Cop28: learn from China on climate action – underpromise and overdeliver

Like previous climate conferences, Cop28 seems to revolve around missed targets, unfulfilled commitments and the increasingly grave consequences of our failures
But China, while still the worst polluter, is quietly and steadily making a planet-leading energy transition

David Dodwell

Published: 7:30pm, 3 Dec 2023

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For the world’s grimmest top job, look no further than the United Nations’ secretary general, Antonio Guterres. As the catastrophic corrosion of multilateral cooperation spreads, with wars, forced migration, pandemics and global warming blighting millions of lives, his warnings have become steadily shriller – and unwelcome and ignored.

From the shell-shocked streets of Kyiv, to the beleaguered Rafah crossing linking Egypt to the shattered open-air prison camp known as Gaza, and the Cop28 UN climate conference in Dubai, Guterres has become the consistent and unwelcome speaker of truth to power.

He did not mince words ahead of Cop28, acutely aware of the need for leaders to replace more-or-less empty promises with grit-on-the-ground commitments to cut carbon dioxide, phase out fossil fuels, slow global warming and fund poor economies’ efforts to cope with climate harm: “Countries are far off track … I see a lack of ambition. A lack of trust. A lack of support. A lack of cooperation. And an abundance of problems around clarity and credibility.”

Credibility is not helped when Cop28 host the United Arab Emirates is a top oil and gas producer, and Cop28 chairman Sultan Al Jaber wrestles with conflicts of interest as chairman of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC). That he is also chairman of Masdar, the UAE’s leading investor in renewable energy, seems to impress no one.

Despite the faltering steps of the Conference of Parties since the first meeting in Berlin in 1995, it would be unfair to make light of the real progress made. A scientific consensus has been created that is well recognised, if poorly communicated.

Landmarks like the Paris Accord have made powerful contributions to political progress and broadened public awareness of the scale and gravity of the climate threat. Community groups and NGOs have been empowered. How else would we have created climate events so enormous – Dubai’s Cop28 brings together more than 70,000 policymakers, experts and climate activists – that a consensus is almost inevitably unachievable?

06:45

“I can’t see my family die like this”: The Kyoto Protocol’s impact 25 years on

Sadly, the main messages of each conference seem to focus on the targets missed, commitments unfulfilled and increasingly grave practical consequences of our failures. As the International Energy Agency (IEA) noted in its recent Net Zero Roadmap, August was the hottest month on record “by a large margin”, with 2023 likely to be the hottest year.

Instead of falling, carbon dioxide emissions from the energy sector continue to rise – to 37 billion tonnes last year from about 25 billion tonnes in 2000. Clean energy investment that needs to amount to US$4.5 trillion a year by the early 2030s is still just US$1.8 trillion. The IEA says no new coal-fired power plants can be built yet China alone approved on average two new coal plants per week last year.

It says we need a clear timetable to phase out fossil fuels (yet the US, Russia and China insist the best we can do is “phase down” and Cop28 chairman Al Jaber’s ADNOC still invests in new gas and oil projects).

Procrastinators – including most oil companies and middle-income countries that depend on fossil fuel revenues – insist we must invest more in abatement: capturing carbon emissions for use or storage. They gloss over the reality made clear by the IEA that “the history of [carbon capture] has largely been one of underperformance”.

02:18

30 years of climate summits: Have they made a difference?

The IEA calculates that we capture about 40 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, and may hit 115 million tonnes by 2030, but that the annual capture must be 1 billion tonnes by 2030 if we are to succeed in reaching net zero emissions.

While governments worldwide struggle to agree on finances for the battle to slow – and deal with the harmful consequences of – global warming, they are still spending a gobsmacking US$7 trillion-US$10 trillion a year on fossil fuel subsidies. There are likely to be fierce arguments in Dubai over these, but no one is holding their breath for concrete commitments to eliminate them.

Over the weekend, Cop28 officials celebrated pledges to contribute more than US$400 million to a loss and damage fund but appear to have overlooked the failed pledge to contribute US$100 billion a year by 2020 to help the world’s poorest countries adjust to and mitigate climate harm.

Fight climate change by funding concrete projects, not pious hopes

There remains a yawning gap between the funds available and the need, estimated by the United Nations to amount to US$125 trillion between now and 2050. As Oxford University’s Rachel Kyte noted, finance is “the obstacle we always trip over”.

Whether you feel hope or despair, it seems China is the key place to look. The world’s largest generator of carbon dioxide, widely attacked for its heavy reliance on coal (which powers around 70 per cent of its electricity), it refuses to commit to net zero before 2060.

But it is also by far the world’s leader in making practical progress in its green transition. It accounts for around 60 per cent of the world’s wind power, over 80 per cent of all the manufacturing stages of solar panels, makes 60 per cent of the world’s batteries for electric vehicles, and half of all EVs on the road. It has installed a third of the world’s 177 million heat pumps.

In a world where most leaders overpromise and underachieve, China seems set on underpromising and overachieving. If that remains true – and others follow – then perhaps our net zero targets might be achievable after all.

David Dodwell is CEO of the trade policy and international relations consultancy Strategic Access, focused on developments and challenges facing the Asia-Pacific over the past four decades