Australia's former top climate diplomat has warned China's net-zero emissions target will leave Australia behind, threatening future trade deals and its influence in the Pacific as the Morrison government becomes wedged between the US and China on climate action.
Howard Bamsey, who was Australia's special envoy on climate change during the Rudd government, said the announcement from President Xi Jinping last week had turned the politics of emissions reduction into a sharp economic and diplomatic issue.
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| Chengde Iron and Steel Co, 200 kilometres north-east of Beijing, in September. Credit: Sanghee Liu |
"It's clear now China is accepting a leadership role," he said. "Xi made the announcement. That carries all the weight of the state and party."
The coronavirus has forced this year's United Nations Glasgow Climate Change Conference to be rescheduled to November 2021, turning Australia's international emissions obligations into a major election flashpoint. The earliest month a federal election can be held is August 2021 and voters are expected to go to the polls by the end of next year.
China, which is simultaneously the world's largest polluter and biggest producer of renewable energy, pledged to go carbon neutral by 2060 at the UN General Assembly last week.
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| Chinese President Xi Jinping remotely addresses the 75th session of the United Nations General Assembly. Credit: AP |
The country is also still building half-a-dozen new coal-fired power plants to stimulate the economy and remains the world's largest coal user, triggering smog outbreaks in major cities and putting pressure on the government to deliver blue skies for workers.
| Coal consumption by region Exajoules  |
Source: BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2020
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"The proposal of this goal is to force China itself to improve and face this problem," said Ma Jun, director of Beijing's Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs. "Secondly, it brings pressure to other large-emitters who are unwilling to face this promise."
| Renewables consumption by region Exajoules  |
| *Commonwealth of Independent States Source: BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2020 |
"Every kilowatt added now is a burden after 2030," Professor Yuan Jiahai of North China Electric Power University told the 2020 China Blue Sky Observation Forum last week.
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Australia's former special envoy for climate change Howard Bamsey. Credit: Melissa Stiles
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It has been criticised for its plan to use carryover credits from the previous Kyoto agreement to meet the obligations established at the Paris UN conference in 2016.
Labor has also yet to define what target it will set. Mark Butler, the opposition's climate change spokesman, told the ABC on Monday that the global effect of Xi's announcement was "seismic", as China becomes for "clean energy in the 21st century what America was for IT in the 1990s."
Professor Bamsey said the UK, European Union and a potential Biden presidency will pressure Australia to match their climate goals ahead of Glasgow.
"We are an internationally connected economy and we will have to adopt the policies of our trading partners, including our main partner in China," he said. "We won't be able to continue to provide goods and services and ignore the climate dimension."
Jake Sullivan, an advisor to Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, told the Lowy Institute in September that a Biden presidency would rally the nations of the world to "elevate their ambition".
"In that regard he will hold countries like China accountable for doing more but he is also going to push our friends to do more as well, to step up and fulfil their responsibilities for what is fundamentally a global problem," he said.
The director of the European Union's Centre of Excellence at RMIT, Bruce Wilson, said China's pledge would increase pressure on Australia as it attempts to negotiate free trade deals with the EU and Britain.
"If anyone is trying to do a trade deal with the EU, the Paris deal is non-negotiable," he said.
Professor Wilson said it was still not clear if the EU would accept Australia's use of Kyoto carryover credits to meet its obligations and said a "carbon border tax" was on the agenda for countries not compliant with the EU's environmental standards.
"If you are exporting an emissions heavy product into Europe there will be a tax on that," he said.
The harshest impacts of climate change are still devastating the world's environments despite the coronavirus pandemic bringing the world to a halt in 2020, a UN report says.
The harshest impacts of climate change are still devastating the world's environments despite the coronavirus pandemic bringing the world to a halt in 2020, a UN report says.
Chief negotiators from the EU and Australia were expected to brief stakeholders about progress on the trade deal on Wednesday afternoon.
Professor Wilson said a post-Brexit free trade deal between the EU and UK would have flow-on effects for any separate Australian negotiations with Britain.
"They won't be able to say we have these environmental standards with the EU but different ones with Australia," he said.
China's escalation is also set to have implications for Australia's diplomatic position in the Pacific, where it has been attempting to manage China's rising influence among some of its closest neighbours.
"From both sides of Parliament Australian politicians aren't understanding it, they approach climate change like it's just another issue for our Pacific counterparts. What Australian politicians do often miss is this issue is personal," said Professor Bamsey.
"It concerns Pacific politicians when they get out of bed, they can see the changes to the future of their country when they look out the window."
Links
- Exit From Fossil Fuels Quickens After California, China Signal Shift
- China Changes The Game On Climate Action, For Renewables And For Coal
- An emissions target without a deadline isn't much of a target
- Carbon price needed to make energy roadmap believable
- Statement by H.E. Xi Jinping President of the People's Republic of China At the General Debate of the 75th Session of The United Nations General Assembly
- GE to pursue exit from new build coal power market
- China’s 2060 climate pledge: long-awaited breakthrough or sugar-coating another decade of rising emissions?
- (AU) By 2020 Standards, Angus Taylor's Low-Emissions Technology Statement Is Not Really A Climate Policy
- (AU) There Are More Horses In The Energy Race, But Are They Fast Enough?
- (AU) A Policy Of The Fossil Fuel Companies, By The Fossil Fuel Companies, For The Fossil Fuel Companies
- (AU) Taylor Favours Fossil Fuels And Farmers As Roadmap Picks Five Technology Winners
- (AU) Australia’s New National Preventive Health Strategy Must Include Climate Change, 30 Health Groups Say
- (AU) Scott Morrison Refuses To Commit To Net Zero Carbon Emissions By 2050
- Climate Change: China Aims For 'Carbon Neutrality By 2060'
- China's Surprise Climate Pledge Leaves Australia 'Naked In The Wind', Analysts Say
- China’s 2060 Climate Change Gambit
- China’s zero carbon pledge: What does it mean for the global climate change fight?
- Spotlight: China's pledge to cut CO2 emissions boosts global confidence in climate change
- Analysis: Going carbon neutral by 2060 ‘will make China richer’
- China’s New Climate Pledge Is Extraordinarily Ambitious
- Experts praise China’s pledge to be carbon neutral by 2060—but more could be done
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