Welcome to Carbon Brief’s China Briefing.
Carbon Brief handpicks and explains the most important climate and energy stories from China over the past fortnight. Subscribe for free here.
(China Briefing will return on 11 January.)
Key developments
China at COP28
BIG PRESENCE: China’s presence at COP28 this year loomed large, boasting the joint-third largest delegation with more than 1,400 badges issued, Carbon Brief analysis found.
WHO’S WHO: The delegation, headed by ministry of environment and ecology (MEE) vice-minister Zhao Yingmin, featured many high-ranking government officials, including MEE minister Huang Runqiu, special climate envoy and COP veteran Xie Zhenhua, as well as UN under-secretary-general for economic and social affairs Liu Zhenmin, who is expected to replace Xie as climate envoy after COP28.
FULL CALENDAR: China also hosted a jam-packed schedule of side events at its country pavilion, which topics ranging from methane emissions and “green” banking through to overseas energy investments and UK-China cooperation on climate science. Many events were attended by Carbon Brief. “The pavilion is always an interesting place to see what [China] want[s] the world to see about them,” Prof Alex Wang, co-director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the University of California, Los Angeles, tells Carbon Brief. “There’s more information available, there’s more societal involvement than ever before…That may be strategic, but it does also reflect genuine changes on the ground [in China].”
China declines to participate in loss-and-damage fund
EARLY SUCCESS: The opening of COP28 was marked by an agreement to “operationalise” the loss-and-damage fund, which Dr Jennifer Allen at the Earth Negotiations Bulletin termed a “big, big win”. Despite a donation by the United Arab Emirates “put[ting] the spotlight on China”, according to Politico, China did not pledge, with Chinese media coverage of the fund being muted.
EVOLVING RESPONSIBILITIES: China Dialogue quoted Avinash Persaud, Barbados’ special envoy for finance, saying: “79% of the stock of greenhouse gases come from the countries that would be defined as developed in 1992. A big part of the other remaining part of the emissions comes from China. I’m happy for us to think about ‘common, but differentiated responsibilities’ as being a vital principle, but not stuck in some particular point of time in measurement. They should be evolving common, but differentiated responsibilities…That would mean that, at some point, China should be a contributor [to the fund]”.
OTHER MECHANISMS: Yuan Ying, chief China representative at Greenpeace East Asia, argues that criticism of China’s position was misguided. China on a per-capita basis is poorer than the UAE – the only developing country to contribute to the fund – she tells Carbon Brief: “China is pretty clear that [payments from] the loss-and-damage fund will prioritise vulnerable and least developed countries. Meanwhile, China is chipping into other channels and platforms to help other countries cope with climate change, like the south-south cooperation fund and Africa climate summit.” Xie echoed this argument at a press conference on 9 December, saying that China “has been carrying out south-south cooperation” over the past 10 years to help other countries build capacity. (Recent analysis for Carbon Brief also underscores this point.)
Pledge to update 2030 and 2035 targets in 2025
NEW NDC: Early on in the COP28 negotiations, Xie announced that China would release a new nationally determined contribution (NDC) that includes targets for both 2035 and 2030, the year before which China has pledged to peak its carbon emissions. “The Chinese government also attaches great importance to this matter,” Xie said.
REASONING? Li Shuo, director of the China climate hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute, attributes two possible motivations to the announcement: “One is ‘don’t ask us again, there won’t be anything new, wait until 2025’. That’s my interpretation. The other is ‘2030 isn’t entirely fixed, we could still enhance the ambitiousness of the 2030 target’.”
PEAKING TIMELINE: Analysis in Carbon Brief shows that China carbon emissions may enter a “structural decline” as early as next year. An early peak could then affect the level of ambition for the 2030 and 2035 targets. Xie also said at the 9 December press conference that “China has moved from dual control of energy to dual control of carbon emissions, which is a strategic shift”. He added: “If this shift is realised by 2025, China will then determine what year we will reach peak carbon and what the absolute amount of peak carbon will be. But this will certainly not [be] 2030, it will be before 2030.”
