President Joe Biden announced ambitious new climate plans. The world will expect both to commit to measurable actions ahead of the United Nations climate summit in November.
Countries are expected to strengthen their pledges this year — hopefully enough to keep global warming in check. I worked in both the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations and have been involved in climate change issues for several years.
China is already planning for a world in which fundamental natural resources like water and food grow scarce because of climate change. For example, when China saw a looming threat to its ability to grow enough soybeans, due in part to climate change, it went from importing virtually no soybeans to importing more than half the soybeans sold on Earth.
China also sees economic opportunity in solving the climate crisis. It is mining raw materials essential to battery storage solutions at the heart of a global renewable energy industry; building cheap electric vehicles as fast as it can for domestic and foreign consumers; and aggressively subsidizing solar panel manufacturing and exporting those panels worldwide. China lost the tech revolution race that defined the global economy of the 20th century.
It does not intend to lose the renewable energy and clean tech revolution that will define the 21st. Which is why climate negotiators hope China does more than make promises for the future. Dimitri de Boer, China head for the environmental law charity ClientEarth, says that there is an ongoing tug-of-war between the central government and some of the provinces, with Beijing saying that new high-emissions projects must be strictly controlled.
He says that the newly announced projects will be important to watch. Write to Amy Gunia at amy. The Chinese flag flies in front of exhaust rising from a coal fired power plant in Jiayuguan, Gansu province, China, on April 1, By Amy Gunia.
Aerial view of a wind-solar hybrid photovoltaic power station in Zaozhuang, Shandong Province of China on September 12, When the central government was the one approving each new coal plant, it could ensure that supply approximated demand.
Local governments were under enormous political pressure to increase the economic productivity in their region and saw new coal plants as a great shortcut. The following year, the capacity of newly approved coal plants in China tripled. In , it rolled back the rules that threw coal plant construction into overdrive and delayed or canceled dozens of approved plants.
But as Shearer and her colleagues at Global Energy Monitor found by analyzing permits and satellite images, many plants are still under active construction today.
Indeed, coal-powered electricity generation in China has flatlined, despite the explosive growth in the number of coal plants. Still, if China has any hope of meeting its climate goals, it needs to be retiring coal plants, not opening new ones. Although China continues to be a world leader in the deployment of renewable energy resources , its continuing reliance on coal also means its carbon footprint tops the charts.
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