- Environmentalists have welcomed the pledge by China’s leader, Xi Jinping, to speed up reductions in emissions in the world’s top-polluting nation and reach carbon neutrality by 2060.
- 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 pledging to lead by example, setting itself goals befitting a country that aspires to be a superpower.
- Under the Paris climate deal reached in 2015, China pledged that its emissions would peak around 2030.
- Xi promised to move up that timetable, though he did not provide specifics.
- More than 60 other countries have pledged carbon neutrality by 2050, a consensus deadline that scientists believe must be met to have a reasonable chance of averting the worst climate catastrophe.
- Those countries are small compared to China, which now produces 28 percent of the world’s emissions.
- Even if its target is a decade later, China is now on record setting the goal for the first time.
- 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 economic headwinds and the government sought to stimulate industrial growth.
- The rise was interrupted by the Covid-19 shutdown, but China’s economy is recovering more quickly than others.
- China also granted more construction permits for coal-fired power plants in the first six months of 2020 than it had each year in 2018 and 2019.
- Xi, in laying out his country’s plans in a speech at the United Nations, did not detail how China would meet the targets.
- While China clings to industries that are consumers of coal, it has also emerged as a leader in clean energy technologies, including solar panels and wind turbines.
- It is the world’s largest manufacturer of electric cars and buses.
- China could also ramp up its ambitions to build nuclear power plants to replace coal-fired plants, though that would prompt other environmental and safety questions.
- The Europeans pressed China to reach peak emissions by 2025, as most European nations have vowed to do.