Impact of Sunnylands
SETTING THE TONE: The Sunnylands statement – itself a positive signal of thawing US-China relations – set “necessary, but insufficient, conditions for success at COP28”, Li previously told Carbon Brief. The statement itself significantly influenced the final outcome. Key language from the document featured in the final global stocktake text, with US climate envoy John Kerry attributing the success of the methane summit (see below) to “the meeting we had in Sunnylands” in his remarks at the event.
RENEWABLES CENTRED: The Sunnylands statement included a call for the US and China to “pursue efforts to triple renewable energy capacity globally by 2030…so as to accelerate the substitution for coal, oil and gas generation”. Nevertheless, China did not sign up to an official pledge to triple renewable energy and double energy efficiency. Prof Zou Ji, president of the Energy Foundation China, attributes this to an issue of measurement. He says to Carbon Brief: “ [It has not been clarified which] year should be the base year – should it be 2020 [or] 2022? This might seem technical, but, in the past two years, development of renewables – both globally, but particularly in China – has been greatly boosted. So using different [base years] could be very significant.” Wang says he believes that China’s unwillingness to sign was “due to a line on acknowledging the need to phase out unabated fossil fuels”, which was not acceptable to the country. By contrast, Professor Pan Jiahua, vice-chair of the national expert committee on climate change, member of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and director of its Research Center for Sustainable Development plus director of Beijing University of Technology’s Institute of Eco-Civilization Studies, tells Carbon Brief that tripling renewable energy was “not enough” and that countries should be more ambitious.
GOOD VIBES: In the early days of COP28, Chinese state media published several articles highlighting the importance of cooperation with the US. The two countries were often reported to be having hour-long meetings and, in the final days of COP28, rumours circulated that a US-China joint statement was imminent.
WHAT NEXT? Kerry also said at the methane summit that the friendship between him and Xie “was the reason we could work together in Paris, in Glasgow and now in Dubai”. With Xie likely to now be replaced by Liu Zhenmin, there is an important open question about whether Liu will be able to maintain this positive dynamic. (Liu and veteran US negotiator Susan Biniaz were seen together on multiple occasions, while Jennifer Morgan, Germany’s special representative for international climate policy and former Greenpeace co-leader, told the audience that they had held discussions on Germany’s net-zero transition.) And, despite his and Kerry’s respective ages – Xie is 74 and Kerry just turned 80 – Xie said at the 9 December press conference: “We will not leave this field, we will still do our best to promote progress in this field.”
Global stocktake to boost China’s renewables drive
PHASEDOWN NOT PHASEOUT: The final draft of the global stocktake did not refer to a “fossil fuel phase-out”, instead calling for “tripling renewable energy capacity”, “accelerating efforts towards the phase-down of unabated coal power”, using “abatement and removal technologies…particularly in hard-to-abate sectors”, while transitioning away from fossil fuels in a “just, orderly and equitable manner”. All of which aligns with China’s policy priorities.
COMPROMISE: The document was a “compromise text”, Li explains, with the overall language on coal being “very modest”. Pan characterises it in comments to Carbon Brief as “based on a consensus that actions must be taken in line with the 1.5C target”. He argues that the outcome showed that a “negotiated accord…[is] not a solution” and, instead, the global stocktake should shift focus from “restricting” fossil fuels to “accelerating zero-carbon industries”. Meanwhile, Yuan says in a statement the text “will undoubtedly further boost China’s already booming renewable energy sector, accelerate the substitution of coal power and achieve the country’s target of peaking emissions”. However, she adds: “The final text lacks clear and effective implementation pathways.”
TRADE SPATS: China also suggested in its initial submission to the UNFCCC that language be included on “rising unilateralism, protectionism and anti-globalism”. However, the final text saw this watered down to “measures taken to combat climate change, including unilateral ones, should not constitute a means of arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination or a disguised restriction on international trade”. Li points out that “this is actually stronger” than language in the Sunnylands statement, which the Chinese delegation “should be happy about”. The EU’s carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) seems to have faded from the text. “I think the consensus is that CBAM is to be discussed at the World Trade Organisation, not at the UN,” Yan Qin, carbon analyst at the London Stock Exchange Group, tells Carbon Brief.
