A coal-fired power plant in Beijing in November 2014. Photo by Kevin Frayer/Getty Images.
The recent downturn in China’s coal use and carbon emissions, noted in this space a few weeks ago, might be more than an anomaly brought on by weaker growth in key sectors and robust hydropower from above-normal rain. That’s the assessment from two London School of Economics researchers, who see a hopeful “new normal” that includes everything from “structural changes in the economy to explicit policies on efficiency, air pollution and clean energy,” and that adds up to the country reaching peak GHG emissions well before a 2030 target date announced last fall.
And that, the authors say, could revive flagging hopes of stabilizing temperatures below a 2°C rise thought necessary to ward off disastrous impacts.
This suggests that China’s international commitment to peak carbon dioxide emissions “around 2030” should be seen as a conservative “upper limit” from a government that prefers to underpromise and over-deliver. It is important that governments, businesses and citizens everywhere understand this fundamental change in China, reflect on their own ambitions on climate change, and adjust upwards expectations about the global market potential for low-carbon and environmental goods and services.
Were China’s emissions indeed to peak around 2020–2025, it would be reasonable to expect a peak emissions level for China of around 12.5–14 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. This could hold open the possibility that global GHG emissions could be brought onto a pathway consistent with the international goal of limiting global warming to no more than 2°C. Whether the world can get onto that pathway in the decade or more after 2020 depends in significant part on China’s ability to reduce its emissions at a rapid rate, post-peak (as opposed to emissions plateauing for a long time), on the actions of other countries in the next two decades, and on global actions over the subsequent decades. – Fergus Green and Nicholas Stern, “China’s ‘new normal’: structural change, better growth, and peak emissions” [PDF]
