By Kate Abnett
BRUSSELS (Reuters) -China’s new climate pledge “falls well short” and will make it harder to reach global targets to slow climate change, the European Union’s climate chief said on Thursday, as the bloc struggles to agree its own emissions-cutting goal.
China led several countries in announcing climate plans at the U.N. on Wednesday. Chinese President Xi Jinping said that by 2035 his country would cut greenhouse gas emissions by 7%-10% from their peak.
The EU did not announce a new climate target this week, after its member countries failed to agree one in time for the U.N. summit.
“Unfortunately, the NDC they have submitted falls well short of what we believe is both achievable and necessary. This level of ambition is clearly disappointing, and given China’s immense footprint, it makes reaching the world’s climate goals significantly more challenging,” EU Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra said in a statement.
The U.N. refers to countries’ climate targets as “nationally determined contributions”.
“We will continue to push China (and others) to go beyond the current level of ambition, and respect our joint commitments under the Paris Agreement,” Hoekstra said.
China’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
As the world’s biggest polluter, China’s emissions target will be decisive to global efforts to curtail climate change.
Its target marked the first time it pledged to reduce emissions. But the reduction was far less than the 30% cut by 2035 that some scientists had said was needed to align China with the globally-agreed goal to limit warming to 1.5 Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).
Faced with U.S. President Donald Trump’s opposition to addressing climate change, other major emitters are attempting to build momentum ahead of this year’s COP30 climate summit in November.
But the EU’s 2035 climate target has been held up by divisions among its members on how ambitious the goal should be.
EU countries have pledged to submit it in time for COP30, and agreed the target would cut emissions somewhere between 66.25% and 72.5% by 2035.
(Reporting by Kate Abnett, additional reporting by Yukun Zhang; editing by Barbara Lewis)
