Tag: Greenhouse gas emissions

Global Leaders Pledge to End Deforestation by 2030

Chin@Strategy

Efforts to keep forests standing, nevertheless, have struggled. One effort, recognized in the Paris climate accord, seeks to pay forested nations for reducing tree loss, but progress has been disappointingly slow. Governments have made similar promises before, without making much progress in stemming the felling of forests for farming and commercial lumber. This year, scientists found that parts of the Amazon have begun emitting more carbon than they store. A United Nations plan announced in 2017 made similar commitments. An agreement in 2014 to end deforestation by 2030, the New…

Scott Morrison tells Cop26 Australia will exceed 2030 target in bid to fend off criticism

Chin@Strategy

Scott Morrison has used his national statement at the Cop26 to emphasise that Australia will probably overachieve on its 2030 emissions reduction target in an effort to blunt international criticism about his government’s lack of climate ambition. While the lead-up to the Glasgow summit was dominated by Morrison’s negotiations with the National party to land a net zero commitment by 2050, the UN-led event is focused on ambition for the 2030s. Australia – part of a bloc of big emitters and exporters at last weekend’s G20 summit in Rome attempting…

How Much Are Countries Pledging to Reduce Emissions?

Chin@Strategy

As the United Nations climate summit in Glasgow gets underway this week, many countries have vowed to do more to fight climate change. Yet those plans still fall short of what’s needed to avoid a dangerous rise in global temperatures. The charts below show emissions pathways for the world’s 10 biggest polluters, based on data from Climate Action Tracker. Together they account for more than two-thirds of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Largest Emitters Source: Climate Action Tracker·Note: Chart reflects emissions from fossil fuels and industry. The world’s four biggest…

‘If we don’t act now it will be too late’, warns Johnson ahead of Cop26

Chin@Strategy

World leaders have been warned that Cop26 must “mark the beginning of the end of climate change” amid last-minute talks that could help determine the future of the planet. With the long-awaited environmental summit due to start on Monday, Boris Johnson issued his plea while saying “too many countries are still doing too little”. Speaking en route to Italy to meet other prime ministers and presidents from the G20 group of industrialised nations, Johnson said that without action the modern world could suffer the same fate as the Roman empire…

China’s New Climate Pledge Changes Little, in Bad Omen for COP26

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China formalized the pledges its leader announced last year, but the country went no further, in an official update of its targets to fight climate change, which were submitted on Thursday with the United Nations climate change agency. It foreshadows a grim start to the international climate talks in Glasgow next week, considering that China’s emissions account for the largest share in the world right now. It reflects the political and economic challenges within China in pivoting away from fossil fuels. China burns more coal than every other country combined…

China’s new climate plan falls short of Cop26 global heating goal, experts say

Chin@Strategy

China has published its long-awaited national plan on greenhouse gas emissions, just days before the opening of the Cop26 UN climate summit. However, the plan revealed on Thursday represents little progress on the previously announced ambitions of the world’s biggest carbon emitter, disappointing observers of the vital climate talks. Emissions would peak by 2030 and be reduced to net zero three decades later, according to the nationally determined contribution (NDC) submitted to the UN. This is widely regarded as too late to ensure the world limits global heating to 1.5C…

China will honour its climate pledges – look at the changes we have already made | Zheng Zeguang

Chin@Strategy

In the run-up to the climate conference in Glasgow, there are suggestions that without real participation and greater contribution from China, neither the conference nor the global response to climate change will get anywhere. The unstated worry is this: will China honour its pledges to reduce emissions? This anxiety is unnecessary. Anyone who knows China well is sure that my country is serious about reducing carbon emissions and pursuing green development, and that we mean what we say. In China, it is already a national consensus that “lucid waters and…

China to cut fossil fuel use to below 20% by 2060

Chin@Strategy

China is targeting a clean energy goal of reducing fossil fuel use to below 20% by 2060, according to an official plan published by state media. The cabinet document, released on Sunday, follows a pledge by President Xi Jinping to wean the world’s biggest polluter off coal, with a target of peaking carbon emissions by 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality 30 years later. But the country has been criticised for pushing ahead with opening dozens of new coal-fired power plants. Authorities have also been wanting to ramp up production, with…

‘Ecological civilisation’: an empty slogan or will China act on the environment?

Chin@Strategy

This week, China took charge of hosting a major UN environmental conference for the first time, at the opening of Cop15 in Kunming. The world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter and largest consumer of natural resources might seem a strange choice to host talks to stop the destruction of ecosystems and mass extinctions of wildlife, but the conference marks a tipping point in China’s development and an international debut for “ecological civilisation”, a little-known phrase outside its borders with big implications for the planet. Amid uncertainty around whether President Xi Jinping…

China’s Power Crunch Exposes Tensions Ahead of Key U.N. Climate Summit

Chin@Strategy

Renewable energy in inland China sometimes generates more electricity than nearby consumers can use, but then at other times produces too little. Just five years ago, three inland regions that create abundant solar and wind energy power — sparsely populated Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang and Gansu — were wasting up to two-fifths of that power. To address this problem, China has built ultra-high-voltage transmission lines linking the country’s interior to hubs near the coast. But connectivity still has a ways to go. “New demand can more than be met by cleaner…