than is “put on paper”.
“This will be a very nuanced decision-making process . . . In addition to the headline target, there could be many different elements and numerical targets in China’s NDC,” says Li, who is also a veteran of global climate negotiations.
Many experts acknowledge that the development of the new NDC targets has been complicated by a range of problems which make economic growth — and therefore also emissions trajectories — very difficult to predict.
At home, business and consumer confidence remain weak, having failed to bounce back after the dual shocks of China’s rigid pandemic response and the deleveraging of the country’s property market. And abroad, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s attacks on Iran are driving fears over energy security just as Donald Trump’s trade war threatens the profitability of China’s exporters.
Against that backdrop, Greenpeace’s Yao suggests that Beijing could offer more ambitious sectoral targets, including in areas such as transport sector electrification, renewable energy installations and other technologies that enable faster decarbonisation.
“This ambition could sustain confidence in the market and also guide investment going forward,” she says.
Indeed, in a report published in June, the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (Creca), a Helsinki-based group, highlighted that if ambitious policy targets were included in both the NDC and China’s next five-year economic plan, due to be released next year, China’s clean energy industries could double in value by 2035. This, the research suggested, could add as much as Rmb15tn ($2.1tn) to the Chinese economy and deliver the 30 per cent emissions reduction needed to meet the Paris targets.
“Weak targets, by contrast, risk slowing China’s momentum, creating uncertainty, and missing a historic opportunity to lead the global energy transition,” noted Belinda Schäpe, China Policy Analyst at Creca and one of the authors of the report.
As it stands, Beijing’s current climate targets and policies are “highly insufficient”, according to Climate Action Tracker, an independent scientific project that tracks the government’s action against the Paris Agreement.
Coal remains the paramount hurdle. Despite the costs of renewable energy and battery storage plummeting in recent years, support for coal persists from vested power sector interests and broader fears over potential economic losses from electricity system instability and social issues resulting from mine and power plant closures.
CAT argues that China needs to integrate “clear targets for coal consumption reduction” in the updated NDC as well as introducing an absolute emissions cap.
Greenpeace’s Yao agreed that while Beijing might not budge from its previously stated commitment to hit peak coal during the period of the 15th Five Year Plan, from 2026-2030, more clarity could be given in the NDC, defining at least “when” the peak will be hit and “how high”.
For many years, international engagement helped propel China’s climate agenda, including by Europe in the lead up to Xi’s blockbuster dual carbon commitment in 2021 — of peak carbon by 2030 and neutrality by 2060 — and by the US ahead of Beijing’s 2023 promise to track and reduce harmful methane emissions.
Over the past two years, while Beijing has continued to rapidly build out renewable energy, there has been concern that it has not done enough to cut coal use. And experts are now also worried that a breakdown in ties between major global powers — including Europe, the US and China — is harming the chances that foreign interlocutors can influence Beijing’s decision making.
“It’s certainly true that no one can just easily sway Beijing and increasingly in recent years the trend is that the space for influence is becoming more limited,” says Li, of the Asia Society Policy Institute. But he adds: “That does not mean that there is just not space or that international engagement doesn’t matter, or doesn’t carry any value.”