US and China trumpet methane cooperation
ON THE AGENDA: On 2 December, Carbon Brief attended the summit on methane and non-CO2 greenhouse gases, co-hosted by China, the US and UAE. The summit was intended as a strong political signal of US-China cooperation and the importance they both now place on reducing methane emissions. In his remarks at the event, Kerry emphasised the countries’ progress in driving the conversation, noting that methane “was not even talked about in Paris”.
FIRST STEPS: Xie described the summit as an “important step”. However, he argued, China has a “poor foundation” for regulating methane, adding: “We need concrete measures, we need capital support and we also need a feasible technical pathway on how we can join hands to tackle climate change.”
LACK OF TARGETS: As with China’s domestic methane emissions action plan, however, the methane summit did not see any concrete targets for reducing methane. “I hope that we can maintain the momentum,” Li tells Carbon Brief, because, “of [all the] topics they could choose, they chose methane”. It would be frustrating if this level of momentum “still can’t move the ball”, he adds.
Quoted at COP28
FRAMING COP28 BACK HOME: Li Shuo: “We need to recognise the domestic politics…Try to imagine a fistfight at the beginning of COP28. If you’re a general Chinese reader and you see that on the news…Is that helpful for the Chinese leadership?…So I think it’s pretty smart that COP28 had a smooth start [with the operationalisation of the loss-and-damage fund].”
TRADE DISPUTES: Yuan Ying: “We need open, inclusive and collaborative supply chains for renewable energy, then we can work collectively to achieve the targets of tripling renewable energy.”
METHANE EMISSIONS: Prof Alex Wang: “China could target a certain subsection of local leaders, put a lot of pressure on them to get rid of methane and then in two years declare a big success on the international stage…I heard one person mention that [efforts] could be framed in terms of worker safety…[which is] a real black mark in Chinese governance.”
CLIMATE, NATURE AND PEOPLE: Lu Lunyan, WWF China CEO, tells Carbon Brief in a statement: “Protecting nature and modifying agro-food systems is an essential part of effective climate action, but it is unfortunate that countries have failed to adopt the IPCC’s recommendation to include the protection of 30-50% of all ecosystems in the text”.
Read Carbon Brief’s in-depth summary of COP28’s key outcomes of COP28. And Anika Patel, Carbon Brief’s China analyst, will be participating in Carbon Brief’s COP28 webinar tomorrow, 15 December, at 3pm (UK time). Sign up is free.
Watch, read, listen
CONSEQUENTIAL RELATIONSHIPS: With Chinese climate envoy Xie Zhenhua set to retire after COP28, Foreign Policy looked back on how he and US climate envoy John Kerry forged a bond “over decades of [climate] negotiations”.
DUBAI FIRESIDE: The Wall Street Journal interviewed John Kerry on China’s climate policy and his experience working with Xie Zhenhua.
DECIPHERING COP28: Carbon Brief’s China analyst (and author of this newsletter) Anika Patel spoke on the China-Global South Podcast to break down China’s positions at COP28.
TOP 10: In China Energy Net, Kevin Tu, managing director of Agora Energy Transition China, highlighted 10 issues he was watching out for at COP28.
New science
Rapid attribution of the record-breaking heatwave event in north China in June 2023 and future risks
Environmental Research Letters
The record-breaking heatwave that hit North China over 22-24 June 2023 – in which Beijing reached or exceeded temperatures of 40C for three consecutive days for the first time – was made around 1C hotter due to human-caused climate change, according to a new study. The authors carried out a “rapid attribution study” to assess the role of climate change on the event. They find that by the end of the century, in an intermediate emissions scenario, 2023-like heatwave events in North China could be 5.5 times more likely and 2.9C hotter than those under a 2023 climate. They add that, “even if carbon neutrality is achieved”, 2023-like events could occur at least 1.6 times throughout the remainder of the century and be 0.5C hotter.
