China Submits New Climate Plan Days Before COP26 Summit

(@FahadShabbir)

China submits new climate plan days before COP26 summit

Paris, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 28th Oct, 2021 ) :China on Thursday submitted a renewed emissions cutting plan that promised to peak carbon pollution before 2030 but which experts said stopped short of the radical decarbonisation required of the world's largest polluter.

Beijing's new submission to the United Nations, just days before the COP26 climate summit, confirmed its goal to achieve carbon neutrality before 2060 and slash its emissions intensity -- the amount of emissions per unit of economic output -- by more than 65 percent.

Analysts said these amounted to minor improvements on China's existing plan and were far from sufficient from the country responsible for more than a quarter of all carbon pollution.

As part of the 2015 Paris Agreement, all countries agreed to slash emissions in order to limit temperature rises to "well below" two degrees Celsius and to strive for a safer 1.5-C warming cap.

Under the accord's "ratchet" mechanism, signatories agreed to submit new and more ambitious emissions cutting plans -- known as Nationally Determined Contributions, or NDCs -- every five years.

Last year, President Xi Jinping indicated that China would achieve carbon neutrality around 2060 and peak emissions around 2030.

But China had been a major NDC holdout, missing several submission deadlines during the year-long delay of COP26 due to the pandemic.

It was hoped its new plan could build momentum ahead of the summit in Glasgow, which begins on Sunday.

According to the document, published on the UN's climate change website, China will increase its share of non-fossil fuels in Primary energy consumption to 25 percent, up from the 20 percent previously pledged.

It also plans to increase its forest stock by six billion cubic metres compared with 2005 levels and "bring its total installed capacity of wind and solar power to over 1.2 billion kilowatts by 2030".

However it was not immediately clear how Beijing plans to draw down its emissions in line with what science says is needed to avoid catastrophic levels of heating this century.