Ban on overseas coal projects could enhance China’s standing at COP26 climate summit

Name: Chinese cash funds African coal plants despite environmental concerns
Uploaded: 2021-09-04T04:00:24.000Z
Duration: 2 min 6 s
Description: Chinese cash funds African coal plants despite environmental concerns

Beijing unlikely to bring forward its 2060 carbon neutrality goal but an end to support for foreign coal power may be possible

Countries are under pressure to bring ambitious targets to the UN summit in Glasgow in November

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Climate experts are hoping China will bring a commitment to ending investments in overseas coal power to the COP26 summit in Glasgow. Photo: Handout

Echo Xie

Published: 12:00pm, 4 Sep 2021Updated: 5:10pm, 31 Oct 2021

China is under pressure to set more ambitious climate targets ahead of November’s United Nations COP26 summit in Glasgow, with diplomats and negotiators calling on the country to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 – a decade earlier than pledged by President Xi Jinping last September.

But climate experts said economic pressures made it unlikely China would bring forward its carbon neutrality goal, suggesting an end to support for overseas coal power as a possible option for any new commitment before COP26.

Countries are being asked to bring ambitious 2030 emissions reduction targets to the summit, to align with reaching net zero by the middle of the century, which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says is necessary to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees.

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Chinese cash funds African coal plants despite environmental concerns

The IPCC warned in 2018 that carbon emissions would need to fall by about 45 per cent from 2010 levels by 2030 to reach net zero around 2050. Last month, a new IPCC report said it was still possible to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees with an immediate, rapid and large-scale reduction of all greenhouse gases, triggering the latest push for action this decade to avoid devastating climate disasters.

The Glasgow summit is also aiming to mobilise finance and finalise the rules needed to implement the Paris Agreement, which requires signatories to update their emissions reduction targets every five years to reflect the highest possible ambition.

China, along with other parties to the agreement, will update its 2030 targets before the summit and has also promised to submit revised short-term and long-term targets.

US climate envoy John Kerry encouraged China to do more to reduce emissions during a virtual meeting on Wednesday with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. Kerry was on his second visit to China in five months, as part of US efforts to convince Beijing to speed up its curb on carbon emissions.

There was similar urging at an online webinar on climate change last month, when Lord Adair Turner, chairman of Britain’s Energy Transitions Commission, called on China to reach peak carbon emissions before 2030 and achieve zero emissions by 2050.

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