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Ed Miliband has accused the previous Conservative government of negligence for failing to engage with China on climate issues, as he travelled to Beijing for the countries’ first formal climate meetings since 2017.
The secretary of state for energy security and net zero was in Beijing to announce a new annual UK-China climate dialogue. The first summit will take place in London later this year. China’s minister of ecology and environment, Huang Runqiu, is expected to attend.
The dialogue “is an essential start to putting an end to what I call the previous strategy of negligence”, Miliband said. He said the new annual summit represented “a strategy of committed engagement”.
The dialogue will allow ministers and officials to share experiences on issues such as energy market reform, carbon capture and storage, domestic climate goals and other issues related to the clean energy transition. It will be the first regular dialogue to be held at secretary of state level.
Miliband stressed that “the world is way off track from where we need to be” before the Cop30 UN climate summit in Brazil in November. He said that in his first eight months as secretary of state, he had visited Brazil, India and China, showing that “Britain is back as a climate leader” on the world stage. The UK is hoping to shape a new global axis in favour of climate action along with China and developing countries, to counter Donald Trump’s abandonment of green policies in the US.
Asked about how Britain could show leadership on sensitive areas in China’s energy transition, such as human rights, Miliband declined to give details.
Campaigners have highlighted that nearly half of the world’s solar-grade polysilicon, a crucial raw material for solar panels, comes from Xinjiang, a region of China where there are credible reports of forced labour for Uyghurs and other minorities via “surplus labour” programmes in which workers are transferred to work in other parts of the country. China says the labour initiatives are voluntary and aimed at tackling poverty.
Miliband said: “The issue of forced labour is absolutely something I’ve raised and it is a concern in the UK … I raised it with my Chinese hosts.” He said China “will continue to play a really important role in solar production”.
The government’s massive investments in the solar industry mean that China dominates about 80% of the total supply chain, with western leaders concerned about oversupply driving down prices.
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Miliband also addressed the issue of coal phase-out in China. Despite the country’s huge rise in clean energy production, Beijing remains committed to coal, and recently pledged “increase coal production and supply capacity” to ensure energy security.
“We obviously want China and all countries indeed to move away from fossil fuels,” Miliband said. He said that he believed the Chinese side “sees renewables as the kind of driver of the system” and fossil fuels as the “underlying backup”.
