China’s commitment to stop its emissions rising requires the kind of massive top-down reformation only possible in a one-party state, according to analysts.
On Wednesday, Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) stood beside US President Barack Obama to announce a “historic” deal on carbon agreed upon between the world’s two biggest polluters.
The US announced new emissions targets for 2025 and — for the first time officially — China said it would aim to stop emissions from rising by about 2030. China also committed to generating 20 percent of its energy from wind, solar, nuclear and other zero-emission sources by 2030. However, the world’s most influential nation on future global warming declined to say how high the peak in emissions would be.
“We know today when we will see the summit of the mountain, but we do not know the contour,” Greenpeace East Asia senior climate and energy campaigner Li Shuo (李碩) said.
The scale of change required in China makes all other nations’ challenges seem insignificant.
In order to meet its clean-energy target, between now and 2030, China must add between 800 to 1,000 gigawatts (GW) of clean energy — enough capacity to power the entire US. Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s climate-denying government might pause to consider that China is to add enough zero-emissions capacity every year to power the whole of Australia.
Analysts are likely to now look closely at how the government backs up the international commitment in its domestic policy. The Chinese Communist Party’s 13th five-year plan, covering 2016 to 2020, will define how the country means to achieve these goals.
Milo Sjardin, head of Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s Asia arm, said China’s stable government allows for a level of future certainty that makes massive, systemic transitions manageable and politically relevant — a key difference with the more chaotic US system.
“China is very much driven by policy and they do think very long-term. Unlike the US, they are not bound by two-year electoral cycles,” he said.
Sjardin believes China must now look to put a price on carbon in order to shift power generation from coal to lower-emitting gas. The next five-year plan could also include some measures to incentivize the use of electric vehicles in major cities.
Li said that despite their scale, the goals are achievable, especially with Xi’s seal.
“I do have confidence that they will be able to deliver this target. Xi’s signature on the statement provides some assurance,” Li said.
In terms of dealing with China’s deeply bureaucratic energy sector, the president’s aegis is vital.
China’s power supply is not dictated by markets as it is in the West, where the grid buys from the power plants that produce the cheapest energy, after subsidies. In China, state administrators dictate to operators how much power they are required to produce. Li said that these decisions are governed by vested interests and heavily favor coal and gas. Xi’s influence might be the key to breaking fossil fuels’ grasp on the electricity sector.
Many in China expect a cap on coal to be included in the next five-year plan. Li said that this is the single most important policy measure for reducing carbon emissions. Such a cap would not only help China to bring its emissions to a peak, it would likely also add impetus to the already massive push for solar and wind energy.
China has already committed to generating a 15 percent share of its energy from non-fossil fuel sources by 2020. This will not be easy, Li said.
The number of Chinese driving gasoline cars is expected to explode over the next 15 years, creating a significant drag on emissions reductions. The industrial sector is similarly locked into processes that require fossil fuels — for example, the use of coal in steelmaking. Sjardin said the majority of gains must to come from the Chinese power sector. At the moment, about two-thirds of power is generated by coal.
However, Sjardin said a 43 percent non-fossil fuel share of Chinese electricity generation by 2030 is “achievable.”
“The Chinese power sector is going to look very different after the next 15 years than it has done in the past,” he said.
To achieve this extraordinary turnaround, China is pouring huge sums of state money into wind and solar.
Last year, China invested US$64 billion in renewable energy projects. This is US$2 billion less that the US invested over the same period, but from almost the same amount of money, China installed more than seven times more energy capacity than the US. China’s money was overwhelmingly concentrated on delivering products on the ground, whereas the US was focused on research and the development of intellectual property.
Also last year, China installed 12GW of solar power generation, outstripping all expectations and smashing records. No nation had ever installed more than 8GW in a single year before. By 2020, China aims to have 100GW of solar installed.
China’s wind sector is similarly booming, with thousands upon thousands of wind turbines set to sprout across its high, western deserts over the next six years. By 2020, wind capacity is expected to more than double from 75GW to 200GW.
Wednesday’s announcement extends this trajectory. Li said that the solar and wind sectors in China are already straining and meeting the 2020 targets would be “quite challenging.” The cheapest, most effective gains are happening now. Each percentage of power generation added and emissions reduced gets more expensive.
However, Sjardin says his modeling indicates that the 2020 and 2030 targets will be achievable, although this depends in large part on China’s economic growth, which is currently slower than in the past decade. A surge in growth would drive demand for energy and send China back to the coal mine.
Some observers are skeptical about China’s level of ambition. In the US, the Republican Party has rallied around a line that the US committed to a big decrease in emissions, but China has simply promised what would have happened anyway.
In its World Energy Outlook, also released on Wednesday, the International Energy Agency (IEA) outlined various pathways for China’s emissions.
Felix Preston, a senior research fellow at Chatham House, has analyzed these and says China’s new goals represent an increase in ambition, but still fall well short of a safe climate future.
“The 20 percent figure is higher than the 18 percent share in the IEA’s latest ‘new policies’ scenario, which takes account of broad policy commitments and plans that have been announced by countries. In this sense, it is another ratcheting up and builds on the existing target of 15 percent in 2020. However, 20 percent is some way below the share of 26 percent in the more climate-secure ‘450 scenario,’” says Preston.
The agency’s “450 scenario,” in which the levels of atmospheric carbon stay within safe limits, China’s non-fossil fuel energy generation would triple between today and 2030. The 20 percent target means it will double.
Another important aspect of the equation is what happens within the mix of fossil fuels, Preston said. Natural gas, while still a fossil fuel, has significantly lower emissions that coal. Under the 450 scenario, gas use in China increases four times over current levels.
Like all Chinese policy — and the world’s future climate — these decisions now rest with China’s politburo.
Karl Mathiesen is a journalist with The Guardian.
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