 It's rare to be able to deliver good news on climate change But this Tuesday an announcement was made which could seriously dent global carbon emissions in the coming years Speaking at the UN China's President Xi Jinping committed to the immediate end of all funding for overseas coal power plants This is a very big deal as when it comes to providing international finance for coal power China is in a league of its own You can see here far and away the biggest funders of overseas coal Once they pause that funding it will become much harder for governments in developing countries to get loans to fund coal power generation There is a catch China is as yet not making any commitment when it comes to domestic coal power So how seriously should we take this pledge to find out? I spoke earlier today to Sam Gill CEO at China dialogue and an expert on environmental policy in China It's genuinely Encouraging of course we need to go much further. There's lots that you know I'm hoping we'll we'll see sort of play out over the next few months But but it really means a lot especially because this now really means there are no international financiers of coal China haven't committed to stop building coal plants within China and I Think that's there's more emissions that come from power plants within China than the ones they fund internationally So wouldn't that be the the bigger deal? Yeah, absolutely I mean that the you know China accounts for half of the world's Existing coal fleet at this point and they need to go further in terms of curbing their own You know brown economy that their coal fired power This pledge comes You know a year to the day after China's 2060 pledge Xi Jinping unilaterally last year pledged to reach carbon neutrality By 2060 to P commissions by 2030 at Latest and there's every hope that it could come in earlier And in the 14 five-year plan that was that that started this year as a plan for you know, how they can they can increase the Carbon intensity or that they can reduce the carbon intensity economy increase the efficiency of the economy that is to say the Reducing carbon emissions per unit of economic output. It doesn't go far enough in terms of putting an absolute cap on coal And I think there'll be further pressure to You know to to get there You know, there's a push and pull as anywhere else between sort of vested interest between local and central governments You know between a coal lobby and Renewables in energy industry, but I think it sends a pretty important signal both globally and to you know China's own industries that that you know The writing is on the war for coal and that the economics point strongly in favour of of renewables and of you know The technologies that I think China Broadly is sort of taking a gamble on in terms of what they believe the future is going to look like this is really a signal about China Positioning itself as the leading exporter of the technologies of the future that are needed for a carbon-constrained world And really sort of riding the kind of economic wave that's coming about through waves of technological innovation around renewables A lot of the falling cost of renewables really is owed to the scale of production in China You know big state-owned firms and private firms kind of competing And bringing down the cost very effectively and very fast over the last decade or so and it's one of the things that underlies a lot of the Diplomatic progress that's been made So I think this is an important signal to developing countries who might still look at coal as being cheap as being a you know An important kind of aspect of their development path to say well now actually we You know no longer really see this as a viable appropriate kind of technology for for development And you know that sends a signal really about China's intent as well. I hope People will often I think rightly be cynical about all the attention that we hear about in you know The United States in UK in the West which has historical responsibility for climate change on what's China going to do You know China needs to commit to that China needs to commit to this From sort of following discourse in in China What is Chinese civil society saying about what the West needs to do for COP 26? What are their demands of of us as it were? I mean China has a pretty active environmental civil society who you know engaged with global South Networks and and and historically have been very critical or very sort of Have offered like quite a robust critique of China's development model and really I think helped to push it towards One that has moved away from growth at all costs and has moved away from kind of pollute first Clean up later kind of approaches And I think would have a similar critique to many including myself of kind of the positioning of rich countries As we go into COP 26, which is to say demonstrating really Enormously insufficient kind of level of solidarity with the most vulnerable countries You know this applies also to to large emitters like China and India and so on as well I don't think they can hide behind the sort of the world's poor But you know as far as as China is now going in kind of stepping up its ambition We need to see a lot more from the rich countries specifically climate finance You know commitments on vaccines on debt on on loss and damage on the 1.5 degrees target These absolutely critical Questions for the world's poorest countries, which are also the most vulnerable and you know frankly at this point You know countries like the you know the United States and the UK have no moral standing to To push China anymore unless they can actually Sort of demonstrate that they're willing to go further on these critical issues because there's really there's really no way that the the kinds of The political alignments that we will need in order to in order to get to a resolution can be made without You know the rich countries actually sort of showing some genuine commitment on on these issues, I mean the $100 billion target that was agreed to Paris for For climate finance to developing countries has never materialized We're starting to see some commitments on that yesterday from Biden. I think that's really to be welcomed But you know that that kind of money really needs to be Shown at this point and I think that will really help to move the politics and it will also Sort of help to move countries like China out of a more traditional Negotiating stance where they can essentially say well look the ball is in in the rich countries core because you know it is and and You know rich countries need to leave by example at this point needs to demonstrate solidarity and then I think we can kind of move forward And see China are also really stepping up its ambition Hopefully which specifically means you know putting in greater commitments greater ambition on their own domestic Emissions i.e. moving forward that their peak year from 2030 to 2025 for example putting in a cap on on on China's own carbon emissions maybe increasing the Ambition of its own carbon intensity goals things like that I think are doable for China which has a history of kind of Underpromising and and over delivering on on its climate targets United States by contrast you know doesn't it has a it has a history of kind of coming into the talks very Very loudly and then of course the administration changing and and Congress not being able to pass bills and not really being able to To be good to its words so that needs to be very serious kind of work done You know in in the United States and in the UK's hosts to really Sort of demonstrate bona fide is so you know it's it's it's it's complex politics going in and we don't have long until until Glasgow