EU backs China carbon neutral pledge but ‘more climate work to be done’

Xi Jinping’s commitment to balance emissions by 2060 comes a week after pressure applied at meeting with European leaders

Carbon neutrality a bold move and shows Xi’s willingness to mix climate and geopolitics, analyst says

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China has agreed to cap carbon emissions before 2030. Photo: AP

Published: 8:37pm, 23 Sep 2020Updated: 10:51pm, 23 Sep 2020

The European Union offered qualified approval to China’s renewed pledges to tackle climate change but insisted Beijing stop construction of coal-fired power stations at home and abroad.

“I welcome China’s ambition to curb emissions and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a tweet on Wednesday after Chinese President Xi Jinping made the commitments in a video address to the United Nations General Assembly.

“It’s an important step in our global fight against climate change under the Paris Agreement. We will work with China on this goal. But a lot of work remains to be done.”

In his UN speech, Xi endorsed one of the EU’s three demands: the 2060 target of balancing carbon emissions with carbon absorption from the atmosphere 10 years after the EU.

The endorsement came just a week after von der Leyen joined Xi at a meeting with EU leaders, where she called on China – the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter – to commit to three specific goals on climate change.

Li Shuo, a specialist on Chinese climate policy from Greenpeace East Asia, said Xi’s pledge just minutes after US President Donald Trump’s address to the assembly was “clearly a bold and well calculated move”.

“It demonstrates Xi’s consistent interest in leveraging the climate agenda for geopolitical purposes,” Li said.

“Carbon neutrality was very rarely discussed in China, [so] pleading to achieve it before 2060 is a bold move. It is also in line with the recent EU demand to China,” Li said.