Trend of our time

China doubles down on climate, wind and solar pledges — a day after Trump called them a 'scam'

Clean energy is the "trend of our time," Chinese President Xi Jinping said while announcing modest targets for trimming the economic superpower's carbon pollution.

By Sara Schonhardt

China pledged Wednesday to cut its world-leading levels of climate pollution by up to 10 percent during the next decade — one day after U.S. President Donald Trump urged global leaders to abandon the effort to halt the Earth’s rising temperatures.

The move, announced virtually by Chinese President Xi Jinping, also includes plans for increasing electric vehicles sales and ramping up wind and solar power, which Xi said he aimed to grow six times over 2020 levels.

That projection, while low according to China’s current trajectory, dwarfs the amount of renewable energy produced in the U.S., and seems to contradict Trump’s assertion Tuesday that China doesn’t use the wind turbines being made in its own industrial plants.

Xi said the transition to cleaner energy is the “trend of our time.” In a nod to the U.S., he added, “while some country is acting against it, the international community should stay focused on the right direction.”

“These targets represent China’s best efforts based on the requirements of the Paris Agreement,” Xi said, referring to the 2015 climate pact. “Meeting these targets requires both painstaking efforts by China itself, and a supportive and open international environment.”

Under the terms of the Paris Agreement, countries are required to submit new emission-cutting plans every five years that should be stronger than the previous targets. Instead, Trump has moved to exit Paris for a second time.

Xi’s message of rising determination to stem pollution contrasts with Trump’s remarks made a day earlier on the same stage at the United Nations General Assembly in New York. There, Trump denounced the effort to stem climate change as a “hoax” and a “con job,” and told nations they would lose the global energy race by pursuing wind and solar over fossil fuels.

“If you don’t get away from the green energy scam, your country is going to fail,” Trump told the assembled leaders, while asserting — falsely — that China foists wind turbines on the world while not using them at home.

“Those windmills are so pathetic and so bad,” Trump said Tuesday. “And most of them are built in China and I give China a lot of credit. They build them, but they have very few wind farms. So why is it that they build them and they send them all over the world, but they barely use them?”

In fact, China has installed vast amounts of wind power over the past decade. In just the first five months of this year it added 46 gigawatts of new wind energy, enough to power more than 30 million homes. During the same period, Trump’s government has frozen permits for several wind farms proposed or under construction in the Atlantic, where the U.S. has a small fraction of offshore turbines compared with China.

China’s support for global climate efforts is notable, said Li Shuo, director of the China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute. “That is a sharp contrast with not only the lack of attention on climate change [globally], but, you know, active backtracking climate policies here in the U.S.”

But China’s pledge falls short of what many nations and scientists say is needed to avoid the dangerous effects of climate change. Last year, the U.S. under then-President Joe Biden had pushed China to cut its carbon emissions 30 percent in order to prevent global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius from preindustrial levels.

That makes China’s goal of cutting emissions 7 to 10 percent look modest, though the pledge also said the country would be “striving to do better.” A higher number was unrealistic given the receding pressure from the U.S. under Trump and other countries, said Joanna Lewis, an energy and environment professor at Georgetown University and long-time China watcher.

“Given the time we’re in and the political realities in the U.S., China could put forward a relatively modest target and still be viewed as taking climate change seriously,” Lewis said.

Many countries and observers were hoping that with the U.S. out of the picture, China would step up and take on a global leadership role, Lewis noted.

“This target doesn’t really do that,” she said. But it was announced by China’s president, the country is still in the Paris Agreement, and it kicked off the tone at a climate summit where dozens of other leaders stood up and also pledged to do more.

Some green groups were more critical.

“Even for those with tempered expectations, what’s presented today still falls short,” Yao Zhe, global policy adviser at Greenpeace East Asia, said in a statement. “This 2035 target offers little assurance to keep our planet safe, but what’s hopeful is that the actual decarbonization of China’s economy is likely to exceed its target on paper.”

China’s new climate plan is its first absolute emissions target, covering all greenhouse gases and all sectors of its economy. China’s previous goal was to peak emissions by 2030 and zero them out by 2060.

Though some believe the country’s emissions may already have peaked or are set to, the goal of cutting them 7 percent to 10 percent by 2035 is “from peak levels,” which Xi didn’t clarify.

“[That’s] problematic because it still leaves the door open for near-term increases in emissions,” said Lauri Myllyvirta, co-founder of the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. It also creates an incentive for firms and local governments to increase emissions in the coming years, thereby weakening the target.

Even as China builds renewables at a record-breaking pace, it continues to add coal-fired power — a resource it possesses in abundance — to meet rising energy demand from its 1.4 billion people.

It is also surpassing the rest of the world in manufacturing and exporting clean energy technologies, which could help other developing countries meet their own climate pledges.

“It’s a highly conservative set of targets that provides little clarity on China’s actual emissions pathway over the next decade, as the clean energy boom will enable the country to achieve much more,” Myllyvirta said.