China’s goal of reaching carbon emission peak by 2030 and realizing carbon neutralization by 2060 fully demonstrated its climate ambition and global leadership matching China’s development stage and national conditions, said Wang Wenbin, the spokesman, at the regular press conference of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs held on November 2.
The above statement was a response to the remarks made by US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, who has falsely claimed that China is “asocial” in dealing with climate change and threatened that the United States will continue to impose pressure on China.
Wang said that President Xi Jinping has pointed out at the sixteenth session of the G20 Leaders’ Summit that China has always taken the initiative to assume international responsibilities consistent with the national conditions, actively promote the green transformation of the economy, and constantly improve its efforts to tackle climate change. It will abide by the promise and strive to achieve the “dual-carbon” goals.
China has made arduous efforts and achieved remarkable results, said Wang Wenbin, in 2020, China’s carbon emission intensity decreased by 48.4% compared with 2005, exceeding the target of reducing by 40-45% by 2020, and reducing carbon dioxide emissions by about 5.8 billion tons. China has made great efforts to promote the green and low-carbon transformation of energy. In 2020, China’s non fossil energy power generation accounted for more than one third of the total electricity consumption of the whole society, and the installed capacity of photovoltaic and wind power increased by more than 3,000 times and 200 times respectively compared with that in 2005.
China has become the world’s largest new photovoltaic market for eight consecutive years, and the technical level and manufacturing scale of wind power and photovoltaic power generation equipment are among the top in the world. Recently, China has organized and started a number of large-scale wind power and photovoltaic projects with a total scale of nearly 30 GW, opening the prelude to the commencement of the first batch of projects with an installed capacity of about 100 GW.
Wang pointed out that developed countries will generally take 40 to 70 years to achieve carbon neutralization from carbon emission peak, while China, as the largest developing country in the world, has set itself only 30 years. The carbon neutralization target proposed by China is fully in line with the goal of controlling the global temperature rise above the pre-industrialization level and below 2 degrees Celsius and striving to control it within 1.5 degrees Celsius proposed in the Paris Agreement. It also fully shows the climate ambition and global leadership matching China’s development stage and national conditions.
Climate change is a common challenge for all mankind, which is related to the future and destiny of mankind and requires the joint efforts of the international community. Developed countries have been emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere for more than 200 years and bear unshirkable historical responsibility for climate change. In particular, the United States, as a historical emitter, has repeatedly and retrogressed its climate policy, and its own emissions have peaked and began to decline in recent years, added Wang.
We expect the U.S. government to put forward specific emission reduction policies and measures as soon as possible. Developed countries should earnestly follow the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities, take the lead in undertaking the obligation of substantial emission reduction, and effectively help developing countries improve their ability to cope with climate challenges in terms of capital, technology and capacity-building. The United States cannot ask China to reduce coal and sanction Chinese photovoltaic enterprises at the same time, said Wang.
