The European Union has strongly criticized China’s newly announced targets for curbing planet-warming gases, describing them as significantly insufficient. EU climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra explicitly stated that these goals fall ‘well short’ of what the bloc believes is ‘both achievable and necessary’ for the world’s leading polluter.
Beijing unveiled its first-ever absolute climate targets at a UN summit on Wednesday. These pledges aim to reduce economy-wide emissions by 7-10 percent by 2035, relative to the country’s projected peak emissions year of 2025.
“This level of ambition is clearly disappointing,” Hoekstra remarked, emphasizing that “given China’s immense footprint, it makes reaching the world’s climate goals significantly more challenging.” As the world’s second-largest economy and biggest emitter, China is responsible for nearly 30 percent of global emissions.
While many observers found these targets modest, there’s a prevailing sentiment that China often under-promises and then over-delivers, largely driven by its rapid advancements in green technology. However, even with this potential, the current trajectory aligns more with the post-peak emission paths taken by the United States and the EU over a decade, which is not enough to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels—the critical threshold set by the 2015 Paris Agreement to avert the most catastrophic climate impacts.
The EU, another major global polluter, has demonstrated the strongest commitment to combating climate change, a crisis that is fueling disasters worldwide, from devastating floods in Pakistan to intense wildfires in Spain. Despite this, its leadership is currently facing significant internal challenges, with divisions emerging over the appropriate level of ambition. This comes as the bloc prioritizes boosting defense and industry in response to the conflict in Ukraine and escalating global trade tensions.
Brussels has pledged to slash emissions by 55 percent by 2030 compared to 1990 levels, and according to the European Commission, it has already achieved nearly 40 percent of this reduction. However, a firm target for 2035, a requirement under the Paris Agreement, has yet to be finalized. Commission Chief Ursula von der Leyen informed the UN summit on Wednesday that EU member states anticipate this target to “range” between 66.25 percent and 72.5 percent, with a formal announcement expected later.
Previously, China had committed to peaking its carbon output before 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality by 2060, but without specifying concrete short-term numeric targets for overall emissions reductions. This latest commitment from China comes at a time when the United States, under President Donald Trump, who famously dismisses climate change as a “con job,” is actively increasing fossil fuel production both domestically and internationally.