Since Donald Trump came to power as US president in January, he has started the process to exit the Paris climate accord, slashed US spending on climate programmes at home and abroad, and slapped a 20% tariff on all Chinese imports.
These moves have raised questions about whether China will seize the opportunity to step up its global leadership on clean energy and align more closely with other supporters of the international climate regime.
Climate Home spoke to China specialist Rebecca Nadin about what Trump’s offensive on trade and the green transition could mean for relations between the world’s two biggest carbon emitters and for China’s climate policies.
Nadin is the director of the global risks and resilience team at ODI Global, a London-based think tank. She previously worked in China, advising the government on adaptation to climate change. Before that, she worked in the British Embassy in Beijing, specialising in Japan-China relations, Central Asia and energy security.
Climate Home: How might Trump’s abandonment of US and international climate action and efforts to use trade as a bargaining chip affect China’s climate policy?
Nadin: It won’t change too much. China will do what China’s doing. The climate community is calling on China to step up now and be this global leader – but its climate trajectory will always depend on how economically and domestically advantageous that is to China.
Donald Trump has pitched himself as “the tariffs guy” and you might think he would want to crush China’s dominant renewables sector. But Biden also put tariffs on the Chinese solar industry – so, in reality, that’s not such a shift.
Similarly, the Biden administration promoted mining of minerals needed for the energy transition in places like Zambia. Even if Trump doesn’t give a damn about the energy transition, a lot of these minerals are useful for the military or information technology, so this policy won’t change too much.
Electricity demand surges, expanding renewables and fossil fuels in 2024
China set out very clearly in its 14th five-year plan that it wants to dominate renewable energy. In 2023, it accounted for 65% of global wind capacity, and it also dominates the production and building of ships that are needed to transport offshore wind [equipment]. And it dominates the supply chain of a lot of those minerals that are needed for renewable tech.
It’s just announced a big investment, for example, in Kazakhstan in wind. So it is going to carry on doing that because, actually, I think the US market for China is relatively small. Most of China’s renewable tech focus is pretty much Southeast Asia – it’s regional.
Then this month, in what some are interpreting as a step to take on the mantle of global climate leadership, Chinese Premier Li Qiang noted that China would “actively engage in, and steer global environmental and climate governance”.
This is a welcome sign, but don’t expect any shift in terms of finance beyond what was agreed at COP29, where China agreed to a formula for the new finance goal for climate-vulnerable countries that would allow its contributions to be counted on a voluntary basis. China will continue to remind the world that it is willing, though not obliged, to help developing countries enhance their adaptability through South-South cooperation.
Q: How would you interpret the latest government announcements on China’s energy and economic policies – do they show that Beijing is serious about keeping up momentum towards its climate goals?
A: In December 2024, the state-owned oil refiner Sinopec announced that China’s oil consumption would peak in 2027. That’s quite a big statement! This is as demand for new energy vehicles, which don’t need oil, is soaring in China. On the other hand, they predict that demand for oil for jet and ship fuel will increase.
The other thing that struck me recently was from the Central Economic Work Conference. It’s one of the most important meetings of the Politburo that effectively sets China’s economic priorities and strategies. In 2024, there was not much mention of climate issues there, as it was all recovery from COVID-19 and the economic downturn, but this year you saw a real focus on the need to “advance China’s green low-carbon transition”.
And just this month Premier Li stressed that China would continue to move towards peaking carbon emissions and achieving carbon neutrality with an acceleration of the integration of renewable energy into local grids and the construction of transmission routes. He also addressed the “coal conundrum” by indicating that China is going to launch low-carbon upgrade pilots for some of its coal-fired power plants.
With China, you have to be very pragmatic. In some areas, China’s doing good stuff. In others, it’s not. People put it in this area of “you’re a hawk or a dove” – and that’s just not a good way of understanding it.
Q: For example, China recently announced a package of major clean energy projects in a bid to peak emissions by 2030 and become carbon-neutral by 2060 – but it also plans to keep increasing coal production too. What explains these seeming contradictions?
A: China is exposed to huge climate change risk – and it knows that. It also wants to keep benefiting from its world-leading renewable and green technology industries and, as an energy security-poor nation, to develop domestic renewable energy.
On the other hand, coal is still a primary energy source for China and that is because these energy sectors are still big employers in the poorest parts of the country – the industrial heartlands. Like other countries, China has to balance that just transition [away from coal] as well.
