China at COP27: Green revolution at home and broken climate talks with the US

The world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases arrives at the Egypt Climate Summit with many purposes of the “green revolution” coined by President Xi Jinping even if it juggles its green transition and energy security.

A couple of days before the ruling Communist Party’s congress opened on Oct. 16, Chinese authorities ordered production to cease at many factories in a giant industrial park in Hebei, a province adjacent to Beijing, which hosted the most important political conclave of the year.

Those factories, a decade ago, were concentrated within the fourth ring of the capital, but they moved to the lands of the neighbor to diminish the terrifying contamination of the political center. Air quality has improved in Beijing thanks to this, while in Hebei they have had to eat all the pollution that the bosses of the second world power did not want to breathe in their city.

Even so, in Beijing it is still common for dense layers of smog to bathe the city quite often, as was the case in the days before the party congress. That is why they paralyzed the activity of the factories. Surprisingly, on the opening day of the event, it sported a splendid blue sky. White clouds were seen and not gray. There was even an air that did not suffocate.

There was no official confirmation as on other occasions, but some neighbors who live near the mountains north of the city explained that, in the run-up to the congress, they saw the military launch rockets into the sky. People’s Liberation Army technicians and scientists often fire silver iodide projectiles before major events, which form ice crystals that help produce rain or clean polluting particles from the environment.

In addition to promoting climate engineering so that more blue skies are seen in the capital, China has an ambitious green agenda for the coming years: before the UN it committed to reach the ceiling of carbon emissions before 2030 and reach neutrality in its emissions in 2060; It has set the goal of generating 20% of the country’s total energy consumption from renewable energy by 2025, the same year in which it aims to produce up to 200,000 tons per year of carbon-free green hydrogen, which is produced by decomposing water through electrolysis powered by renewable energy sources.

The list of climate objectives of the largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world (responsible for 27% of global emissions), would complete several pages. There are many purposes of the “green revolution” coined by President Xi Jinping, such as stopping building coal plants abroad and reducing the use of coal, its main source of energy, at home, even if it has to juggle between that clean transition and energy security so that there is no lack of electricity during the harsh winters in the cold northern regions.

These are some of the cards with which China, a key player in the leadership in the fight against climate change, has attended the COP27 summit in Egypt. Beijing has sent to the coastal city of Sharm el-Sheikh a delegation of 50 people led by Zhao Yingmin, vice minister of ecology and environment, and veteran Xie Zhenhua, a top climate change official, who on Sunday called for more help from developing nations in his first speech.

Xie declined to respond to reporters asking if there was any chance of resuming climate talks with Washington, broken after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s August visit to Taiwan.

This rupture between the two main world powers, with the joint working group on the climate that both countries had gathered, completely discarded, has caused widespread concern at the UN about the delay that this will mean in the plans to reach agreements of global decarbonization or in the cooperation in the reduction of methane emissions. In addition to a jolt for the joint deployment of technology that needs to be developed for emissions reductions.

In the run-up to the summit, China presented the annual report of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) on policies and actions to address climate change. “Only concerted efforts by all parties can address it effectively. We must uphold true multilateralism, reject any unilateral measures and politicization of climate issues, and oppose any kind of decoupling,” said Li Gao, head of the ministry’s climate change office. “Rich countries must leave behind empty slogans when it comes to climate change and move forward in meeting financing commitments,” the official reiterated.

In addition to the wake-up call aimed at the West, Li wanted to give some details of the country’s progress to demonstrate his constant commitment to the international climate agenda: compared to 2005, CO emissions₂ per unit of GDP they were down 50.8% by 2021, and non-fossil fuel energy accounted for 16.6% of primary energy that year. “Total installed wind and solar power capacity has reached 635 million kilowatts, coal consumption per unit of GDP has been significantly reduced, and forest cover and stock volume have achieved growth for 30 consecutive years,” the report said.

Another of the internal percentages that Beijing has taken to the summit to boast of policies addresses the almost double-digit drop in carbon dioxide (_CO2) emissions in the first half of the year. It sells it as the effectiveness of its strong commitment to renewables, although it omits that the fall is also due to a pandemic policy that continues to confine entire cities and paralyze large industrial centers.

Source: El Mundo