China

China proposed its updated NDC targets at the UN’s Climate Ambition Summit in December 2020, but has yet to officially submit its revised NDC.

In September 2020, President Xi Jinping announced that China would peak carbon dioxide emissions “before 2030” (an improvement from its previous “To achieve the peaking of carbon dioxide emissions around 2030 and making best efforts to peak early”) as well as a new “carbon neutrality” target “before 2060”. The question of whether this neutrality target relates to GHG neutrality or carbon neutrality is still under active discussion and pending official confirmation. A GHG neutrality target could align China with an emissions range in 2050 consistent with the Paris Agreement 1.5 limit, depending on the speed of the transition.

The proposed NDC update in December 2020 strengthened and expanded previous 2030 targets, which the CAT rates as Highly Insufficient. China updated all its separate NDC targets and added an additional fifth target:

1. Peaking carbon dioxide emissions “before 2030”, instead of “around 2030 and efforts to peak early”[1];
2. Lower carbon intensity by “over 65% in 2030” compared to 2005 levels, up from “by 60- 65%”;
3. Share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy consumption to “around 25%’ in 2030, up from “around 20%’; and
4. Increase forest stock volume by around 6 billion cubic metres in 2030,up from the previous 4.5 billion cubic metres.
5. Increase the installed capacity of wind and solar power to 1,200 GW by 2030.

According to CAT’s analysis, these updated NDC targets are slightly more ambitious than the current NDC. Taking all target of the new proposal together we arrive at an emissions level of 12.9 to 14.4 GtCO2e in 2030, compared 13.7 to 15.2 GtCO2e of the current NDC. While these proposed NDC target revisions are all improvements, the expected emission levels are well within China’s projected current policies emissions trajectory (12.9 to 14.7 GtCO2e), meaning China is likely to achieve or overachieve most of these targets without substantially increasing mitigation policy with only the new non-fossil fuel target leading to an improvement of just 2% from the upper end of the current policy emissions range.

The NDC target range is a summary of the individual NDC targets:

• The update of the peaking year was not specified in December and unless this is done in the updated NDC, the CAT interprets this as meaning China has no plans to substantially deviate from its projected continued emissions increase towards 2030. In the absence of a better way to quantify it, we take the bottom end of our current policy range to represent the peaking, 12.9 GtCO2e. This determines the lower end of the CAT’s NDC quantification and is lower today compared to our previous NDC assessment, as our new projections take into account the impact of the pandemic.
• The carbon intensity target improvement results in emissions of 14.4 to 15.1 GtCO2e in 2030 (previous upper range was 16.9 tCO2e) but does not represent more ambition from current policy projections. China would have to increase its 2030 carbon intensity target to approximately 70% below 2005 levels—a figure which some experts expected and which China could feasibly achieve—to fall within the CAT’s “Insufficient” rating (if all governments implemented this level of ambition, global temperature increases rise by 2-3 degrees Celsius by end of the century, compared to pre-industrial levels) for China.
• We quantify the non-fossil share target improvement to lead to a level of 14.4 GtCO2e in 2030 (down from 15.2 GtCO2e): only a mild improvement that many hoped China would approach with greater ambition. According to CAT’s analysis, China would readily achieve a non-fossil share of primary energy consumption of 23% in 2030 under current policies. We take this level as the upper end of the NDC range.
• The non-fossil share target suggests greater renewable capacity is needed than the new 1,200 GW solar and wind capacity target (and thus an NDC target with greater ambition), as it is a minimal increase from what would occur under current policies. Achievement of only this target would lead to emission levels of 14.6 GtCO2e in 2030. To achieve the renewable installation target, China would need to only add approximately 71 GW of renewable capacity annually from 2019-2030, which is consistent with recent trends.

Although the strengthened non-fossil fuel share target and a proposed net-zero target are positive developments for China’s climate ambition, China has not yet committed to a peaking year before 2030 nor to a fixed or absolute emissions target, which leads to uncertain emissions trajectories to 2030 and makes the target difficult to assess.

There is also uncertainty as to whether the “before 2060” carbon neutrality goal refers to all GHG emissions: whether it is Paris-compatible depends on coverage and how fast the transition happens. The next question is whether the new proposed NDC target is aligned with the net-zero target: we find it is not yet consistent with a Paris-compatible trajectory to net zero GHG emissions before 2060. China’s plans to decarbonise rapidly after 2030 heavily depend on substantial forestry sinks as well as large-scale implementation of CCS and CCUS technologies that are not currently viable.

[1] This was announced by President Xi Jinping in September, but not referred to at the Climate Ambition Summit in December