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

Climate change

Echo Xie

Published: 3:39pm, 6 Sep 2021

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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.

Unchecked emissions to make Earth hotter sooner, UN experts say

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.

Under the Paris Agreement, countries are expected to submit Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) every five years. China’s first NDC was submitted to the UN in 2015 and it is expected to submit enhanced NDCs compared to the 2015 version before COP26.

It may include the pledges Xi made in December, but it is not known if China’s enhanced NDCs will have new commitments, say experts.

China is facing increasing pressure to accelerate its climate efforts. Sharma’s visit comes three days after a visit by John Kerry, the US special envoy on climate who pressed China to publicly commit to the 1.5 degrees Celsius limit to global warming above pre-industrial levels, set a time frame for carbon emissions to peak before 2030 and to stop financing overseas coal-fired power projects.

But Beijing rebuffed America’s calls to make more public pledges.

At a panel discussion with climate scientists on the IPCC’s report in August, Sharma said countries should take action to keep 1.5 degrees within reach and called on countries to phase out coal.

“COP26 must be that COP that we consign coal power to history, with countries committing to end the use of coal power at home and to stop financing coal abroad,” he said.

To keep 1.5 degrees within reach, countries must halve global emissions by 2030 and reach net zero emissions by mid-century, according to the IPCC report.

As the world’s largest emitter, as well as the world’s largest coal producer and consumer, engagement with China is seen as critical if the summit is to have any chance of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees.

While China has not made any new commitments, some experts said conversations with Sharma could be more “constructive” compared to China’s exchange with John Kerry.

“Talking to Britain would be better compared to talking to the United States,” said Wang Yiwei, a professor in European studies with Renmin University.

“We’d like to have conversations with Britain and the European Union because it’s under the UN framework.

“China and Britain need to cooperate on climate change as well as on biodiversity. COP 26 and COP15 are related,” he said, referring to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity to be hosted in southwestern Yunnan province next month.

Deliver on climate change goals instead of revising goals: China’s top envoy

China and Britain should increase communication, coordination and mutual support and work with all parties to achieve outcomes at the two conferences, China’s ambassador to Britain, Zheng Zeguang, and Sharma agreed in a discussion on Wednesday.

But the outcome of Sharma’s visit to China – which ends on Tuesday – remains to be seen.

“Many people would ask: can Britain get anything that the US cannot get from China? We can see the results from Tianjin,” said Li Shuo, a senior global policy adviser for Greenpeace East Asia.

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