In the next few months, Chinese President Xi Jinping will announce his country’s new climate targets. His decision could make or break the Paris Agreement, the landmark treaty—ratified by nearly every country in the world—that aims to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius. If the world breaches this critical threshold, it will see major falls in food production, a severe hit to global GDP, and a rise in deadly weather events.
All participating governments are due to submit their 2035 climate targets to the United Nations by next February. The most important will come from the three largest emitters today, which collectively account for more than 50 percent of global emissions: the United States, European Union, and China.
In the next few months, Chinese President Xi Jinping will announce his country’s new climate targets. His decision could make or break the Paris Agreement, the landmark treaty—ratified by nearly every country in the world—that aims to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius. If the world breaches this critical threshold, it will see major falls in food production, a severe hit to global GDP, and a rise in deadly weather events.
All participating governments are due to submit their 2035 climate targets to the United Nations by next February. The most important will come from the three largest emitters today, which collectively account for more than 50 percent of global emissions: the United States, European Union, and China.
The United States and EU have not reduced emissions fast enough to align with the Paris goals, but they still delivered two-thirds of the 13 percent reduction in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s carbon emissions over the past decade. China, meanwhile, is responsible for more than 90 percent of the growth in carbon dioxide emissions since the Paris Agreement was negotiated in 2015.
The 1.5-degree target has been in danger for a while, but China’s scale and role in driving emissions put the country in the unique position of being able to single-handedly limit warming so that it stays as close to that target as possible. Global emissions need to peak urgently, and that is simply not realistic without China changing course.
Despite this, China appears to be gravitating toward a weak, conservative set of near-term targets. Although Xi has previously pledged that China will become carbon neutral before 2060, recent policy trends indicate that Beijing’s new targets are likely to fall short of what’s needed to realize that 2060 climate vision—and stave off the worst of global warming.
Chinese diplomats often boast about their country’s record of overachieving on climate and energy targets. As Kevin Rudd, the former Australian prime minister, has put it, China’s strategy on climate is “to under-promise and over-deliver.” For example, China far exceeded its 2020 commitment to reduce carbon intensity as well as its wind and solar power capacity targets for 2015 and 2020.
But now, China is looking increasingly likely to miss the 2025 targets that it named in its Paris commitments and elsewhere. These include plans to “strictly limit” coal consumption growth, “strictly control” new coal power projects, and reduce carbon intensity (carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP) by 18 percent compared with 2020—all by next year. China’s emissions would need to fall between now and the end of 2025 for the country to reach that target. Yet the carbon intensity target set by China’s Environment Ministry for 2024 leaves room for emissions to rise this year, suggesting that the ministry is not seriously pursuing the 2025 target.
Meanwhile, a flurry of high-level policy documents published in recent months indicates that Beijing is likely to pursue conservative near-term climate goals. The State Council’s plan for controlling carbon emissions only expects them to peak just before 2030, and the Central Committee of the Communist Party only aims for China’s emissions to show a “falling trend” by 2035. Due to the lack of ambition in the medium term, Climate Action Tracker—an independent research group—has determined that China’s policies and targets are “highly insufficient” despite the country’s long-term carbon neutrality target.
Furthermore, China’s National Energy Administration has dropped hints that it is erring on the side of caution when it comes to the climate. Top agency officials have dismissed evidence that emissions could peak several years ahead of the “before 2030” deadline—China’s official target—and proposed energy installation targets that would slow down clean energy deployment. They have also advocated for fossil fuels meeting 30 percent of energy demand growth through 2030.
One reason that regulators tend to be conservative is that bureaucrats’ prospects in climbing the ladder of the Communist Party hinge upon the achievement of policy goals, making lower targets desirable. Ministries are also constrained by the level of climate ambition set from the top; bureaucrats have no control over economic policy priorities, which can have a major impact on emissions, especially when China’s leadership considers an energy-intensive sector the growth driver of the day. For example, Beijing’s favorable treatment toward the petrochemical industry has been a major driver of the sharp rise in coal consumption in recent years.