There is a stark realisation in China that the coal industry and the heavy polluting industries are big employers and that these individual provinces need to be supported in a transition away from that. These provinces can be huge – some have more than 100 million people – so it’s difficult. It’s like transitioning several countries.
This Australian coal community is co-designing its own green future
But [the Chinese authorities] have always understood the socio-economic benefits of addressing climate change. Even in the 1990s, climate policy was moved from the China Meteorological Administration to the predecessor of the National Development and Reform Commission. That showed they saw it not just as an environmental issue but as an issue of socio-economic development.
Q: China’s National Development and Reform Commission recently proposed a huge hydropower dam on the Tibetan plateau. What will be the implications of that – and is it a positive move?
A: The Tibetan Plateau is basically the Third Pole. It’s like the water tower of Asia – you’ve got all these major rivers in the Hindu Kush Himalaya basin. Putting a dam up in the Yarlung Tsangpo River would allow China to effectively control the lower riparian countries – India, Bangladesh – which originate rivers in the Brahmaputra. This could be really, really serious.
The engineering that’s required to build this dam is phenomenal because they’re effectively going to have to tunnel through the mountain, and this gorge is something like 3,000 metres deep. So what they’re expecting is that with the power of the water dropping through this gorge, the power production would be two or three times that of the Three Gorges Dam.
As the climate community, we need to also think a little bit about some of the trade-offs. China will meet its renewable energy targets with this dam, but then potentially you’ve got a massive issue with water flow into Bangladesh, India, Laos and all those countries. And the sediment – this is what happened with the Three Gorges [in the 1950s] – they dammed the Yellow River and all the sediment was trapped behind the dam. Then they had to release it. This basically messes up the soil (and) the nutrients. So you solve one problem, but you create another.
The post Q&A: China set to stay the course on green policies, despite Trump appeared first on Climate Home News.
Q&A: China set to stay the course on green policies, despite Trump
Scientists have vowed to keep working on the next flagship set of reports for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), after a political row over the timeline for their release saw its latest session suspended on Friday evening without agreement.
During the weekend, government officials and scientists alike expressed disappointment over the inability to reach a compromise before some delegates from developing countries and small island states had to leave the week-long meeting in Ethiopia to catch flights home.
The disagreement – which has persisted since early 2024 – turns on whether the three key parts of the AR7 assessment should all be published before the conclusion of the UN’s next Global Stocktake of global climate action, which is due to be completed in late 2028.
The IPCC issued a statement after the close of the session, saying that “key agenda items” – the timelines for the three AR7 reports, as well as the IPCC budget – remain open and under discussion. It said the IPCC’s plenary session and its deliberations on the pending agenda “will resume at the earliest opportunity”, giving no further details of when.
IPCC Chair Jim Skea told delegates in closing remarks that recent months had been some of the most turbulent for the climate science panel and that, if there were stronger words than “profound disappointment” he would use them, according to a summary published by the Earth Negotiators Bulletin (ENB). IPCC discussions happen behind closed doors.
IPCC scientists remained committed
In an open letter, issued on Monday, a group of nearly 120 scientists – from a total of 664 AR7 authors – said they “stand committed to continue working to deliver the AR7 reports in a manner that is rigorous, timely and inclusive, in line with our mandate to be policy-relevant”.
“An assessment that arrives after the decisions it is meant to inform cannot serve its purpose,” they emphasised. “The second Global Stocktake in 2028 is such a decision point, and the world should not have to face it without the IPCCʼs latest assessment.”
Europe, small islands and the least developed countries, plus many Latin American and developed nations, want the IPCC to meet this deadline, arguing that the findings from the UN climate science body are irreplaceable in the UN climate policy-making process.
However, around a dozen developing countries plus Russia have argued that the reports should come later in order to allow for greater research input from the Global South – something that, in their view, would make the findings fairer. They also claim that a shorter timeline would put excessive pressure on experts.
-
Who shapes climate science? The equity question facing the IPCC
Early completion of the next global climate science assessment reports risks excluding research from the Global South, which is key to ensuring the findings are fair -
Governments that support climate science must stand firm against naysayers
The IPCC is meeting to decide the timing of its next major report, as some countries try to delay it and weaken the case for faster emissions cuts
The most vocal of this group at last week’s meeting were India and Saudi Arabia, according to the ENB summary and a developed country diplomat. Critics see this push for a longer timeline as an excuse to deprive government decision-makers of the latest science and ease pressure on emerging economies to raise their ambition, particularly on cutting emissions.
