what does that mean for the climate?

China has revealed its goal for slashing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, providing a glimpse into how global emissions might change over the next decade. In a video address to the United Nations Climate Summit on 24 September, Chinese president Xi Jinping announced that China will reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by 7% to 10% from peak levels by 2035.

The pace at which China cuts emissions will have profound global impact. The country has accounted for 90% of the growth in the world’s CO_₂ emissions since 2015 and it is now the largest GHG emitter in the world, responsible for around one-third of the global total, according to the Asia Society Policy Institute, a think tank based in New York City. Analysts have warned that China’s action could make or break the 2015 Paris agreement.

In 2020, Xi pledged that China’s CO_₂ emissions would peak before 2030 and that the country would achieve carbon neutrality before 2060. Some researchers say China’s CO_₂ emissions will probably peak soon if they haven’t already.

The latest targets are part of China’s new Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), a climate-action plan that all countries subject to the Paris agreement must submit to the UN every five years. China also set clean-energy targets for 2035.

The importance of China’s latest NDC is that its targets cover the years until 2035, past the country’s proposed peak, says Yao Zhe, a Beijing-based researcher of China’s climate policy at Greenpeace East Asia. “This is the first time China has officially outlined its post-peaking plan,” Yao says.

Once China’s emissions drop, global emissions will likely start to drop, says Belinda Schäpe, a China analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), a Helsinki-based think tank. “That’s why these targets are so important for the global community, because they can help them understand” how the world’s emissions trajectory could look, she says.

This is also the first time that China has announced a target that covers not only carbon dioxide (CO_₂) but all GHGs including methane and nitrous oxide, says Zhang Da, who researches energy economics and climate change at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

Ambitious or not?

Some researchers think that China’s emissions-reduction target falls short of what the world needs to achieve the Paris agreement’s aim, of limiting global warming to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels, and striving to stay below 1.5 °C.

“Anything less than 20% is definitely not aligned with 2 degrees. Similarly, anything less than 30% is definitely not aligned with 1.5 degrees,” says Lauri Myllyvirta, an analyst who has tracked China’s emissions trends for more than a decade and is CREA’s co-founder. Myllyvirta cites his analysis of a set of future climate scenarios used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to help the world adhere to the Paris Agreement.

The way China has defined its emissions cuts — as 7–10% of an undefined amount, rather than specifying a year as the basis for calculation – leaves the door open for short-term emissions increases, Myllyvirta says.

The different pathways for China to achieve carbon neutrality between 2030 and 2060 could result in different amounts of cumulative emissions, says Myllyvirta. “What matters for the climate is the total amount of GHGs emitted into the atmosphere over time,” he says, adding that this is why cutting emissions fast early on is important.

But others, such as Da, regard China’s target an important step. “Reducing non-CO_₂ emissions is typically more challenging than mitigating CO_₂,” says Da. “A 7–10% reduction in net GHG emissions from peak levels usually implies a higher level of CO_₂ reduction.”

A study by Da and colleagues¹published in January, found that if China reduces its energy-related CO_₂ emissions by 10–12% from peak levels by 2035, the country would meet its goal of being carbon neutral before 2060. A separate study²also co-authored by Da, found the two-degree temperature goal is achievable under China’s carbon-neutral timeline.