China not doing enough on climate change despite promises: US envoy John Kerry

WASHINGTON: US Special climate envoy John Kerry on Friday said that China isn't doing enough on climate change after the country said at a White House climate summit this week that it would try to reduce its coal use starting in a few years.

"They have a massive coal dependency. We have to try to get them to move further and we have to also ask China not to be funding the building of new coal-fired power plants in other parts of the world," Kerry argued during a CNN town hall, as quoted by The Hill.

China, during the White House event this week, said it would "strictly limit" its increase in coal consumption through 2025 and start to "phase it down" starting in 2026. Xi also said that the country plans to "strictly control" coal-fired power plant projects.

However, unlike countries such as the US that will seek to reduce their greenhouse emissions over the course of the next decade, China said that it expects its emissions to peak in 2030, The Hill reported.

China is the world's largest greenhouse gas emitter and the US is the second-largest.

According to a new study conducted by Harvard and Boston University researchers, air pollution data in China may have been manipulated by local officials.

According to Fox News, the analysis, published on Wednesday, found statistically significant differences between data from monitoring stations run by local Chinese officials in five cities - Beijing, Shenyang, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chengdu - and readings collected by US embassies.

Harvard University's Jesse Turiel and Boston University's Robert Kaufmann examined the measurement of PM 2.5, particulate matter that's linked to lung cancer, asthma and heart disease, recorded by Chinese and US stations between January 2015 and June 2017.

They discovered temporary divergences between the two data sets that were more likely to occur during periods of high air pollution, suggesting that "government-controlled stations systematically underreport pollution levels when local air quality is poor."

According to Fox News, China is the world's largest carbon producer, closely followed by the US

Xi's claim that China would achieve carbon neutrality by 2060, and to peak carbon emissions by 2030 comes as coal generation rose in China in 2020, while falling elsewhere -- making it the only G20 nation to see a significant jump in coal-fired generation.

According to a report by research from Ember, a London-based energy and climate research group, China is now responsible for more than half (53 per cent) of the world's coal-fired electricity, up from 44 per cent in 2015.

Over the years, China has received applause for its clean environmental speeches at climate change and environmental events. However, ground reality narrates a different story as China continues to be the largest coal producer globally.

Citing China Coal Transport and Distribution Association's (CCTDA) data, the Asia Times reported that the coal used by coastal power plants at five major Chinese utilities hit 4,88,800 tonnes during the last week of March, more than double from a record low seen on February 10 last year.

Despite making tall speeches about the road to have a clean environment, the Chinese government reportedly plans to add coal storage facilities in 2020 to ensure stockpiles at or above 15 days' normal supply for coal-driven power plants.