China Resists Climate Pressure From West, but Makes Gains on Its Own
Beijing won’t bow to pressure to cut emissions at COP27 summit, but may slow their growth significantly on its own
China is sending a large delegation to the United Nations climate summit in Egypt, but it is unlikely to bow to demands to strengthen its pledge to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, China energy experts say.
The country wants to appear independent, rather than in collaboration with the U.S., when it makes any new climate commitments, they say. It is facing criticism from the U.S. and other countries that its pledges to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions aren’t aggressive enough.
China may go beyond its commitments without making any new pledges. It is leading the world in sales of electric vehicles and installation of renewable energy. The trajectory of its economy could lead to a meaningful slowing of emissions growth.
The world’s biggest greenhouse-gas emitter isn’t unusual among attendees at the U.N. conference, which is taking place in an Egyptian resort city over the next two weeks. It is buying more oil and gas from Russia. Concerns about energy security have meant the country is digging up more coal at home.
China has had its own changes in the past year. Its relationship with the West has deteriorated, and there has been a crackdown on its overheated real-estate market. Some economists say the latter could signal a permanent slowing in the rate of economic growth and energy demand.
The country’s emissions dropped sharply during the 12 months ended in June, driven by wide-ranging Covid-19 lockdowns and a property-market slowdown.
What happens when they rebound “depends heavily on the economic policy direction that the leadership chooses,” said Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at the Finland-based research organization the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, or CREA.
China’s greenhouse-gas emissions are so large that the world won’t get far in curbing global warming unless they come down. The country generates roughly a third of the world’s carbon dioxide, much of it from burning coal in power plants and for industrial use such as making steel and cement.
At COP27, as the conference is known, China is unlikely to update its pledge of reaching peak emissions before 2030 and becoming carbon neutral before 2060, people familiar with the matter said. Instead, it will focus on implementing current climate goals, Li Gao, director of the climate-change department at China’s Ministry of Environment and Ecology, told reporters at a press briefing on Oct. 27.
U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said at a Wall Street Journal event that he had spoken during the conference with his Chinese counterpart, Xie Zhenhua, although he added that the two countries still haven’t restarted formal discussions that halted a few months earlier.
Mr. Xie said separately that China had completed a plan for the reduction of methane emissions, first promised in a joint U.S.-China declaration at last year’s global climate conference, but he didn’t say when it would be released. Before U.S.-China climate talks broke down, experts had expected the two countries might unveil their methane plans together at COP 27.
U.S.-China climate cooperation ground to a halt in August because of Taiwan-related tensions, then deteriorated further in October when the Biden administration effectively banned U.S. semiconductor companies from working with Chinese counterparts.
By some measures, though, China is already beating its climate goals by building out renewable energy faster than anywhere else. Analysts expect the country to add 150 gigawatts in solar and wind capacity this year, nearly as much as the amount in operation in Germany and France combined.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has pledged to have at least 1,200 gigawatts of wind and solar capacity installed by 2030. Chinese provinces have already unveiled plans that would bring total capacity to more than 1,500 gigawatts by 2025, according to a tally by the International Energy Network, a database of Chinese energy information.
The country is also leading the world in purchases of electric vehicles and plowing money into clean-energy technologies such as hydrogen. China sold more electric cars last year than the entire world did in 2020; at the end of last year it had almost half of all the electric cars in the world, according to the Paris-based International Energy Agency.
But China is also playing it safe by boosting investment in coal, a fuel the country can mine in abundance at home but which is also responsible for the bulk of greenhouse-gas emissions. Chinese officials say they need a stable and secure source of energy in the wake of turbulent global energy markets and a series of power shortages that have rattled the country during the past year.
Critics point out that China already consumes more than half of the world’s coal and shouldn’t be burning more.
“Instead of trying to phase out coal or cap it at current levels,” China is positioning itself to burn more coal “for the foreseeable future,” says Pavel Molchanov, an energy-transition analyst at financial services company Raymond James & Associates who predicts the country won’t manage to cap emissions by 2030.
The deciding factor is likely to be whether China tries to goose its economic growth, as it has in the past, by pouring money into energy- and emissions-heavy projects such as real-estate construction, energy analysts say. That could end up increasing energy demand from industries such as cement and steel, which account for roughly a third of China’s emissions, at a pace too fast for the country’s growth in renewable energy to cover.
In August, the government rolled out a nearly $150 billion stimulus package to support its economy, much of it focused on the types of infrastructure and power projects the country has relied on before.
But there are also signs that Chinese officials could hold back from the type of full-bore economic stimulus the country has pursued in the past. Energy experts say it is likely that a significant portion of the currently planned coal-power plants will be abandoned because of poor project economics. China’s leaders under Mr. Xi are increasingly focused on national security and central control over the economy, a stance that could slow growth prospects, many economists say.
And the country is finally undertaking a long-overdue restructuring of its debt-ridden property sector that has left some of China’s biggest developers to go bust or default on loans. Authorities will likely be careful not to inflate the real estate bubble again, many economists say.
Write to Phred Dvorak at phred.dvorak@wsj.com and Sha Hua at sha.hua@wsj.com