Yet Chinese policymakers’ unwillingness to take more progressive positions on climate is seemingly at odds with their country’s booming clean energy industry and other promising domestic trends. China’s solar and wind installations nearly doubled in 2023 compared with the year before and have continued to accelerate this year. The nuclear power sector, another important source of low-carbon electricity, is also growing, with 20 new reactors approved for construction from 2022 to 2023, and another 11 so far this year.
At its current rate, the growth in clean energy is sufficient to cover all additional electricity demand at the rate forecasted by the China Electricity Council for the second half of this year. If China continues to add renewable energy at the rate that it did in 2023, it could be on track to triple its renewable energy capacity from 2022 to 2030, in line with the target to triple renewables globally agreed upon at last year’s U.N. climate summit in Dubai.
Driven by clean energy expansion, China’s carbon emissions reportedly started declining in March and have continued to fall since then. Meanwhile, energy planners appear to be slamming the brakes on fossil fuels. Beijing approved hundreds of new coal power plants and coal-based steel plants after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, but permits for new coal plants fell by about 80 percent in the first half of 2024 compared with the previous year. In August, Beijing introduced a ban on new steelmaking projects, and no coal-based steel plants have been approved since the start of this year.
Research suggests that China needs to cut emissions by at least 30 percent by 2035, compared with 2023 levels, to limit warming to 1.5 degrees. China can achieve meaningful emission reductions by 2035 if it maintains its rate of clean energy deployment. However, policy inertia and conservative thinking risk preventing China from capitalizing on progress that has already been achieved in the real world.
Despite these roadblocks, it is in China’s own interest to make ambitious climate targets. The clean energy sector contributed a record $1.6 trillion to China’s economy in 2023, accounting for 9 percent of the country’s GDP and 40 percent of economic growth. In addition, a weak climate goal from Beijing would affect trade policy; it would increase tensions by undermining China’s domestic market for clean tech, further inviting the ire of countries that are concerned about China’s manufacturing overcapacity and low-cost exports of electric vehicles, solar panels, and other green technology.
A lowball target would also upset Beijing’s diplomatic alliances in climate negotiations. So far, China has been the de facto leader of the developing country bloc in international climate discussions. This has allowed it to resist calls to set climate targets on par with those of richer countries. But that position is increasingly untenable. China is on the cusp of becoming a high-income country and is on track to overtake the EU’s historical carbon dioxide emissions in the next few years to become the second-largest historic emitter after the United States.
In recent U.N. climate talks, the Maldives and Antigua and Barbuda—developing island nations that are part of China’s negotiating bloc and are among the most vulnerable countries to climate impacts—openly voiced their disquiet about China’s lack of commitment to addressing climate change. China’s next target, if not sufficiently ambitious, could lead more countries to break ranks with Beijing’s negotiating alliance, flying in the face of its efforts to portray itself as a “doer in global climate governance.”
To continue to make progress on climate, Xi cannot rely on his bureaucrats to put forward meaningful targets—he must do it himself. Xi and the rest of China’s top leadership will have to balance the growth of their country’s clean energy industry against short-term economic considerations related to fossil fuels. Weak targets that allow the expansion of the fossil-fuel industry would pull the rug out from under the clean energy sectors that have been China’s star economic performers of the past couple years.
China’s leaders are almost certain to wait until the results of the U.S. presidential election to announce their targets, and they will likely feel more pressure in the case of a victory by Democratic candidate and current Vice President Kamala Harris. The other question is whether China’s other important partners—including the EU, United Kingdom, and other G-20 members—will hold Beijing to a high standard. This will be especially important if former President Donald Trump wins the election.
Until then, the message to China has to be clear: Lip service to multilateralism and global climate action isn’t enough; Paris-aligned climate targets are essential. After Trump was elected in 2016, China vowed to defend the Paris agreement. Now, the country is increasingly at risk of failing to do so. As a recent strategy document for China’s own cabinet reads, “Major countries should focus more on the future of the earth and humanity and act in a responsible manner … thus fulfilling the responsibilities commensurate with their status.”
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