Climate change: British envoy looks forward to China’s ‘enhanced’ 2030 emissions goal

Alok Sharma tweeted about arriving in China and meeting its top climate diplomat as pressure builds for Beijing to cut dependence on coal

Experts said conversations between Sharma and China’s climate envoy Xie Zhenhua could be more ‘constructive’ than China’s exchange with John Kerry

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COP26 President Alok Sharma arrived in Tianjin on Sunday for talks with government and business representatives. Photo: AFP

Published: 3:39pm, 6 Sep 2021Updated: 8:55pm, 6 Sep 2021

Alok Sharma, Britain’s president-designate for the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP26, arrived in China on Sunday for a three-day visit to talk about Beijing enhancing its emissions goals ahead of the summit in Glasgow in November.

Sharma arrived in Tianjin at China’s invitation and exchanged views with China’s climate envoy Xie Zhenhua on climate cooperation between the two countries and COP 26, China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment said in a statement on Monday.

Sharma said on Twitter on Sunday he was pleased to be in China for discussions with Xie “on how we work together towards a successful #COP26”.

“I welcome China’s commitment to climate neutrality by 2060 and look forward to discussing China’s policy proposals towards this goal, its plans for submitting an enhanced 2030 emissions reduction target, as well as how we work towards a successful multilateral outcome at COP26,” he was quoted by Reuters as saying.

Chinese President Xi Jinping last September pledged his country would hit peak carbon emissions before 2030 and would achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.

In December, Xi announced new 2030 climate targets to the Climate Ambition Summit, including tougher goals on carbon intensity, non-fossil energy share in the primary energy mix and increasing the volume of forest. He also said China’s wind and solar capacity would reach 1,200 gigawatts by 2030.

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