China’s first road map to achieving net zero emissions by 2060 may be too slow to stop the world’s biggest polluter from hastening global warming. Thousands of Chinese delegates applauded when Premier Li Keqiang stood in the Great Hall in Beijing at the start of the National Party Congress on Friday and said the country will act strongly on climate change. The country’s 14th five-year plan, released later that morning, was awash with ways to increase the use of renewable energy by 2025.

But when it came to greenhouse-gas emissions — the key metric that will determine whether the world reins in a global temperature increase — Friday’s announcements were disappointing. Beijing didn’t set a hard target for the emissions, nor did it bring forward from 2030 the date it expects them to peak. The only carbon goal announced — reducing emissions per unit of gross domestic product by 18% over five years — was the same as in 2016.

“To tackle the climate crisis, China needs to bring its emission growth to a much slower level,” said Li Shuo, senior global policy adviser at Greenpeace in Beijing. “Peaking emissions earlier than 2025 is not only possible but necessary.”

The new five-year plan is the latest sign that China is employing a two-speed approach to tackling climate change. In the near term, it’s offering incremental improvements, such as reducing the intensity of emissions, while spending on research into technologies such as hydrogen and battery storage that it hopes will allow the nation later on to accelerate efforts to meet its 2060 goal.

The slow start is a reflection that the government needs to restore steady growth to the world’s second-largest economy even as much of the planet remains in the grip of the pandemic, to help preserve social order and continue reducing poverty.

Uncertainty over how quickly that can happen is reflected in the plan, which, for the first time in recent history, doesn’t include a five-year numerical target for GDP growth.

Among the energy and climate goals announced are to:

  • Get 20% of its energy from non-fossil fuel sources by 2025, up from 15.9% in 2020
  • Reduce energy use and carbon emissions per unit of GDP by 13.5% and 18%, respectively
  • Boost nuclear power capacity to 70 gigawatts, from nearly 50 GW at the end of last year.

More targets may be coming later this year, when the government is expected to release a separate five-year plan for the energy sector. Premier Li also promised a work plan this year to show how China aims to reach peak emissions by 2030.