China Vows to Cut Greenhouse Gas Emissions 7% to 10% by 2035

(Bloomberg) -- China, the world’s largest polluter, set a target to cut economy-wide net greenhouse gas emissions by 7% to 10% over the next decade, a strategy that’s seen as too modest to put the nation on a path to net zero and galvanize global climate action.

The promised reduction from China’s peak levels — while “striving to do better” — follows President Xi Jinping’s pledge in April to pursue more stringent curbs and to set policies that cover the entire economy, addressing pollutants beyond carbon dioxide. It follows a tradition of Chinese leaders setting relatively modest climate targets, only to surpass them later. 

“These targets represent China’s best efforts based on the requirements of the Paris Agreement,” Xi said in a videotaped address played to a UN climate summit in New York on Wednesday. “Meeting these targets requires both painstaking efforts by China itself and a supportive and open international environment.”

“We have the resolve and confidence to deliver on our commitments,” Xi added. 

Xi outlined other pledges for the country, including a plan to increase its share of non-fossil fuels in total energy consumption to more than 30% and expand installed capacity of wind and solar power more than six times 2020 levels. 

In the European Union, which hasn’t delivered its own updated emissions reduction target, China’s latest goals were met with criticism. 

“This level of ambition is clearly disappointing,” said Wopke Hoekstra, the EU’s climate commissioner. “It makes reaching the world’s climate goals significantly more challenging.”

Although environmentalists and some policymakers cast China’s pledge as cautious and insufficient, analysts emphasized the country’s efforts to develop and deploy renewable wind and solar. 

“The headline target disappoints environmentalists, and it falls short of the climate leadership the world desperately needs,” said Li Shuo, director of the China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute. “Yet, the good news is that in a world increasingly driven by self-interest, China is in a stronger position than most to drive climate action forward.”

The actual decarbonization of China’s economy is likely to exceed the country’s target on paper, said Yao Zhe, global policy adviser at Greenpeace East Asia. “Looking at the amount of wind and solar entering China’s energy mix, there is every reason to believe that China’s economy will continue to decarbonize.”

China’s latest pledge moves the country away from a previous emissions intensity-based process and focuses on absolute volumes of emissions, in line with developed economies. 

Xi did not specify a baseline year for the planned reduction and instead tied it to when China’s greenhouse gas emissions peaked. However, based on current data and trends, that threshold might have been crossed in 2024.

Analysts point to signs that China’s emissions footprint has now peaked — ahead of Xi’s target to do so before 2030 — amid a slowdown in smokestack industries and as the nation’s world-leading deployment of renewable energy begins to slowly erode demand for fossil fuels. 

Xi delivered veiled criticism of the US, which under President Donald Trump has retreated from climate diplomacy and is dialing back policies meant to accelerate the deployment of emission-free energy. 

The low-carbon transition is the trend of our time, Xi said through a translator. “While some country is acting against it, the international community should stay focused on the right direction, remain unwavering in confidence, unremitting in actions and unrelenting in intensity.”

The pace of China’s cuts are seen as especially crucial; the country’s greenhouse gas pollution currently accounts for roughly 30% of global emissions. A faster pace of reductions would vastly improve the world’s chances of avoiding the most catastrophic effects of planetary warming.

Xi’s previous commitments call for China to achieve net zero by 2060, a target that’s seen as too unambitious by many advocates of faster climate action. To move in line with other large nations and hit carbon neutrality by mid-century, China would need to cut its emissions by at least 43% by 2035 compared to 2005 levels, BloombergNEF said in a May report. That would require even steeper reductions from 2025 levels. 

Despite recent positive signals, China’s is still experiencing strong energy consumption growth from air conditioning and chemicals production, and emissions rose slightly in June, according to an analysis by Climate Trace, a nonprofit. Though installations of renewables have set a record in each of the last two years, authorities last year also approved a huge volume of new coal-fired power capacity and appear to have agreed to ramp up natural gas imports from Russia.

(Updates with comment from EU climate commissioner in seventh paragraph. A previous version corrected the day of the week in the third paragraph.)

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