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Credit: AFP via Getty<\/span><\/p>\n China has revealed its goal for slashing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, providing a glimpse into how global emissions might change over the next decade. In a video address to the United Nations Climate Summit on 24 September, Chinese president Xi Jinping announced that China will reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by 7% to 10% from peak levels by 2035.<\/p>\n The pace at which China cuts emissions will have profound global impact. The country has accounted for 90% of the growth in the world\u2019s CO\u2082 emissions since 2015 and it is now the largest GHG emitter in the world, responsible for around one-third of the global total, according to the Asia Society Policy Institute, a think tank based in New York City. Analysts have warned that China\u2019s action could make or break the 2015 Paris agreement.<\/p>\n In 2020, Xi pledged that China\u2019s CO\u2082 emissions would peak before 2030 and that the country would achieve carbon neutrality before 2060. Some researchers say China\u2019s CO\u2082 emissions will probably peak soon if they haven\u2019t already.<\/p>\n The latest targets are part of China\u2019s new Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), a climate-action plan that all countries subject to the Paris agreement must submit to the UN every five years. China also set clean-energy targets for 2035.<\/p>\n The importance of China\u2019s latest NDC is that its targets cover the years until 2035, past the country\u2019s proposed peak, says Yao Zhe, a Beijing-based researcher of China\u2019s climate policy at Greenpeace East Asia. \u201cThis is the first time China has officially outlined its post-peaking plan,\u201d Yao says.<\/p>\n Once China\u2019s emissions drop, global emissions will likely start to drop, says Belinda Sch\u00e4pe, a China analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), a Helsinki-based think tank. \u201cThat’s why these targets are so important for the global community, because they can help them understand\u201d how the world\u2019s emissions trajectory could look, she says.<\/p>\n This is also the first time that China has announced a target that covers not only carbon dioxide (CO\u2082) but all GHGs including methane and nitrous oxide, says Zhang Da, who researches energy economics and climate change at Tsinghua University in Beijing.<\/p>\n Some researchers think that China\u2019s emissions-reduction target falls short of what the world needs to achieve the Paris agreement\u2019s aim, of limiting global warming to well below 2 \u00b0C above pre-industrial levels, and striving to stay below 1.5 \u00b0C.<\/p>\n \u201cAnything less than 20% is definitely not aligned with 2 degrees. Similarly, anything less than 30% is definitely not aligned with 1.5 degrees,\u201d says Lauri Myllyvirta, an analyst who has tracked China\u2019s emissions trends for more than a decade and is CREA\u2019s co-founder. Myllyvirta cites his analysis of a set of future climate scenarios used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to help the world adhere to the Paris Agreement.<\/p>\n The way China has defined its emissions cuts \u2014 as 7\u201310% of an undefined amount, rather than specifying a year as the basis for calculation \u2013 leaves the door open for short-term emissions increases, Myllyvirta says.<\/p>\n The different pathways for China to achieve carbon neutrality between 2030 and 2060 could result in different amounts of cumulative emissions, says Myllyvirta. \u201cWhat matters for the climate is the total amount of GHGs emitted into the atmosphere over time,\u201d he says, adding that this is why cutting emissions fast early on is important.<\/p>\n But others, such as Da, regard China\u2019s target an important step. \u201cReducing non-CO\u2082 emissions is typically more challenging than mitigating CO\u2082,\u201d says Da. \u201cA 7\u201310% reduction in net GHG emissions from peak levels usually implies a higher level of CO\u2082 reduction.\u201d<\/p>\n A study by Da and colleagues1, published in January, found that if China reduces its energy-related CO\u2082 emissions by 10\u201312% from peak levels by 2035, the country would meet its goal of being carbon neutral before 2060. A separate study2, also co-authored by Da, found the two-degree temperature goal is achievable under China’s carbon-neutral timeline. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Credit: AFP via Getty China has revealed its goal for slashing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, providing a glimpse into how global emissions might change over the next decade. In a video address to the United Nations Climate Summit on 24 September, Chinese president Xi Jinping announced that China will reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by 7% to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24133,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[186],"class_list":{"0":"post-24132","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-climate"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24132","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=24132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24132\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Ambitious or not?<\/h2>\n