Electrifying industrial heating in China
Global Efficiency Intelligence
“Plastic recycling, steel reheating processes, steel production and the ammonia industry are the top four industries in terms of CO2 emissions reduction potential from electrification,” according to a new report. The report “identifies specific processes that could be electrified in the near term with commercially available technologies and analyses the expected changes in energy use, CO2 emissions and energy costs”. The authors recommend “integrating electrification in industrial planning and decision-making establishing industry-specific electrification roadmaps”.
Deploying green hydrogen to decarbonise China’s coal chemical sector
Nature Communications
New research finds that China’s coal chemical production resulted in around 1.1 gigaton CO2 equivalent (GtCO2eq) in 2020 – equal to 9% of national emissions. The authors estimate that emissions from the sector could rise to 1.3 GtCO2eq by 2030, but add that around half of these emissions could be reduced using “solar or wind power-based electrolytic hydrogen and oxygen” to replace coal-based hydrogen and air separation-based oxygen. The paper suggests that the provinces of Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi, Ningxia and Xinjiang would be “well suited for pilot policies to advance demonstration projects”.
China Briefing is compiled by Anika Patel and edited by Wanyuan Song and Simon Evans. Please send tips and feedback to china@carbonbrief.org.
The post China Briefing 14 December: COP28 special edition appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Steven Stone is acting director of the United Nations Environment Programme’s Office of Science
In 1934, American economist Simon Kuznets presented a paper to Congress advocating for a new way of measuring economic performance.
The United States was reeling from the Great Depression, and Kuznets – a future Novel prize winner – wanted to gauge just how badly the country’s economy had been dented.
His metric, which would come to be known as gross domestic product (GDP), was a breakthrough. But as pioneering as it was, Kuznets saw its limitations.
“The welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measure of national income,” he wrote in the 1934 paper.
Some nine decades on, we have largely forgotten that message. GDP has become a barometer of economic progress, a kind of one-number-that-rules-them-all upon which national policies turn and governments rise and fall.
With the climate crisis deepening by the day – as evidenced by the heatwaves and wildfires now searing Europe – our attachment to GDP is looking like a problem.
In a single-minded pursuit of GDP growth, humanity is inadvertently feeding several environmental crises that, over the long run, threaten to make most of us poorer, sicker and more miserable. Climate change alone could slice 20 per cent off global GDP by 2100 – a staggering number.
Clear-cutting boosts GDP not wealth
We need to broaden our vision and definition of economic success before it’s too late.
I grew up in the 1970s and 80s surrounded by the mixed hardwood forests of the northeastern United States. For me, the trees were a refuge, a place to run, discover and savor the history and mystery of the land and its people.
Those experiences with my friends were more important than the amount of money in my pocket. And they led to a realization early on in my career as an economist: that wealth is about more than just income.
This is one of GDP’s most significant oversights.
With every forest we clear cut and every ounce of fossil fuel we burn, GDP rises. But through those actions, we are whittling away at the natural world, which supplies us with food, water, medicine, clean air and countless other essentials.
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By focusing only on GDP, we’re ignoring what’s happening to the natural assets on which our prosperity ultimately depends. It’s like we’re driving a car and only looking at the speedometer, not the energy remaining in the battery.
That is the difference between measuring income versus measuring wealth.
The answer to this dilemma lies in looking beyond GDP. We must start considering a broader range of indicators when making policy decisions.
From an environmental perspective, that means measuring and valuing natural assets like forests, water, soil, biodiversity and clean air. By assigning a value to nature, decision-makers can better understand the economic consequences of, say, strip-mining a mountain top or letting plastic waste overwhelm a river.
There is still some debate over how exactly to do this kind of natural capital accounting. But that’s not a reason to dismiss it, as many have done. It took years of refinement to end up with the GDP formula we have today.
