NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t Ian Magness

Xi commits China to its first ever emissions targets, reports the Telegraph, but is his promise worth anything?

From the Telegraph:

Xi Jinping on Wednesday issued China’s first absolute targets for cutting emissions.

The landmark pledge from the world’s top polluter comes as the US doubles down on fossil fuels and Europe falters in its commitment to meeting targets.

Under the new plan, the Chinese president said his country will reduce economy-wide emissions by 7-10 per cent by 2035 relative to the year of the country’s peak emissions, believed to be 2025.

Full story here.

Whatever Xi promises now can be overturned in the twinkle of an eye when he is replaced as leader. They are not worth the paper they are written on. This is how Chinese politics works.

It is also worth pointing out that China’s emission targets include land use and forestation changes, which are widely regarded as pretty much worthless and can be easily fudged.

The target, for instance, includes an increase in forest stock volume from 6 million to 11 million cubic metres by 2035. And who is going to count of all these cubic metres?

But forests only act as a temporary reduction in emissions – once grown, CO2 emissions return to normal. In short, there is no long term solution other than reducing what you actually emit.

Targets also include non CO2 GHGs, such as methane, nitrous oxide and F-gases. These represent low hanging fruit for China. Together with planting some more forests, which might have grown anyway, China can easily hit its new target without cutting actual CO2 emissions at all.

But assuming China does hit its target, how much difference will this make. Carbon Brief have the answer:

All it will achieve is to return emissions in 2035 to where they were two or three years ago! Assuming CO2 is also cut by 7%, all it would do is take us back to 2021 levels.

Q&A: What does China’s new Paris Agreement pledge mean for climate action?

China had, of course, already pledged to peak emissions by 2030, so it was always inevitable that they would gradually fall afterwards. And the increase in non-fossil fuel share from 25% to 30% is hardly mind blowing either.

China already has 1410 GW of wind and solar power capacity, generating about 18% of China’s electricity. Increasing that to 3600 GW might raise the share to 30% at best, given China’s ever increasing demand for electricity.

None of what Xi has said is “planet saving” or anything that was not already on the cards. It is no more than political theatre, designed to impress the West and encourage them to further damage their economies. No doubt useful idiots like Ambrose Evans-Pritchard and the Climate Change Committee will use it as propaganda.

Little wonder then that Carbon Brief comment:

Overall, the targets for China’s new 2035 “nationally determined contribution” (NDC) under the Paris Agreement have received a lukewarm response, described as “conservative”, “too weak” and as not reflecting the pace of clean-energy expansion on the ground.