China, the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter, will limit its total emissions for the first time by the end of this decade, according to a top government advisor.
Advisory Committee on Climate Change chairman He Jiankun (何建坤) told a conference in Beijing on Tuesday that an absolute cap on carbon emissions will be introduced.
“The government will use two ways to control CO2 emissions in the next five-year plan, by intensity and an absolute cap,” Reuters reported He as saying.
Though not a government official, He is a high level advisor.
While environmentalists have broadly welcomed the remarks, they cautioned that it was far from clear at what level the cap would be set and said it needed to be enforceable.
China’s emissions have risen dramatically in the last two decades, overtaking those from the US — the previous biggest producer — in 2006. Although the average Chinese person’s carbon footprint is still much lower than the average American’s, it is catching up, and is now on a par with the average European’s.
He’s remarks came just a day after US President Barack Obama’s administration implemented tough new rules to cut carbon emissions from power plants 30 percent by 2030.
“The timing is very auspicious,” said Frank Jotzo, an expert on the economics and policy of climate change at Australian National University and a lead author on the fifth assessment report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN’s climate science panel.
“Globally I think we are in a much better situation than we were leading into the [major UN climate change talks] Copenhagen summit in 2009,” said Jotzo, who is attending the conference in Beijing.
One and a half years out from the Paris climate conference, where a new agreement is to be struck, we very likely have some coordination behind the scenes and some competition for leadership on the issue,” Jotzo said.
However, “the announcement of intent of an absolute target doesn’t tell us anything substantive... [On the US side] we have a policy for the electricity sector, but not an overall national number,” he said.
China set its first ever carbon targets in 2009, in the run-up to the Copenhagen summit.
The previous target was for a cut of emissions relative to its economic growth, by 40 percent to 45 percent by 2020, compared to 2005 levels, meaning absolute carbon emissions could still increase as China’s economy grew.
However, the new cap will be the first time that the country, which has been plagued by pollution problems in large part due to the burning of carbon-intensive coal, has promised to limit absolute emissions.
Chinese officials have not yet put a figure on what level the cap will be.
Doug Parr, Greenpeace UK’s chief scientist, said that the move by China, so shortly after the US announcement, showed “momentum” in the climate talks process.
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