Costa Rica’s example
The idea of looking beyond GDP isn’t only a theoretical debate. Countries and communities around the world have started to make economic decisions based on their natural assets. A prime example is Costa Rica, a biodiversity hotspot where a years-long effort to conserve land and seascapes has led to a boom in tourism. That in part helped elevate the country into the club of high-income nations.
This kind of environmentally focused economic decision making can pay huge dividends. By stabilizing the climate, ending pollution and halting the loss of the natural world, humanity could save millions of lives a year and create US$20 trillion in economic benefits annually by 2070, found the Global Environment Outlook 7, a 2025 report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The report was funded by the European Union among others.
I began my career as an economist before moving to UNEP, which focuses on solving the world’s thorniest environmental problems. During that time, I’ve come to appreciate that “wealth” means more than simply “income.” True prosperity means being able to provide for ourselves now and into the future. Anything short of that is an empty kind of affluence – and ultimately doomed to be short-lived.
As deadly heat blankets our cities, species slip into extinction and the planet struggles with rising toxicity and pollution, I am convinced that we can do better at measuring what matters. And that means updating and expanding how we measure economic progress.
The post As fires burn and temperatures soar, it’s time to imagine a world beyond GDP appeared first on Climate Home News.
As fires burn and temperatures soar, it’s time to imagine a world beyond GDP
Amira Odeh Quiñones is a hydrologist and Caribbean organiser for the 350.org climate campaign group
El Niño, likely to be one of the strongest in modern history, has arrived on Caribbean shores.
Drought is slowly creeping up on our islands. But unlike the fiery wildfires ravaging parts of Europe, there’s no smoke signalling the damage being done, no sirens to warn of the danger. Only announcements from public health officials to stay indoors and remain hydrated — as if outdoor workers and farming communities have the luxury to heed such advice.
During El Niño, strong atmospheric winds alter rain patterns and trap heat across the Caribbean. But while we have experienced El Niño many times before, it has become very visible in recent years how climate change is making this natural phenomenon worse.
Across the Greater Antilles, temperatures are soaring past 38°C (100°F), with real-feel indexes reaching a gruelling 43°C in parts of Puerto Rico where I live. Cuba has it worse. Widespread power outages mean that methods for cooling down are unavailable for most of the day, leaving millions of vulnerable people at risk of heat stroke when temperatures hit 38°C.
Santa Marta coalition tested as co-chair Colombia turns back to fossil fuels
During the last strong drought a decade ago, I had water only two days a week in my home. Today, there are many families whose taps are about to run completely dry. Water authorities have already begun strict rationing in some municipalities, with more on the list scheduled for rationing if conditions don’t change.
Water rationing is far more than an inconvenience; it is an immediate health risk. This means thousands of people need to constantly haul heavy buckets up flights of stairs just so they could bathe, cook, stay hydrated – the basics of survival.
Heat causes health problems
Puerto Rico is home to roughly 300,000 elderly residents. Many live alone, isolated and without support. They risk severe physical injury when carrying heavy water containers, and are wont to suffer from silent heat exhaustion in unventilated rooms.
Furthermore, when water shortages force residents to store water in open household containers, it inadvertently creates breeding grounds for Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. Paired with scorching temperatures that tend to shorten the mosquito breeding cycle, the region is facing explosive outbreaks of dengue fever that endanger our most vulnerable: children and the elderly.
The economic fallout is equally devastating. Dry fields mean millions of dollars in lost crops, forcing small agricultural businesses to collapse, needing urgent government relief to survive. Extreme fuel shortages have already paralyzed Cuba’s agricultural sector, cutting food output by 60% – the El Niño dry spell threatens to decimate it.
At sea, warmer ocean waters fuel massive influxes of sargassum seaweed. Rotting sargassum chokes our beaches, destroying the local tourism industry that so many working families rely on. Tangled seaweed also damages nets and boat engines, slashing fish catches and driving up equipment costs for local fishers.
In the south of Puerto Rico, the coastal town of La Parguera is currently witnessing a historic amount of sargassum on its shores. This has halted most of the boating activity in the area, which is the seaside town’s main tourist draw and economic driver.
