Climate change: China’s coal reliance raises alarms as UN IPCC moves net-zero deadlines ahead 10 years for 1.5-degree goal

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China’s reluctance to ditch coal due to energy-security concerns will make the country’s decarbonisation even harder, climate experts say

UN’s new goals require ‘much faster emissions reductions than China is currently prepared to target’, an analyst says

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A photo taken on October 24, 2021, shows a worker leveling coal on a carrier in Jiujiang, in China’s central Jiangxi province. Photo: AFP

Yujie Xuein Shenzhen

Published: 2:30pm, 22 Mar 2023

The United Nations’ call for a “quantum leap” on climate action has heightened concern about China’s coal reliance among climate analysts, as the UN moves the global deadline for net-zero emissions forward by a decade to 2050 – 10 years ahead of China’s 2060 carbon-neutral goal.

China’s reluctance to ditch coal due to energy-security concerns, as evidenced by Beijing’s recent greenlighting of more coal-fired power plants, will make the country’s decarbonisation progress even harder, climate experts said.

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s leading climate-science body, on Monday released a landmark report summarising the panel’s findings in the past five years and giving a comprehensive assessment of how the global climate crisis is unfolding.

“The climate time-bomb is ticking,” said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in a statement to mark the launch of the IPCC report on Monday. “Humanity is on thin ice – and that ice is melting fast.”

Workers unload coal at a storage site along a railway station in Hefei, Anhui province in October 2009. Photo: Reuters

According to the report, the hurdles to keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by 2100 have become even higher due to a continued increase in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This has left the current plans and pace of climate actions insufficient to tackle climate change, the report said.

Climate change: China’s coal reliance raises alarms as UN IPCC moves net-zero deadlines ahead 10 years for 1.5-degree goal

China’s reluctance to ditch coal due to energy-security concerns will make the country’s decarbonisation even harder, climate experts say UN’s new goals require ‘much faster emissions reductions than China is currently prepared to target’, an analyst says

China’s reluctance to ditch coal due to energy-security concerns will make the country’s decarbonisation even harder, climate experts say

UN’s new goals require ‘much faster emissions reductions than China is currently prepared to target’, an analyst says