China unveils new plan for carbon emissions peak
SHANGHAI/ROME: China will take action to reduce waste, promote renewables and unconventional fuel, and reform its electricity network as part of its plan to bring carbon emissions to a peak before 2030, China’s cabinet said on Tuesday.
The new action plan repeats China’s targets to bring wind and solar capacity to 1,200 gigawatts by the end of the decade, to build more hydropower and nuclear plants and further develop natural gas resources.
The document was published just five days before talks get under way in Glasgow to strengthen the global fight against climate change. China is set to announce its updated
“nationally determined contributions” before the meeting begins.
Climate watchers have been looking closely for signs that China, the world’s biggest source of climate-warming greenhouse gases, might make more ambitious pledges ahead of the Glasgow talks. Tuesday’s document offered few advances.
China’s Xi will not attend G20 summit in Rome Chinese President Xi Jinping will not attend a Rome summit of the Group of 20 leading economies in person, a source close to the matter said on Tuesday.
China will be represented at the summit on Saturday and Sunday by its foreign minister while Xi, whose presence had been in doubt for some time, will join the summit remotely, the source said.
The Kremlin said last week that Russian President Vladimir Putin would not be in Rome for the summit, and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador have also said they will not come.
The source said the absences would not compromise the chances of making good progress at the summit, which will focus mainly on climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic.
The gathering hopes to achieve recognition from G20 leaders of the importance of limiting global warming to 1.5 decrees Celsius, the source said, and a commitment to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by “around the middle of the century”.
Activists target Paris climate finance meeting Activists disrupted a green finance summit in Paris on Tuesday, saying that French President Emmanuel Macron had failed to get serious on investing in combating climate change.
Macron’s government says it is committed to meeting its climate targets, including going carbon neutral by 2050, in line with the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change.
Protesters intervened shortly after a speech by French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire, with one seen holding a banner reading “Macron: champion of fossil fuel finance”, images published online by action group Les Amis de la Terre showed.
A French court this month ordered the state to honour its promises on climate change, insisting it take measures to repair ecological damage and to prevent a further increase of carbon emissions by the end of December 2022 at the latest.
In a nod to Greta Thunberg, the protesters complained of the “blah, blah” rhetoric they said was coming from Macron’s government, echoing the words of the environmental campaigner at a pre-COP26 event in Italy last month.
Macron’s government, which is due to attend the COP26 meeting in Glasgow, Scotland next month, was fined 10mn euros ($12mn) by France’s highest administrative court in August for failing to improve air quality.