At climate summit, UN chief urges countries to go “much further, much faster” on NDCs

UN Secretary-General: COP30 must deliver global response plan

UN Secretary-General António Guterres urged world leaders to deliver climate plans that go “much further, much faster” as he kicked off today’s climate summit at UN headquarters.

Hinting at an expected shortfall in the ambition needed to reduce emissions in line with the Paris Agreement 1.5C temperature limit, he said November’s COP30 must end with a “credible global response plan” to get world efforts back on track.

Guterres, who convened the gathering, outlined five areas for priority action, putting energy at the top. Despite clean energy’s competitiveness, fossil fuels still dominate, he said, calling on countries to “supercharge” the energy transition by investing in grids and storage, lowering investment costs for developing countries and shifting subsidies away from fossil fuels.

“Drastic cuts” in methane emissions are essential and can be achieved quickly and cheaply, Guterres added. A potent gas with a shorter lifespan than carbon dioxide, methane is widely considered a low-hanging fruit to slow global warming.

The International Energy Agency reckons around 40% of methane emissions from fossil fuels could be cut at no net cost. That’s because interventions like identifying and repairing leaky infrastructure cost less than the market value of the additional gas fossil fuel operators would be able to capture and sell, the watchdog said.

The UN chief then highlighted the need to end the destruction of forests, which he described as “nature’s greatest carbon sinks”. At COP28 two years ago, countries committed to ending and reversing deforestation by 2030. Guterres said that could deliver a fifth of the needed emission reductions by the end of this decade. At the moment, that goal remains way off track as forest loss keeps rising.

Guterres also called for governments to urgently deploy new technologies that can cut emissions from steel and cement production, as well as heavy transport. Those sectors are generally considered harder to decarbonise because they require substantial amounts of energy, and efforts to make them greener rely on less mature, or more expensive, solutions like hydrogen or alternative fuels.

Finally, Guterres made an appeal for climate justice. The finance gaps preventing investment in climate resilience across the developing world should be plugged, he said. That means reforming the international financial architecture, offering “effective” debt relief, raising contributions to the loss and damage fund, and boosting adaptation finance.

Brazil’s president: Submitting NDCs is “not an option”

Opening the summit together with the UN chief, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva urged countries to submit their new climate plans (Nationally Determined Contributions – NDCs) before COP30, which is happening in the Brazilian state of Pará this November.

“The submissions of NDCs is not an option. As it was made clear by the International Court of Justice, it is an obligation,” he said referring to its advisory opinion on climate change and human rights handed down in July.

He added that only by having all countries respect their commitments and submit their NDCs, will the world know where it stands in the battle against climate change. No one is safe from the effects of it, he said, not even the countries that are part of what he called “multilateral denialism”.

As he spoke, only 47 countries had presented their plans.

Brazil was the second country to present its NDC, last November. It aims to reduce emissions of all greenhouse gases by between 59% and 67% across all sectors of the economy and end deforestation by 2030.

Lula championed multilateralism in multiple parts of his speech, saying that COP30 can be “the stage for a decisive moment in” its history. “I call on the countries that have not yet submitted their NDCs. The success of COP30 in Belém depends on you.”

He also said that if the world doesn’t come together and take decisions that respect what science says, civil society will stop trusting its leaders, “and instead of strengthening the struggle against global warming, we are going to help discredit multilateralism policies and in democracy. And all of us will lose because denialism may actually win.”

China unveils 2035 emissions-cutting goal of 7-10%

China announced a much-anticipated new target to reduce its emissions at the summit. It said it will aim for a 7-10% cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2035 compared to “peak” levels, without specifying which year that would be. Experts said that pledge is not enough to align with the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to 1.5C. 

In a video message, Chinese President Xi Jinping told world leaders that the “green and low carbon transition is the trend of our time”, despite “some countries acting against it”.

“China will by 2035 reduce economy-wide net greenhouse gas emissions by 7-10% from peak levels, striving to do better,” the Chinese leader announced.

The Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) has warned that only emissions cuts of around 30% by 2035 by China would be consistent with the 1.5C limit. 

A range, such as the one delivered by Xi at the New York summit, could be interpreted as “the lower bound is effectively the guarantee, while the upper bound represents potential ambition”.

The baseline year for the target – a key measure for how ambitious the target is – was not clarified in Xi’s announcement. The country will take as reference the “peak” in its emissions, with some experts saying that could be as early as last year or this year.

China’s rapid renewable energy rollout has kept the country on track to meet its existing goal of peaking carbon pollution before the end of the decade. It plans to reach net zero by 2060.

The world’s largest carbon polluter, China is responsible for about a third of global emissions. As countries are expected to deliver new climate plans at the climate summit, China’s new nationally determined contribution (NDC) has been one of the most anticipated and is viewed as an indicator of global climate ambition.

The Chinese president also announced a target to “increase the share of non-fossil fuels in total energy consumption to over 30%”, and “expand the installed capacity of wind and solar power to over six times the 2020 levels, striving to bring the total to 3,600 GW”.

He also pledged to “scale up the total forest stock volume to over 24 billion cubic metres”, make EVs the “mainstream in the sale of new vehicles”, and expand China’s emissions trading market to cover “major emitting sectors”.

European Union promises to submit formal NDC before COP30

To no-one’s surprise, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced that the bloc’s 2035 target would “range between 66% and 72%” below 1990 levels and promised to formally submit it before COP30.

“The clean transition is moving on and let me assure you that Europe will stay the course on our climate ambition,” she said.

She also plugged the EU’s support for clean cooking and other climate finance projects overseas. “No mother, no child should die because [of] simply cooking dinner under abhorrent circumstances”, she said.

Von der Leyen could only give an emissions-reduction range – known as a “statement of intent” – because the European Union has not yet been able to agree exact targets for 2035 or 2040, on the road to meeting its overarching goal of net zero by 2050.

In July, the European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, proposed a goal to cut emissions 90% on 1990 levels by 2040. That would have formed the basis for the 2035 target.

But the 2040 goal still needs approval from the EU’s other two arms – the European Parliament and the European Council, which represents member states.

At a meeting last week in Brussels, environment ministers from the bloc’s 27 member states said they had been unable to agree on the targets, asking heads of state to give them a steer at a European Council meeting in October.

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