Commenting on last week’s meeting, France’s ambassador for climate negotiations Benoît Faraco said a broad coalition of developed and developing countries from all five continents, “united in their support for science and the timeline proposed by scientists”, had withstood pressure “from a few countries” seeking to slow down the process of adopting the IPCC reports.
He added that France would not back down and would “continue to fight tirelessly for science, protect the integrity of information, and convince our partners that without the best available scientific data, we will be less effective in tackling climate change and protecting our populations”.
Inclusivity proposal stalled
In a bid to unlock a solution for the AR7 timeline, countries discussed ways to improve the inclusivity of the IPCC’s work. One option put on the table was for the IPCC to expand its funding for delegates from developing countries to attend some or all of its sessions from one to two participants, according to the ENB summary and a delegate speaking to Climate Home News.
That would increase the costs for the IPCC to complete AR7 by up to a quarter, according to an assessment shared by the secretariat. The panel’s budget is under severe strain and its officials have warned that, without additional voluntary contributions, it risks running out of money before it can deliver on this assessment cycle.
Climate Home News understands that some of the IPCC’s traditional donors – which mainly include European countries, Japan and Australia – indicated a willingness to support funding for an additional developing country participant. But without an agreement over the budget or the timeline for the reports, that option was ultimately not adopted.
‘Disappointed and worried’
The three reports are managed by working groups that collate and draw overall findings from the latest scientific studies and data on the physical effects of global warming around the world, how to adapt to it, and pathways for cutting planet-heating emissions in order to meet the temperature goals of the Paris Agreement.
Winston Chow, an urban climate professor at Singapore Management University who co-chairs Working Group II on adaptation, wrote in a LinkedIn post that he was “disappointed and worried” for the IPCC authors who have worked “extraordinarily hard” to assess the relevant climate science over the past two years.
He said he shared their concern that “the rigour, time and goodwill they’ve invested are now being put at risk by the Panel’s stalemate”.
As science comes under attack at UN talks, climate movement splits over how to respond
For Working Group II, a meeting for 250 experts writing that report is scheduled for January 2027, followed by the approval of a special report on cities and climate change in Singapore next March.
But because the IPCC’s budget has not been confirmed due to uncertainty about the AR7 schedule, travel support for those researchers is at risk, wrote Chow. “If they cannot participate, our assessments will lose vital expertise, perspectives and scientific breadth, and the collective effort of our authors will be undermined,” he warned.
Scientific work continues
Despite the political holdups, he – together with French climate scientist Robert Vautard, co-chair of Working Group 1 – agreed with IPCC head Skea who told the IPCC’s closing session on Friday: “The engine room of the IPCC is working, and it’s healthy.”
Vautard commented in a separate post on LinkedIn after it ended: “The boat is at full steam.” Working groups I and II are due to start revising the first drafts of their reports, while Working Group III on reducing emissions is finalising its first draft which will be out soon, he wrote.
“The most exciting two years of the cycle are ahead, for the authors. The momentum in the engine room is here and now. Trust the engine room!” he added.
The IPCC and some scientists report that progress has been made towards achieving an equitable balance of authors from the Global North and the Global South.
The group of researchers who signed the open letter on Monday noted that “inclusivity is at the heart of how we work”, with author teams bringing together experts from developed and developing countries with diverse backgrounds and at different stages of their careers.
Plea to overcome political differences
The signatories include several scientists from some of the countries opposed to the alignment of all IPCC reports with the Global Stocktake.
“We are committed to an assessment in which the knowledge, experience and priorities of every region are fully reflected, a commitment we share with the leadership of the IPCC.
Equity is built into how our assessment is being drafted,” they added.
They appealed to governments that make up the IPCC “to overcome their political differences and work together as we do as a global scientific community, so that we can deliver the IPCC reports the world needs to hear”.
In a statement published on Monday, IPCC chair Skea said reaching consensus on the schedule for the reports is “vital”. He added that the assessments provide authoritative scientific evidence to inform national climate policies, strengthen adaptation and resilience and support access to climate finance, as well as helping communicate the scale of the climate crisis and the urgency of efforts to tackle it.
The post IPCC scientists vow to press on with climate reports despite political deadlock appeared first on Climate Home News.
IPCC scientists vow to press on with climate reports despite political deadlock
An Lambrechts is a biodiversity politics expert at Greenpeace International with extensive experience in biodiversity-related multilateral negotiations. She is the head of the Greenpeace delegation at the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) COP17 happening in Yerevan, Armenia.
