Mon 26 October 2020:
Chinese leaders will discuss ambitious new measures to tackle climate change on Monday at a government plenum to finalize a new five-year national development plan, after Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged to make the country “carbon neutral” by 2060.
Policymakers are under pressure to include radical climate targets in the new 2021-2025 “five-year plan,” with the COVID-hit economy weighing on their decisions.
Government departments drawing up the document were scheduled to complete the first draft by April, but Xi’s announcement to the United Nations that the country will offset all its emissions within 40 years meant they must integrate the new climate goals.
Xie Zhenhua, formerly China’s top climate official and now adviser to the environment ministry, told Reuters that while the new targets were “based on ample research and calculation,” everyone would now have to make adjustments.
Before September, few expected China to promise more ambitious curbs on climate-warming greenhouse gasses over the next five years, with policy documents signaling Beijing’s intent to make energy security and the economy its top priorities. It was also expected to go on a new coal-fired power construction spree, but government scholars have been forced to revise their old drafts.
“Right now every level of government is busy working on the 14th Five-Year Plan,” said Kevin Lo, Associate Director at the David C. Lam Institute for East-West Studies in Hong Kong, who studies China’s environmental policies.
“The understanding is that there is no time to waste if China is to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.”
Experts say China needs to bring the share of coal in its total energy mix from 58 percent last year to less than 50 percent by 2025, and provide enhanced support for technology like carbon capture.
It could start by setting an absolute emissions cap for the first time, said Zou Ji, head of the Energy Foundation China, which has been involved in five-year plan research.
“Our recommendation is to establish a target to control total carbon emissions (by 2025),” he said at a conference last week.
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