China doesn’t want to lead alone on climate policies, senior adviser warns | Cop30 | The Guardianhttps://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/nov/19/china-doesnt-want-to-take-lead-on-climate-policies-alone-senior-adviser-warnsIn an exclusive interview, Wang said theChinese president, Xi Jinping, was committed to the energy transition for the long haul despite resistance from some industrial sectors. He explained that China’s priority in Belém was to help the Brazilian presidency achieve a successful climate conference, and to show the benefits of multilateral decision-making. On Tuesday, the first draft of a possible agreement was published at the Cop30 summit, reviving the hotly contested plan to transition away from fossil fuels.
China is the planet’s biggest emitter of carbon dioxide from burning of coal, oil and gas, but it is now also a world leader in the production, installation and export of wind turbines, solar panels and electric cars.
He said China wanted to “speed up and scale up its efforts to provide more global public goods” despite serious geopolitical and economic tensions and unilateral barriers to trade, including tariffs. The country’s emissions have been flat or falling for 18 months.
He estimated China’s per capita power consumption would continue to grow from 7,000 kilowatt hours in 2024 to “well over 10,000, maybe 12,000” – but there would be a steady move away from fossil fuels to wind and solar, as well as green hydrogen, green ammonia and electric vehicles. Along with a new power grid system, he said the country was in the midst of a “comprehensive green transition of social economic development”.
As in many countries, Wang suggested there was some resistance to change, but the president had sent a clear signal about the direction of travel. “Even in China, we have a lot of industrial conflict ... but the central government, including President Xi, is very clear to us that we must, in the next five years’ time, speed up the new power system.”
In the absence of the US, China’s role is even more crucial than usual to the success or failure of Cop30, where the Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has urged his negotiators to lay the foundations for an exit ramp out of the fossil fuel era.