Is China still serious about climate change? Why did Xi Jinping not show up at COP26?

Is China still serious about climate change? Why did Xi Jinping not show up at COP26?
#COP26 #glasgow #climatechange #chinasnewnormal

TIMESTAMPS

00:00 Why does China seem to not care about Climate Change? At COP26, Biden accused Xi Jinping of not showing up at COP26, as a sign that China is bailing out of China’s climate change commitments. Reality is that China has been giving clear commitments to tackle climate change since 2015 at Paris meetings. China committed to reduce CO2 emissions after 2030 and go to carbon zero by 2060. The developing world is committing to 2050, but China is typically ahead of target as we seen in the past, and the West typically behind target. So we will meet in 2055.

03:42 Why is China giving mixed signals on climate change? Xi Jinping not showing up at COP26 was not a sign of China not committing to climate changes; as it had to do with COVID-19 measures he wanted to keep strict. Re-opening coal mines didn’t leave a good impression either; but also not reducing CO2 total emissions before 2030 is seen as not doing enough. The issue is that China is in shortage of energy this winter, and that the energy needs of China are growing so fast, that reducing total CO2 before 2030 is mission impossible no other country could do.

06:05 What are China’s CO2 emission targets? Cap CO2 emissions by 2030, zero-carbon by 2060. Today, 16% of energy supply in China is renewable, and this will go up-to 25% by 2030 and above 80% by 2060. At same time, coal is still 57% of all energy supply and is going down by a few percentages every year since 2005. This is a race against time.

07:45 What is China doing on renewable energy? As far as capacity, they have more than U.S., Europe, Japan and South-Korea together. China also built ultra-high-voltage lines to bring this energy to the coastal cities. China is planting more trees than any country on the planet, and they just opened a carbon emission market to speed up the transformation. As far as electrical, China is the biggest Electrical Vehicle market in the world, with the most advanced and highest capacity of batteries and electrical vehicles, like busses. They are also building carbon-zero visionary cities now.

11:47 What caused China’s energy crisis? Due to climate change, many coal plants were affected by floods, which means an undersupply. But also the demand increased as pandemic recovery is on full speed for China’s factories now. Despite China reopening coal plants, they have some of the cleanest in the world, so this is a temporary measure to cope with shortages of this winter. Actually, the reason of shortages has a lot to do with an overreaching of targets of renewable sources being implemented by local governments to reach targets creating an uneven playing field over the whole country.

15:41 Why is China reaching CO2 targets so hard? China is the factory of the world, with the biggest population of the world. They have to reduce from 27% of global CO2 emissions to zero, which is much bigger effort than any country. They are also a huge country, so transmissions from renewable sources to the cities is an incredible infrastructure project. The biggest challenge is that China has fixed energy prices, which the world enjoys very much, and so China needs to liberalize its energy market, which could create a global inflation as result.

18:12 How does China compare to U.S. in CO2 emissions? Currently, China is responsible for 27% of CO2 emissions of the planet, and U.S. only 11%; but historically, North America is responsible for 29% of CO2 emissions, while China only 13% as its factories have been running for less than 40 years. But if we compare energy usage, Chinese are emitting half of U.S. per capita on average, and households are using 8 times less than American households.

20:09 What is China doing well to tackle its energy crisis? They are making the hard choices, by asking factories to close 30% of time during this winter. They are also importing liquid gas from Russia and U.S., instead of coal from Australia. They are liberalizing the energy prices to lower the demand side and are investing heavily into nuclear power plants, including new Thorium plants right now.

22:58 Is Greta right about COP26 that it’s all blah, blah, blah? She seems most correct, as many politicians in the West have been talking a lot, but barely reach their targets, and cannot commit to the future as not all politicians are aligned. China on the other hand, has a huge challenge on climate to tackle, and could do more, but is much more faithful to keeping its promises and plans. So, as Greta says, we should look at the actions, not the worlds anymore.

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