Analysis: China’s carbon commitment is massive climate coup — but is it even achievable?

China has accelerated its coal use in recent months as it looks to a dirty recovery from coronavirus 

Ever since Donald Trump announced he would take the US out of the Paris Agreement the question has been whether President Xi Jinping would take it as a cue to abandon global climate efforts. 

Mr Xi’s move to announce China would be carbon neutral by 2060, coming directly after a speech by the US president, may therefore have been primarily a diplomatic one. 

The EU has worked hard to try and persuade China, the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter, to lean in to the Paris Agreement, most recently at a summit last week to discuss climate change and trade. 

Beijing’s announcement suggests it may have been successful in persuading Mr Xi that an alliance that sidelines Mr Trump’s US and allows China to take the lead on decarbonisation is worth more than going it alone or waiting for a new administration. 

But it could also be the most important move for the climate since Mr Xi’s last surprise agreement on climate change, with Barack Obama in 2014, which led to the Paris Agreement, and it may be the best chance of reaching its updated aim of limiting warming to 1.5C. 

That will depend on what the commitment looks like in practice. 

Mr Xi clarified an earlier goal for China to reach carbon emissions to ‘before’ 2030, when it had previously been ‘around’ 2030. 

That is an improvement, but it still leaves nearly a decade for China, which accounts for half the world’s coal consumption and is the only country still building significant new coal capacity, to continue increasing emissions.

China has laid the groundwork for a green industry, stealing the charge on becoming the biggest the world’s largest producer, exporter and installer of solar panels, wind turbines, batteries and electric vehicles. But those industries rely on carbon intensive manufacturing processes. 

It also matters how the country plans to reach their goal of net zero, i.e. how they plan to suck up as much carbon as they emit. 

If they set their carbon emissions output high and intend to rely on untested technologies to remove it, they will be in a very different place by 2055 than if they intend to drastically reduce emissions and mitigate with tested carbon sinks such as afforestry. 

The real test will therefore come next year, when China lays out its next five-year plan, and we can expect to know how serious Beijing is about reducing emissions in the short term. 

If China is now on the path to radical decarbonisation, that has huge implications for all of us. 

On a basic level that’s because China’s emissions are everyone’s emissions — global warming is not limited to the country causing it. 

But it could also impact how and what the rest of us consume, not least in the UK. 

Britain was the first major economy to commit to carbon neutrality by 2050, but that goal only covers emissions that occur within the country. 

Meanwhile, we have become dependent on quick, cheap and carbon intensive imports from China.

The UK is the G7’s biggest net importer of CO2 emissions per capita, and our imported emissions from China grew 260 per cent between 1997 and 2017.

We can’t be truly carbon neutral until our imports are. Depending on how China decarbonises, that could mean the era of mass cheap goods could have to end.