China will cut its greenhouse gas emissions by up to 10% and increase renewable energy capacity six-fold within a decade, Chinese leader Xi Jinping announced in a new climate plan, along with a thinly veiled swipe at the US, reports the Financial Times. The climate goal was described as “both underwhelming and transformative,” with experts having hoped that the world’s largest emitter and second-biggest economy would set a target at least in the mid-teens.
About twice that level is estimated to be needed to meet a Paris accord objective of limiting the average global temperature rise to 1.5C above the pre-industrial level.
However, the delivery of the plan by Xi himself was regarded as significant. He called the transition to green energy “the trend of our time” in a video address to the UN climate summit in New York hosted by secretary-general António Guterres and Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.