BEIJING (dpa-AFX) - China has committed that by 2035, the country will reduce economy-wide net greenhouse gas emissions by seven to 10 per cent from peak levels.
Chinese President Xi Jinping announced this while addressing the Climate Summit 2025, a high-Level special event on Climate Action.
From accelerating the move to clean energy to planting acres of trees, leaders from more than 100 countries announced or reiterated new national climate action plans during a meeting on Wednesday as part of the high-level week of the UN General Assembly.
The game-changing summit was convened by UN Secretary-General António Guterres alongside President Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva of Brazil, host of the COP30 conference which kicks off in November in the Amazonian city of Belém.
Xi Jinping told the summit meeting that China will also increase the share of non-fossil fuels in total energy consumption to more than 30 per cent, and expand wind and solar power capacity six-fold compared to 2020 levels. Delivering a video message, he pledged to make 'new energy vehicles' the mainstream in new vehicle sales.
Meanwhile, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said 'the clean transition is moving on' in the European Union, where emissions are down nearly 40 per cent since 1990.
European countries are also 'doubling down on global partnerships' and will remain the world's largest providers of climate finance, she said, adding that the bloc is also mobilizing up to 300 billion Euros to support the clean energy transition worldwide.
At the outset of the meeting, leading climate scientists Johan Rockström and Katharine Hayhoe provided a stark assessment of global efforts so far to honor the Paris Agreement, the landmark 2015 treaty that seeks to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
Ten years on, greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming continue to rise, and annual global temperature change exceeded 1.5 degrees for the first time last year.
Under the Paris Agreement, governments are required to submit climate plans called Nationally Determined Contributions laying out bold action for the next decade.
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