In 2022, COP15 delivered the landmark Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030. With COP17 starting in Yerevan, we are now halfway to the deadline, and according to the first Global Review of progress, countries are not on track to meet the biodiversity targets, and implementation must accelerate fast.
One of the main findings of the Global Review is that funding falls far short of the scale needed to halt and reverse nature loss. But the crisis facing the world’s biodiversity is not an absolute scarcity of capital – it is a profound public policy distortion.
The global economy currently spends roughly $30 destroying nature for every single dollar invested in its protection. According to a report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, a staggering $2.4 trillion is spent in public subsidies for fossil fuels, agriculture and water use, while global investment in biodiversity conservation and restoration stands at a mere $220 billion.
Countries urged to ramp up “insufficient” nature policies at COP17
Yet, discussions about how to close the biodiversity finance gap continue to claim that salvation lies in mobilising private capital, scaling offsets and “derisking” investments in nature. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of both the nature of ecological stewardship and of the global financial architecture.
Biodiversity conservation is not a speculative investment portfolio – it is the foundation of human survival. The health of our planet is a non-monetisable, non-excludable public good. Expecting profit-seeking private capital to protect nature perpetuates the structural drivers of ecosystem destruction in the first place.
But if private market mechanisms cannot save biodiversity, where will the necessary public resources come from?
Money going to the wrong places
The answer lies in recovering the vast public wealth currently drained by cross-border tax abuse, financial secrecy and corporate impunity. Finance and environment ministers meeting in Yerevan must give a strong political signal that, to avert ecological breakdown, countries need to take swift action to reform global tax rules, eliminate harmful public subsidies and cancel unsustainable sovereign debts for the public revenues to end up where they belong.
Extractive sectors such as industrial agriculture, fishing, timber and mining continue business-as-usual, often heavily subsidised by public treasuries, while voluntary carbon and biodiversity offset markets pose a serious risk to nature conservation. Offset schemes have delivered only a negligible fraction of the funding needed to preserve ecosystems, allowing industries to continue with their destructive business-as-usual practices.
-
Global deforestation slowed in 2025 but Brazil’s election could undo “fragile” gains
Countries remain 70% off track to meet a goal to end deforestation by 2030, as progress in Latin America offset by failures in Africa -
Brazil confident new rainforest fund will reach $10bn donor milestone
Brazil’s environment minister said the Tropical Forest Forever Facility has raised billions in record time – which he hopes will convince more investors
In advanced economies, public funding often actively undermines biodiversity. In Europe, over €5.3 billion in public subsidies is funnelled annually into intensive forest biomass harvesting under renewable energy directives, degrading primary forest ecosystems and undermining long-term climate resilience. Pleading with private investors to fill a “finance gap” while pouring billions into ecological destruction is an exercise in futility.
Developing countries struggle with debt burden
For developing countries, reliance on private finance is further compounded by a crushing sovereign debt crisis. In 2024, public debt in developing economies reached record levels, with net interest payments alone absorbing $921 billion. A record 61 developing countries now spend more than 10% of government revenue on foreign debt service, with many climate-vulnerable nations spending twice as much servicing external debt as they receive in climate and biodiversity finance combined.
This burden acts as a structural driver of ecosystem destruction. Under pressure from external creditors and international financial institutions to avoid default and secure foreign exchange, governments are routinely forced into austerity measures and pushed to expand raw commodity exports into pristine biomes.
Comment: World Bank and IMF should lead the financial system in responding to the climate crisis
The current negotiations for a United Nations Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation (UNFCITC) also offer a way forward. An estimated $492 billion in tax revenue is lost every year to offshore tax havens. Multinational corporations account for around $348 billion of this total by shifting profits away from the countries where real economic extraction and environmental degradation occur.
In the mining sector alone, developing nations lose tens of billions annually to corporate tax dodging. Furthermore, international financial secrecy shields environmental criminals, with illicit financial flows from illegal logging draining between $51 billion and $152 billion annually.
At COP17, leaders must seize the opportunity to build a bridge between the two conventions and enhance cooperation. Governments must put the world on a firm path to securing predictable, sufficient, sovereign public finance for biodiversity conservation. It’s the only path to a restorative, rights-based future for people and the planet.
The post Protecting nature is a public duty, not a Wall Street profit opportunity appeared first on Climate Home News.
Protecting nature is a public duty, not a Wall Street profit opportunity