\n<\/p>\n
Anything China does on energy and climate change is very big news. Its plans ripple around the world, whether that\u2019s in changing the demand for fossil fuels or affecting the impacts on the planet from global heating.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, Australia woke to the news that China\u2019s president, Xi Jinping, had told the United Nations that for the first time his country was setting a target to cut \u2013 in absolute terms \u2013 its greenhouse gas emissions.<\/p>\n
In a video address, Xi said China\u2019s emissions would fall by 7% to 10% from their peak. When that peak happens he didn\u2019t say, but some analysts think it may have already passed.<\/p>\n
Anthony Albanese had a lukewarm response to Xi\u2019s announcement, saying it was \u201cgood that there is progress being made\u201d, but \u201cof course [Australia] would like there to be more\u201d.<\/p>\n
China\u2019s emissions are about 29% of the global total \u2013 more than twice that of the United States, the world\u2019s second-biggest emitter.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we see emissions peak and fall in China, then we will see them fall everywhere,\u201d says Dr Wesley Morgan, a Climate Council councillor and researcher at the institute for climate risk and response at the University of New South Wales.<\/p>\n
Whatever China does will make a substantial difference to the impacts of the climate crisis felt around the world, including Australia.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s at stake for Australia was clearly articulated by the release last week of Australia\u2019s first national climate risk assessment, which laid out the shocking toll on the economy, on communities and on habitats and wildlife as global temperatures rise.<\/p>\n
Political figures and commentators who want to see Australia slow down on cutting emissions have pointed to China\u2019s lack of a target as justification for their position. Those arguments will be harder to make now.<\/p>\n
While China\u2019s new target is not in line with limiting global heating to 1.5C, Morgan says, nor are most other national 2035 targets that have been announced \u2013 including Australia\u2019s.<\/p>\n
Many climate analysts have expressed disappointment at what was seen as the timid nature of China\u2019s target, but many also noted China had underpromised and overdelivered on its previous target.<\/p>\n
Dr Jorrit Gosens, an expert on China\u2019s energy transition at the Australian National University, says: \u201cThe 7% to 10% reduction by 2035 is disappointing, because it is less than what we need. But 7% to 10% in political terms is quite an achievement.\u201d<\/p>\n
China is also the biggest manufacturer and deployer of technologies to slow global heating, from wind turbines and solar panels to electric vehicles and batteries.<\/p>\n
Xi also set other 2035 goals: solar and wind capacity would increase by six times the levels in 2020 to reach 3,600 gigawatts, and the share of non-fossil fuels providing the country\u2019s energy would rise above 30%.<\/p>\n
But Gosens says both these targets will be easily reached. China has been adding between 300GW and 400GW of solar and wind a year for the past two years.<\/p>\n
Getting to a total of 3,600GW by 2035 would require a rate of only about 180GW a year, he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is so entirely likely that it will be overachieved that it\u2019s almost pointless to set that target,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
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Sign up to Clear Air Australia<\/span><\/p>\n Adam Morton brings you incisive analysis about the politics and impact of the climate crisis<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n The low target is likely aimed at international audiences, Gosens says. \u201cChina wants to avoid criticism for missing a target and instead get lauded for overachieving.\u201d<\/p>\n Any ambition from China to reduce its fossil fuel use is going to be keenly watched by the fossil fuel industry. The country is the world\u2019s biggest importer of both steel-making coal and coal for burning in power stations and is a significant importer of LNG.<\/p>\n \u201cDeclining fossil gas demand from China will also impact China\u2019s LNG demand. And China is Australia\u2019s largest LNG customer,\u201d says Josh Runciman, Australian gas analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.<\/p>\n He says: \u201cChina\u2019s domestic gas is its cheapest and LNG will likely be the first supply source that falls away. We\u2019re likely to see a similar trend for Australian coal.\u201d<\/p>\n While China continues to build coal-fired power plants, Gosens said in the first half of 2025 there had been a cut in coal power consumption of about 100 terrawatt hours.<\/p>\n For context, that reduction is roughly the equivalent of turning off all the coal plants in Australia\u2019s national electricity market for 11 months.<\/p>\n Gosens says China has installed about three-quarters of all the solar and wind power on the planet.<\/p>\n \u201cThat means China is doing three times more [renewable energy installations] than the rest of the world put together.\u201d<\/p>\n Bill Hare, the founder of research organisation Climate Analytics, says China will be able to meet its new target with policies that are already in place, \u201cso it won\u2019t drive down emissions\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cAustralia is a major exporter of fossil fuels to China,\u201d he says. \u201cAbout 34% to 35% of LNG exports go to China and about 11% to 12% of our coal exports. So Australia is fuelling China\u2019s ongoing overreliance on fossil fuels.<\/p>\n \u201cAustralian government policy visibly favours ongoing exports of these fossil fuels to China, whereas it could be doing a lot more to facilitate China\u2019s rapid exit from these fuels \u2013 and that is in all of our interests.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Anything China does on energy and climate change is very big news. Its plans ripple around the world, whether that\u2019s in changing the demand for fossil fuels or affecting the impacts on the planet from global heating. On Thursday, Australia woke to the news that China\u2019s president, Xi Jinping, had told the United Nations that<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23945,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[9101,346,2059,2474,11888,191,3428,7645,504,14583,124,1741],"class_list":{"0":"post-23944","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-argument","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-australian","11":"tag-chinas","12":"tag-cutting","13":"tag-emissions","14":"tag-harder","15":"tag-lack","16":"tag-opponents","17":"tag-pointed","18":"tag-politics","19":"tag-target"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23944\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Slowing demand for Australian fossil fuels<\/h2>\n