Li Gao, the head of China’s climate change department (DCC) under the Ministry of Environment and Ecology (MEE), issued the first official response to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s 1.5 degrees special report at a press conference. According to MEE’s Weibo account, Li Gao said that the report findings demonstrate the urgency of taking action on climate change. He said that keeping temperature to 2 or 1.5 degrees Celsius would be challenging and that more effective action is needed on mitigation, finance, technological innovation and other fronts. In particular, more research is needed on the costs and the most cost-effective actions. Meanwhile, he remarked that China will continue striving to meet its Paris Agreement goal to peak emissions at or before 2030. He added that China contributed to global climate action by lowering the cost of renewables, and the recently apparent plateauing of emissions was a major achievement. Read more
China issues National Climate Plan for 2026–2030
On 27 July 2026, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) and 18 other national authorities jointly issued the “National Climate Change Plan for the 15th Five-Year Plan Period”. The plan covers the period 2026–2030 and addresses mitigation, adaptation, carbon markets, product carbon footprints and climate governance.
The plan builds on the objectives of the general 15th Five-Year Plan (FYP) for National Economic and Social Development, adopted in March 2026, and of the State Council’s “Action Plan for Carbon Peaking during the 15th Five-Year Plan Period”, issued earlier this month. While the “Action Plan for Carbon Peaking” focuses mainly on energy and sectoral carbon dioxide (CO2) reductions, the new national climate plan also addresses non-CO2 gases, climate risk and the data systems needed to implement climate policy.