All over the Caribbean, from town halls to local group gatherings, the story I hear is always the same: constant headaches, lost work hours, failing health, and a sense that quality of life is silently being stolen. The compounding effects of heatwaves, drought, and marine destruction are exhausting our people, our islands.
Climate change to blame
Climate change makes each El Niño year hotter and more damaging. Higher baseline global temperatures increase the energy and moisture available for extreme weather. Latest projections show that El Niño may push the monthly global average temperature past 2°C of warming for the first time in early 2027. In the Caribbean islands, that will not just be breaking records – it’ll be breaking lives.
Recently, I had the opportunity to share a panel with climate scientists behind what is known as the field of “attribution science” – or the science that compares today’s climate conditions to what the Earth’s climate would be like without human activity, particularly burning fossil fuels. They’re unequivocal: it’s no longer a question of whether extreme weather is caused by climate change, it’s just a question of how much.
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Attribution science recently got a boost from the U.S.’ top scientific advisory body. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine recognized that researchers’ methods have advanced considerably in recent years, resulting in better assessments on how much extreme weather can be attributed to human-caused climate change. It noted that attribution findings could be relevant in some types of legal cases, including those seeking damages from oil companies for climate impacts.
This crisis, which is already taking a heavy toll on our communities’ survival, needs real, urgent, and structural action that goes beyond aid. With similar droughts now gripping parts of Asia and Africa, we’re falling into the familiar narrative of treating the looming humanitarian crisis as if no one was to blame, as if it is being caused solely by a natural phenomenon we can’t control.
It’s not. The world was already on fire before its regular visitor, El Niño, came. While we need humanitarian action, we need climate action too, in order to permanently put out the flames.
The post When taps run dry in the Caribbean, it’s not enough to blame El Niño appeared first on Climate Home News.
When taps run dry in the Caribbean, it’s not enough to blame El Niño
China has released a five-year plan dedicated to addressing climate change.
The 15th five-year plan for a national response to climate change is the latest in a series to outline in-depth climate and energy targets for the 2026-2030 period.
These include five-year plans for “building a Beautiful China”, developing a “new-type energy system” and developing renewable energy.
There are also separate “action plans” for the 2026-2030 period, such as for peaking carbon emissions.
China has pledged to peak its emissions before 2030 and reach carbon neutrality before 2060.
The new plan does not include any major new targets, instead consolidating and reaffirming existing policies.
Nevertheless, it includes significant signals on key policy areas, such as non-carbon dioxide (CO2) greenhouse gases, global climate governance and carbon markets.
Below, Carbon Brief examines some of the notable elements in the latest five-year plan and what it reveals about China’s policy direction through to 2030.
What does the climate plan cover?
The Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) released the plan in late July, in unison with 18 other government departments. These include the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China’s top economic planning agency, and the National Energy Administration.
The document covers a range of topics, including CO2 emissions, other greenhouse gases (non-CO2 GHGs), carbon markets, carbon footprints, climate adaptation and international cooperation on climate change.
For the first time at the five-year plan level, the plan creates a comprehensive target system covering all areas of climate policy, say officials in a MEE Q&A.
They describe it as “the main policy instrument” for advancing China’s climate action during 2026-2030.
China rarely issues high-level multi-year policies dedicated to “responding to climate change”. In 2014, the NDRC published a plan on the topic running through to 2020, but this was not linked to a five-year plan period.
Qin Yan, principal analyst at ClearBlue Markets, tells Carbon Brief that the plan shows that China’s climate governance has reached “an unprecedented strategic level”.
She adds that the plan creates an “all-encompassing target system” to support China’s Paris Agreement climate pledges for 2030 and 2035.
In its 2030 pledge, China aimed to peak emissions “before 2030” and reduce carbon intensity – its emissions per unit of GDP – by more than 65% from 2005 levels.
Last year, president Xi Jinping personally announced China’s 2035 pledge to cut China’s greenhouse gas emissions to 7-10% below peak levels by 2035, while “striving to do better”.
