China at Biden's climate summit - Expert: Xi Jinping will address the biggest environmental problem

China is there: President Xi Jinping will give a speech at the US President Joe Biden's climate summit.

It remains to be seen whether Xi will make new promises in the process.

One topic is particularly in the foreground.

Munich / Washington / Beijing - he had left it open until the very end. It was only yesterday, Wednesday, that China's President Xi Jinping accepted the invitation to the virtual climate summit of his American counterpart Joe Biden. Xi will give an "important speech," said Foreign Office spokeswoman Hua Chunying in Beijing. Several states are expected to make new climate promises at the summit - what could this be for Xi? In September 2020, the president announced that China would become climate neutral by 2060. So China is definitely involved in the fight against climate change. But an even more ambitious overall target is currently not to be expected from the emerging country China.

Observers therefore assume that Xi will address his country's biggest climate problem: coal. Almost 59 percent of China's electricity comes from coal - the most climate-damaging of all fossil fuels. Coal is the country's biggest climate and environmental problem - and thus also the world. "There is great international pressure on China when it comes to coal," said Byford Tsang from the climate think tank E3G in London to Merkur.de. According to think tank Global Energy Monitor's coal tracker, China put a good three-quarters of all new coal-fired power plants in the world into operation in 2020 (around 38.4 gigawatts) - undoing the move away from coal in the rest of the world. "We talked a lot about coal," said US climate envoy John Kerry after the recent meeting with his counterpart Xie Zhenhua in Shanghai.This, too, is a sign that China's appearance at the summit will primarily be about coal.

China: End of Financing for Coal Power Plants Abroad?

Byford Tsang says that Xi's promise not to support any more coal projects abroad is conceivable.

China is currently financing a number of new coal-fired power plants in partner countries along the New Silk Road.

Along with Japan and South Korea, China is one of the three largest financiers for international coal projects, says Tsang.

“Japan is expected to promise at the summit that it will no longer fund foreign coal projects.

South Korea will probably follow soon.

If the two countries go ahead, China would look bad if it did nothing. "

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Workers shovel coal on open wagons: The raw material is China's biggest climate problem (archive image)

© Hu Guolin

In addition to Xi, Joe Biden has invited around 40 other heads of state and government to his climate summit, including Chancellor Angela Merkel. It is expected that the US will also announce new climate targets before or at the summit. The EU had already agreed on new goals shortly before the two-day summit: The EU states and the European Parliament decided to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by "at least 55 percent" by 2030. The European climate law also sets the goal for the EU to become climate neutral by 2050. As the most populous country in the world, China emits around 28 percent of global greenhouse gases - more than number two, the USA and the EU combined.The emission intensity of the Chinese economic output has been falling for several years - but the country's absolute emissions are still increasing. According to previous commitments, however, they should peak before 2030. Together with carbon neutrality by 2060, these commitments are also referred to as the “30/60 target” in China.

It is a success that Xi Jinping is attending the summit despite the current geopolitical tensions between Beijing and the West.

“I don't think these tensions will be particularly evident at this summit,” says Byford Tsang.

Kerry and Xie had already made a joint climate commitment in Shanghai and decided things - for example, that they wanted to give developing countries more support with climate protection.

"The US has outsourced climate protection as an independent topic of relations," said Tsang.

The EU has been doing the same for some time.

China does not agree in principle to this separation of individual issues - but has not yet de facto refused to pursue this policy, says Tsang.

China: climate balance is mixed - renewable energies are booming, but so is coal

Goals are one thing. In the end, however, what counts is implementation. And because of coal, China's carbon footprint has so far been characterized by strong contrasts. Record investments in renewable energies are matched by approvals for further huge coal-fired power plant capacities - of which, however, nobody knows how much of it will ever be built. The government and the provinces are wrestling over the coal behind the scenes. Some inland provinces get a large part of their tax revenue from the coal sector and need this money.

At the beginning of 2021, China's Ministry of the Environment issued guidelines that require all provinces to carry out pilot projects and clear local emissions targets - along with concrete action plans. The same applies to industries such as the steel sector. These plans are currently being drawn up - on the basis of the five-year plan 2021-2025. According to Byford Tsang, they should be ready by the end of 2021. "Officials in ministries and provinces are now competing with each other for the most ambitious decarbonization action plans," according to a study by E3G. Beijing, Shanghai and the comparatively developed provinces of Guangdong, Jiangsu and Hainan have already published their climate targets. Shanghai, for example, wants to reach the emission peak before the entire country - namely 2025 - with the help of energy saving and restructuring of the steel and chemical industries, for example.

China: Rapid development of wind power and solar plants

Many observers highlight the extent to which the 30/60 targets are now permeating government communications - which, despite all the problems, is a strong sign.

There are already plans to reduce the production of steel and other heavy industry products year after year.

Prime Minister Li Keqiang announced at the National People's Congress that energy consumption per capita should decrease by 13.5 percent by 2025 and CO2 emissions per capita by 18 percent.

At the same time, China is promoting the feeding of renewable energies into the power grid as well as the construction of new plants.

And so, despite the corona pandemic, China achieved fabulous growth in the construction of new wind and solar systems in 2020: According to the National Energy Agency, almost 72 gigawatts of wind turbines and 48 gigawatts of solar systems were installed. For comparison: In Germany, the total installed capacity from onshore wind energy is just under 55 gigawatts. Xi Jinping said in March that the share of renewable energies would have to increase to 25 percent by 2030. The total capacity of wind and solar should increase to 1200 gigawatts. If that succeeds, China won't need as much coal either. (

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