Gatekeepers of the Transition: How Provinces Are Adapting to China’s National Decarbonization Pledges (Edmund Downie, Jeremy Lee Wallace, Columbia SIPA)

China’s centrality in the climate crisis is hard to overstate. It overtook the United States as the world’s leading emitter of carbon dioxide (CO2) 15 years ago, and after slowing in the mid-2010s, an uptick in 2018 signaled a return to significant carbon dioxide emissions growth. By 2020, China was responsible for 31 percent of global carbon emissions from fuel combustion, exceeding the combined emissions of the US, European Union, and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD; 41 countries). In the run-up to the Paris Agreement in 2015, China pledged that its carbon dioxide emissions would peak around 2030. In a virtual address to the United Nations General Assembly on September 22, 2020, president and Chinese Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping surprised the world with a new pledge that China would scale up its Nationally Determined Contributions and “aim to have CO2 emissions peak before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060.” These “30-60” targets serve as the high-level goals that structure China’s economic and environmental planning at every level.

Columbia | SIPA Center on Global Energy Policy | Gatekeepers of the Transition: How Provinces Are Adapting to China’s National Decarbonization Pledges