Fri, Oct 08, 2010 page5

• China touts its climate efforts

  ‘OUT OF THE STARTING BLOCKS’: China invested almost twice as much as the US in clean energy last year and phased out power plants equal to the capacity of the UK

  • AFP, TIANJIN, CHINA
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  China has seized on its hosting of UN climate talks this week to showcase its efforts to curb carbon emissions, and environmentalists say the top greenhouse gas polluter is making huge progress.

  China’s phenomenal economic growth has made it the biggest source of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, and those emissions will continue to soar because of its dependence on carbon-belching coal.

  However, amid US-led pressure to do more, China has outlined an array of measures to curb emissions that environmentalists say helps its bargaining position in UN negotiations on a global warming treaty.

  

  A worker makes small repairs to the blades of wind turbines sitting on a truck outside a factory in Baoding in China’s Hubei Province on Sept. 30.

  PHOTO: AFP

  And while China was blamed by some rich nations for the failure of a climate summit in Copenhagen last year, few are developing clean energies as aggressively, say experts at the week-long talks in the city of Tianjin.

  “The Chinese are out of the starting blocks and the United States is still taking off its -sweatsuit,” said Jake Schmidt, global climate policy director for the US-based Natural Resources Defense Council.

  China says in the past five years it has phased out obsolete and inefficient power plants equal to the power capacity of Britain.

  It last year invested a world-leading US$34.6 billion in clean energy initiatives — 30 percent of the global total and nearly double US spending.

  The government has said another US$738 billion will be spent in the next decade.

  Its ambitious renewable energy goals, backed with both incentives and mandatory targets, saw China become the leading manufacturer of wind turbines last year.

  It became No. 3 in the world in installed wind power capacity and is expected to pass the US and Germany to take the top spot this year.

  China also is on course to become a world leader in several other areas such as carbon capture.

  On the macro-level, China has set a 2020 target to reduce carbon emissions per unit of GDP — or carbon intensity — by 40-45 percent from 2005 levels.

  China has held a series of press events in Tianjin to highlight its clean energy efforts, the latest salvo in its decades-long dispute with rich nations in which each side insists the other should do more to fight global warming.

  “Our efforts have been tremendous and so have the achievements,” China’s top climate official Xie Zhenhua (解振華) told reporters in Tianjin on Monday.

  If China can hit its target of improving its energy efficiency this year, it will have avoided emitting about 4.3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from 2006 to 2010, according to the US-based Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

  China’s 2007 emissions were 6.5 billion tonnes.

  The Tianjin event is a prelude to a UN summit starting next month in Mexico, where countries will again try to make progress on forging a global climate change treaty.

  Yang Ailun (楊愛倫), climate and energy campaigner for Greenpeace China, said Beijing’s clean energy efforts had given it a stronger hand in the negotiations.

  “China has been doing a lot at home and this has given them more leverage, especially when the United States seems to be backtracking. China is in a rather comfortable position right now,” she said.

  China’s clean energy policies however still attract criticism because its emissions will continue to rise for years as its expanding economy gobbles up energy, 70 percent of which comes from coal.

  The US and other developing nations also remain frustrated over China’s refusal to commit through the UN process to emission reduction targets.

  Nevertheless, merely continuing with the measures of the past five years would reduce China’s carbon intensity 37 percent by 2020, said Barbara Finamore, the NRDC’s China director.

  She said Beijing was expected to announce further aggressive steps for the next five years next year.
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