On November 2, at the Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Wang Wenbin’s Regular Press Conference, Wang said that China always delivers on its commitments and has made arduous efforts and achieved remarkable progress.
PVTIME – The Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Wang Wenbin stressed that at the 16th G20 Leaders’ Summit, President Xi Jinping said that China has all along undertaken due international responsibilities commensurate with its national conditions. We have actively advanced the green transition of our economy and raised the ambition of our climate actions on our own initiative. We will honor our words and strive to peak carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060.
China always delivers on its commitments and has made arduous efforts and achieved remarkable progress. China’s carbon intensity in 2020 was 48.4 percent less than that in 2005, which means that China had more than fulfilled its commitment to the international community – to achieve a 40-45 percent reduction in carbon intensity from the 2005 level by 2020. The drop in carbon intensity translates to a total reduction of about 5.8 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions. China has made great effort to advance a green and low-carbon energy transition. Electricity generated by non-fossil energy represented more than one third of the power consumption of the country. The total installed capacity of PV power generation increased by a factor of more than 3,000 compared with 2005, and wind by a factor of more than 200. China has led the world in PV capacity additions for eight consecutive years. In the manufacture of wind power and PV power generation equipment, China is the global leader in terms of technology and output. Recently China has started construction of a batch of large wind power and photovoltaic bases with a combined installed capacity of 30 million kW, marking the beginning of the first phase of projects with an installed capacity of approximately 100 million kW. As I said yesterday, developed countries generally set a timeframe of 40 to 70 years to move from carbon peaking to carbon neutrality while China, the largest developing country in the world, only gives itself 30 years. China’s carbon neutrality targets are fully consistent with the Paris Agreement goal of holding global average temperature increase to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. They also fully demonstrate China’s climate ambition and global leadership commensurate with its development stage and national realities.
Wang Wenbin also stressed that as a challenge to all humanity, climate change bears on the future of us all and thus requires joint actions of the international community. Developed countries have unshirkable and historical responsibility since they have been releasing a tremendous amount of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere for the past 200 years or so. In particular, the US, a major emitter in history, has seen reversal and retrogression in its climate policy. Its emissions peaked and began to decline only in recent years. China is looking forward to concrete emissions reduction policies and measures rolled out by the US as soon as possible. Developed countries should earnestly follow the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities, take the lead in fulfilling emission reduction obligations, and provide financial, technological and capacity building support to help developing countries enhance their capacity to respond to climate challenges. They should also stop asking China to reduce the use of coal while sanctioning Chinese photovoltaic companies.
