China is pushing back against efforts at COP26 climate talks to phase out coal worldwide and to force countries to beef up their emissions plans as soon as next year.
Energy security concerns will keep China from supporting the proposal on coal, according to a person familiar with China’s position who asked not to be named. While China plans to peak emissions by 2030, the country is now in the grips of an energy crisis and is ramping up coal output to record levels.
Beijing is also pushing back against a proposal at COP26 to force governments to revise their official climate plans by the end of next year, a move aimed at curbing temperature increases as soon as possible. China’s view is that working out a new plan for emissions so soon after its latest submission just ahead of the talks in Glasgow will be too time-consuming for the world’s biggest emitter.
The press office of China’s negotiating team didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The latest position shows that China hasn’t really budged from its objections even after a surprise agreement with the U.S. announced late Wednesday evening injected some hope into the talks. The two superpowers said they would work together to boost concrete action that would cut planet-warming emissions in the 2020s, a crucial decade. The bilateral pact also includes efforts to curb methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.
In the last days of COP26, resistance remains to some key parts of a draft communique that has to be agreed by consensus.
It’s not just China pushing back. India, the world’s third-largest polluter, has also said it opposes the proposed line in an early draft of the Glasgow agreement to “accelerate the phasing-out of coal and subsidies for fossil fuels.” India is seeking more financial support from rich countries before it makes stronger climate commitments. Saudi Arabia has denied accusation it is blocking progress. Prime Minister Boris Johnson called on leaders late Wednesday not to stand in the way of an ambitious deal.
COP talks have been made more complicated by the energy crisis that’s raging through Asia and Europe, throwing the spotlight on the importance of energy security and the perils of abandoning dirty energy sources before the clean ones are ready to pick up the slack. While China has resorted to burning more coal, the U.S. has been asking OPEC to pump more oil.
In October, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang warned that the nation’s green transition needs to be underpinned by a stable supply of energy and called for an indepth assessment of the recent power crunch before setting any short-term targets for reaching peak emissions. Production of coal, natural gas and oil are still important to the country’s success and security, he said.
“Energy security should be the premise on which a modern energy system is built, and the capacity for energy self-supply should be enhanced,” he said.
That means the twin goals of peak emissions by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060 should be achieved in a “sound and well-paced” manner that will require “long and hard” effort, according to Li.
At an event last week, Sun Zhen, a member of China’s negotiation team who is also the head of climate change department under China’s environment ministry, said during an event about carbon capture and storage in China, that “Instead of focusing on reducing the use of coal, we should focus on how to reduce the emission of the coal by CCUS technology."