The five-year plan marks a new phase in China’s climate policy, according to researchers at CIB Research, an economic research body affiliated with the Industrial Bank, whose largest shareholder is the Fujian provincial government.
Their analysis adds that the plan represents a broad effort to strengthen China’s climate-governance system, implementation mechanisms and underlying capacity.
Nevertheless, several headline targets and policies in the document simply reiterate already established plans.
These include:
- Cutting carbon intensity by 17% across the five years
- Reducing carbon intensity per product in industries under China’s carbon market by 3%
- Substituting fossil fuels with renewables
- Strengthening climate adaptation
- Supporting the “free flow” of cleantech
What does the plan say about non-CO2 GHGs?
The plan also goes into detail on China’s approach to non-CO2 GHGs. This includes reaffirming a target of an emissions “reduction capacity” from these gases totalling 30m tonnes of CO2 equivalent (MtCO2e) by 2030, although the baseline is unclear.
The target previously appeared in the overarching five-year plan, as well as the plan for building a “Beautiful China”.
The goal refers to emissions reductions, which can be realised through implementing current non-CO2 emissions reduction policies and projects, says Chen Meian, programme director and senior analyst at the Institute for Global Decarbonization Progress (iGDP).
She adds that it is “relatively achievable”, with sources including increasing the number of coal-mine methane utilisation projects.
She points to an MEE explanatory note for a draft methodology under the China Certified Emission Reduction (CCER) scheme, China’s voluntary carbon-credit market. Chen says the note suggests that projects using ventilation air methane and coal-mine methane with concentrations below 8% alone could deliver around 20MtCO2e of reduction by 2030.
The note states that, currently, such projects are estimated to be able to “generate annual emission reductions of approximately 4.5MtCO2e”.
In addition, Chen says, measures targeting industrial nitrous oxide (N2O) and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) could help make up the remainder needed to meet the target.
According to iGDP analysis of biennial reports submitted by China to the UNFCCC, China emitted around 14,000MtCO2e of GHGs in 2021, excluding land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF).
Non-CO2 GHGs accounted for around 2,700MtCO2e, or 19%, of the total, the majority of which was methane, as shown in the figure below.
China’s plans to curb these super-pollutants in the five-year period include coal-mine methane utilisation projects, end-of-pipe destruction technologies for HFCs and guidance on the use of catalysts to reduce N2O emissions.
The plan also calls for the recovery and replacement of sulphur hexafluoride (SF6) in power equipment.
For Chen, the plan’s focus on SF6 control is particularly noteworthy. She says the gas is “finally receiving policy attention” and that proactive action is “timely and will help avoid future emissions growth” as China’s power system expands.
What does the plan say about global climate governance?
One of the plan’s clearest objectives for international cooperation is for China to play a more active role in global climate governance.
By 2030, it says China should markedly increase its “influence, guiding power, shaping power and moral appeal” in this area.
It says China’s climate action could also feed into the Global Governance Initiative, a policy initiative aimed at reforming the global governance system.
China will also aim to “build a new narrative on climate governance”, it adds.
Prof Thomas Hale, a professor in public policy at the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government, writes on LinkedIn that the plan “marks a major rhetorical shift” towards China being increasingly willing to “lead and shape” global climate action.
Another clear focal point for international cooperation is in carbon markets.
The plan calls for China to expand the global influence of its carbon market, such as through international rule-setting, cooperation on standards and by hosting the China Carbon Market Conference.
Qin says China’s more active role in global carbon pricing is already evident in the launch of the open coalition on compliance carbon markets with the EU and Brazil. This coalition is expected to adopt a work plan at the China Carbon Market Conference in September.
Qin also notes that China “could become the world’s largest [carbon] offset buyer” as its energy transition progresses.
The country would, therefore, “benefit from helping shape global rules under the Article 6 framework [for carbon trading under the Paris Agreement]”, she adds.
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The post Q&A: What is in China’s new five-year plan for climate change? appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Q&A: What is in China’s new five-year plan for climate change?
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