German Vice-Chancellor Habeck says China indispensable to achieve climate goals
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German vice-chancellor Habeck during his visit to carmaker BMW's research and development centre in Shanghai, China, on June 23.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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HANGZHOU – German Vice-Chancellor and Economy Minister Robert Habeck said on June 23 that China was indispensable to achieving global climate goals and must find a safe alternative to coal, which accounted for nearly 60 per cent of China’s electricity supply in 2023.
"Without China, it would not be possible to meet the climate targets globally," he told reporters in the southern city of Hangzhou a day after meeting Chinese officials in the capital Beijing.
Other issues seem to overshadow curbing global warming at the moment, but it is a key challenge, so strengthening cooperation with China in this area is necessary, said Mr Habeck.
Chinese officials had told him they were expanding coal production for security reasons, the minister added.
"China also imports large amounts of gas and oil and China has already seen what has happened in Europe and Germany in the last two years," he said, referring to the energy crisis after Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Mr Habeck said China must find a safe alternative to coal.
"You don't have to teach them that CO2 emissions are bad for the climate. They've got that," he said, adding that an alternative should allow them to achieve the same level of security with fewer coal-fired power plants.
Later, Mr Habeck told students at Zhejiang University that the difficulty lay in integrating variable forms of energy such as wind and solar into a system built to work on more predictable fuels, adding: “That is basically my work.”
He said that doubling capacities was “the old way” of doing it, but not the most efficient.
China is expanding its coal production but also installed almost 350 gigawatts of new renewable energy capacity in 2023, more than half the global total.
Mr Habeck said extension of the power grid and use of batteries to store energy could reduce the number of traditionally fuelled power plants needed to meet China’s needs, adding that economic growth and climate action were not opposites.
“Transforming the economy to a climate-neutral one is not only good for the climate but creates new opportunities for wealth and growth,” he added.
During his visit to China on June 22, Chinese and EU officials said they had agreed to start talks on the proposed imposition of tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles being imported into the European market. REUTERS
