China’s Emissions Continue to Grow
The 2019 increase is an 11.4 percent increase over the past decade. (1) China alone contributed over 27 percent of total global emissions, far exceeding the US—the second highest emitter—which contributed 11 percent of the global total. For the first time, India edged out the EU-27 for third place, coming in at 6.6 percent of global emissions.
This is hardly a surprise: Indian leaders are ramping up the country’s coal production by opening a new mine every month, despite signing the Paris climate agreement.
At a recent climate conference, where dozens of high level delegates dutifully lauded net-zero, India went off-script. As other participants squirmed, power minister Raj Kumar Singh inconveniently blurted out the truth: net-zero ‘is just pie-in-the-sky.’ He added that developing countries will want to use more and more fossil fuels and ‘you can’t stop them.’ (2)
In most of the developed world, there has been a sustained global scale effort to reduce coal power capacity in recent years. Meanwhile, China’s government has been busy loosening restrictions on coal plant construction to power its post pandemic economy. In 2020, China built over three times as much new coal power capacity as all other countries in the world combined, with no signs of letting up in years to come. (3)
President Xi Jinping reiterated at the recent G7 summit that ecological cooperation is a key aspect of China’s Belt and Road Initiative. China made no promises to end coal financing abroad, even as Japan and South Korea, the second and third larges financiers of overseas coal power plants, take ambitious steps to stop funding overseas coal plants. (4)
Indeed, China is working directly against the Paris accord, flagrantly, openly, on a massive scale, and the coal plants it is providing are not even the cleaner sort.
As most of the world experienced economic contraction in 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, China’s industrial led recovery kept the nation in positive territory, ultimately growing their economy 2.1 percent in 2020. As a result, China is also the only major economy to experience an increase in greenhouse gas emissions last year. Based on preliminary energy and economic data, estimates indicate that China emissions increased by 1.7 percent in 2020.
While this is well below the 3.3% emissions growth that China averaged over the past decade, it is a worrying sign that the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter’s focus on a fossil fueled industrial recovery is at odds with its long term goal of reaching net zero emissions by 2060. (5)
As countries finalize their international commitments for 2030 under the Paris Agreement this year and the world looks ahead to reaching net zero emissions by mid-century, there will be increasing scrutiny on China’s plans for the coming decade to ensure that emissions peak as soon as possible and get on a rapid path toward meeting President Xi Jinping’s goal of reaching net zero emissions by 2060.
China’s current 2030 goals, increasing non-fossil share of energy consumption to 25 percent and reducing carbon intensity of GDP by 65 percent below 2005 level, fall far short of what will be required to get on track for that goal.
How will they reduce carbon intensity? Wind and solar? Highly questionable since China will stop subsidizing new solar farm projects, distributed solar projects for commercial users, and onshore farms as soon as this year. The change will enter into effect on August 1 and is a departure from the course set last year. (6)
The reasons for the cut—and this year’s end of subsidies—were not exactly altruistic. China has amassed a massive debt pile in subsidies owed to wind and solar companies as a result of its previously generous support for new projects.
The pile, according to a Bloomberg report from July last year, is worth $42 billion. (7) The cost of going net-zero for China would exceed seven to fourteen percent of its GDP. Instead, China uses green rhetoric to placate westerners but aims for development with 247 new coal fired power plants. As mentioned earlier, China now emits more carbon dioxide than the entire rich world.
References
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Tom
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I guess they ignored the memo from the climate control freaks about fake climate change and that the earth is gonna melt by 2030.
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T. C. Clark
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In other news, CCP (China) blocks air travel from the UK to Hing Kong….it’s the Delta Variant of the CCP Virus coming home….coming home…..how much longer before the Zebra Variant appears?
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