Xi Jinping (second from left) is shown on the screen at an international climate conference led by Joe Biden via video on April 22, 2021.
Although Beijing authorities have pledged to address global climate change, giving China a timeline for “peak carbon” and “carbon neutrality,” the U.S. president’s climate envoy recently said outright that he believes the Communist Party’s climate policy is “foolish and derelict. But the U.S. president’s climate envoy recently said that he believes the CCP’s climate policy is “foolish and derelict. Meanwhile, former Chinese central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan admitted that China still wants to “play Taijiquan” to foreigners on the annual total carbon emissions figure.
At the United Nations General Assembly last September and at a climate summit of global leaders this April, Chinese President Xi Jinping said China would reach peak carbon by 2030 and be carbon neutral by 2060. By “carbon peaking”, we mean that carbon emissions will no longer grow; by “carbon neutral”, we mean that we will offset all carbon dioxide emissions by planting trees, saving energy, and reducing emissions in various ways.
Will this commitment be fulfilled? There is widespread skepticism.
According to Politico, the president’s climate envoy, John Kerry, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on May 12 that the Biden administration could not rely on “just someone’s word” to ensure China’s compliance. “to ensure that China meets its climate commitments.
“This is not a matter of winning with trust.” He said, “It would be foolish and malfeasant if we just built a trust thing.”
Kerry was invited to China in mid-April to meet with Xie Zhenhua, the Communist Party’s special envoy on climate change affairs, in Shanghai to exchange views on climate change cooperation between the two countries and the 26th United Nations Climate Conference (COP26), which will be held in November.
He revealed that the conversation with Chinese officials became “very heated” when they talked about the Chinese Communist Party’s funding of coal-fired power plants overseas.
Kerry said the U.S. side must continue to work to get the Chinese Communist Party to accept what is considered “legitimate” at the UN climate conference in five months, because it “hasn’t gotten there yet. He has already discussed with EU foreign ministers a unified strategy to deal with the Chinese Communist Party and other countries on climate issues.
Chinese Banks Accused of Helping to Log Forests Outside China
The U.S. distrust of the Chinese Communist Party’s climate policy stems from what the Chinese side is actually doing on the environmental front.
According to Voice of America, environmentalists have criticized the Chinese government for setting domestic emissions reduction targets while providing other countries with funds to develop coal-fired power plants through the Belt and Road Initiative. This is tantamount to transferring pollution and undermining global climate benefits.
According to statistics, the Chinese Communist Party is funding a quarter of the coal-fired power plants being built in other Belt and Road countries. These coal plants, with a combined capacity of 102 GW (gigawatts), would account for 5% of the world’s total coal power capacity if completed. But because global carbon emissions are calculated on a country-by-country basis, the future emissions from such coal plants will not be credited to China.
Li Shuo, Greenpeace’s global climate policy advisor for East Asia, said, “Beijing should start limiting its funding of overseas coal [power] plant projects… and come up with a plan before the 26th UN climate conference that would benefit China.”
In addition to outsourcing pollution, Chinese banks have recently been accused of funding deforestation abroad.
As reported by the Financial Times earlier this month, data analyzed by Forests& Finance, a global coalition of NGOs, shows that from January 2016 to April 2020, Chinese financial institutions provided $15 billion in loans and underwriting services to companies involved in the commodities trade. billion in loans and underwriting services to companies engaged in commodity trading. Among them, state-owned Industrial and Commercial Bank of China was the largest provider of loans and underwriting services, offering a total value of $2.2 billion. These commodities have been linked to deforestation in Southeast Asia, Brazil and Africa, contributing to greenhouse gas emissions.
This runs counter to Xi Jinping’s goal of “achieving carbon neutrality by 2060,” according to the report.
How much is the “carbon peak”? The Chinese Communist Party is playing with figures
According to the Global Coal Plant Tracker, China has a total of 1,023 GW of coal-fired power plants in operation, accounting for half of the world’s coal-fired capacity.
It is widely believed that China should close at least 50 percent of its coal plants by 2030, or even all coal plants by 2040, in order to reach the net zero goal of carbon neutrality by 2060.
But the New York Times writes that the Communist Party’s 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025) does not appear to be working toward this goal at all, leaving a foothold for all sides of the coal debate.
On the one hand, the plan promises green growth, expanding hydropower, solar and wind power capacity in addition to nuclear power plants, and says that non-fossil fuels will account for one-fifth of China’s energy consumption by 2025; on the other hand, instead of setting an absolute cap on annual carbon dioxide emissions, the plan implies that coal-fired power plants will continue to be built.
At the end of January this year, Wang Jinnan, director of the Environmental Planning Institute of the Communist Party of China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment, told the mainland media that research found that “many places believe that they can continue to significantly increase their fossil energy use until 2030.”
The China Coal Industry Association also released its “Annual Report on Coal Industry Development 2020” in March of this year, proposing a moderate increase in coal consumption over the next five years, reaching 4.2 billion tons by 2025. The report also said that China should develop three to five “globally competitive world-class coal companies.
“The main position and ballast role of coal in China’s energy system will not change,” the association wrote in its earlier guidance on the development of the coal industry over the next five years.
Lauri Myllyvirta, chief analyst at the Center for Research on energy and Clean Air in Helsinki, Finland, believes that the CCP is leaving “many onerous tasks beyond 2030 “The core tension between expanding old-fashioned economic growth models and promoting green growth appears to be unresolved.”
The key question, according to New Times, is not just when China’s emissions will peak, but how high they will peak and how long it will take for them to drop significantly after they do.
In this regard, Zhou Xiaochuan, former governor of the Communist Party of China central bank and president of the China Society of Finance, said last month that the goal of reaching the carbon peak in 2030 clearly specifies a 65 percent reduction in carbon emissions intensity, but the total amount of emissions is still unclear, and the differences are not small.
He revealed that the total annual carbon emissions planning is apparently not clear yet, which may be due to two considerations: first, to continue not to use absolute indicators, so that the figures can “play Taijiquan”, especially for foreigners; second, in fact, the Chinese Communist Party’s own basic data work is not done well, there is no way to come up with consistent and credible data, and based on this to measurement and planning.
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