As Biden’s climate envoy Kerry flew to Shanghai on April 14 to discuss climate issues with his Chinese counterpart in preparation for Biden’s climate video conference, news broke on April 15 that Xi Jinping will hold a climate summit with Macron and Merkel via video from Beijing on April 16.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying announced today, April 15, that at the invitation of French President Emmanuel Macron, Chinese President Xi Jinping will attend a climate summit between Chinese, French and German leaders in Beijing on April 16.
U.S. climate envoy John Kerry arrived in Shanghai yesterday, April 14, to meet with Chinese climate official Xie Zhenhua. His trip to Beijing and Seoul (April 14-17) is said to be in preparation for President Joe Biden’s April 22-23 “climate video summit” in the United States.
According to Reuters, Kerry and Xie Zhenhua will discuss preparations for COP26, the U.N. climate change conference scheduled to be held in Glasgow in November.
Biden announced the U.S. rejoining the Paris Climate Accord upon taking office in January and will announce new targets for emissions reductions by 2030 in the coming days.
For its part, China should cut carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from its coal-fired power plants by half over the next 10 years if it is to meet its official carbon neutrality target by 2060, according to a study published Thursday by the London-based Zero Emissions group.
The Communist Party’s State Council on Wednesday approved the construction of five nuclear reactors with a total capacity of 4.9 gigawatts (GW), or about 10 percent of China’s total nuclear power capacity, Reuters said, citing two sources.
China is not on track to meet its target of 58 GW of total nuclear capacity by 2020, partly because the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan delayed the start of new projects.
Four of the five reactors approved for construction by the Communist Party of China State Council on Wednesday will be based on Russian VVER-1200 technology, with a capacity of 1.2 gigawatts each. The fifth, smaller, is said to be a 125-megawatt “demonstration” reactor based on China’s ACP100 technology.
According to the UK’s Maplecroft, China emits more than 6 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere each year, the most in the world. As a result, it has a pivotal role in global cooperation to curb climate warming.
Some commentators expect that after the “mask diplomacy” and “vaccine diplomacy”, Chinese President Xi Jinping will be able to interact with Europe and the United States through “climate diplomacy”.
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