Climate of Our Future

From: SciDev.Net

China and climate change: the role of the energy sector
Pan Jiahua
June 2005

Summary

Climate change is affecting China and China is affecting climate change. Key to the relationship are the nation’s booming economy and energy sector. Pan Jiahua, executive director of the sustainable development research centre of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, describes what the country is doing to face the challenge of climate change.

Introduction

Since the end of the 1980s, when climate change was brought to the global political agenda, China has gone from generating a surplus of energy to becoming an importer of oil. The change is a symptom of a rapidly industrialising nation and comes hand-in-hand with many of the signs of a nation already suffering from the effects of climate change.

Recent figures show that China is the second most important emitter of greenhouse gasses in the world, after the United States. Research shows that its population and environment are likely to suffer the effects of extreme weather events made more frequent by climate change, that rising temperatures and changing rainfall will affect food production, and that energy consumption — a major source of emissions — will continue to rise over the coming decades.

Yet China, as a developing nation, is not bound to limit its emissions under the Kyoto Protocol, and will not do so at the expense of its development. The government says developed nations must bear the responsibility for historical rises in concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Despite this, the Chinese government is aware of the complexities and effects of climate change. Although its primary motivation is not to align itself with international climate change policy, it is adopting measures to diversify its sources of energy and to increase energy efficiency, which could slow the steep rise of its emissions.

Effects of climate change in China

Early in 2005, a comprehensive assessment of environmental and climate change in China showed that the effects of climate change in China are similar to those in the rest of the world (Qin et al, 2005). During the past century, the average temperature in China increased by 0.6-0.8 degrees Celsius. In the past 50 years, sea levels rose by between 1-2.5 millimetres each year.

Climate change will make China more vulnerable to damage caused by rising sea levels, drought, flooding, tropical cyclones, sand storms, and heat waves. Although a warmer climate will increase the amount of land available for farming, extreme weather could reduce agricultural yield by ten per cent. Already, in 2004 alone, drought and floods damaged more than 37 million hectares of arable crops, leaving more than four million of them barren.

China has several climatic zones and a varied physical environment. North-west China is a largely arid and semi-arid, fragile environment that is highly vulnerable to climate change. In north-east China, a warmer climate might increase agricultural production, but extreme weather events, such as storms and flooding, would probably cause serious damage.

In central and eastern China, winters are cold and summers are hot. The building industry in these regions is using more and more energy. Coastal areas in the south and east are densely populated, and a rise in sea levels could greatly damage the economically dynamic and prosperous Zhujiang and Yangtze deltas.

The challenges for China to reduce emissions

China is the largest emitter in the world of greenhouse gases after the United States. It accounts for just over one-seventh of the world’s emissions (14.7 per cent in 2000; in comparison, the United States emitted 20.6 per cent of global emissions in the same year). According to researchers at the US-based Pew Centre on Global Climate Change, China is likely to be the number one emitter in twenty years (Baumert and Pershing, 2004).

Patterns of energy consumption

China’s booming industry and its corresponding burst in energy consumption and rapid urbanisation — and the fact that it generates most of its energy by burning coal — are largely responsible for its rapidly climbing greenhouse gas emissions. After all, in only half a century, China has moved from being a society based on farming, to one where half of its output comes from industry.

In 1960, China’s commercial sector consumed 302 million tonnes of coal equivalent (1 tce corresponds to 7,500 kilowatt hours). By 1980, this figure had doubled. By 2000, it had reached 1.3 billion tce. In 2004, the figure rocketed to 1.97 billion tce, surpassing the country’s energy production of 1.85 billion. The same year, China consumed 290 million tonnes of oil, but produced only 175 million.

In just 11 years, from 1993-2004, China has gone from being one of the world’s largest exporters of coal to having to import oil in order to meet its energy needs.

Economic development is pushing China’s greenhouse gas emissions into realms more often associated with developed nations. Now a ‘developing giant’ with a surging economy, China is finding that energy security and pollution problems dominate its choices in how to take that development forward.

Energy demand will continue to rise

Between 1980 and 2000, the Chinese economy more than quadrupled and energy consumption doubled. In 2000, the government set a target to quadruple its gross domestic product (GDP) again by 2020.

The Chinese Energy Research Institute projected that this target, combined with advances in technology and renewable energies, would take energy demand to 1.9 billion tce by 2010, and to about 2.8 billion tce by 2020 (Zhou et al, 2003). In reality, energy consumption passed the 2010 target in 2004 — a whole six years early.

Firmly in support of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’

China has consistently emphasised that industrialised nations must be held responsible for past greenhouse gas emissions. It also emphasises that developing countries need to increase their own emissions, to meet the needs of development. Developed countries, China maintains, should take the lead in reducing emissions, and help developing countries limit theirs by transferring technology and funds to them.

When the Kyoto Protocol was negotiated in 1997, China officially stated that it would not consider limiting greenhouse gas emissions until it reached a “medium level of development”. It implied that this meant an annual income of about US$5,000 per person, which would be reached around the middle of the twenty-first century.

Eight years on, the government remains unlikely to make any commitments to limit its emissions, although it has been more flexible in participating in international efforts to mitigate climate change. These include cooperating on the technological development of renewable energies, as well as on carbon capture and storage.

In addition, China has participated in the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism, which helps developing countries run projects to reduce greenhouse gas emissions using investments from developed nations.

China’s international climate change policy: historical perspective

China has never denied the threat of climate change. From the 1980s, it treated climate change as a scientific issue, giving the China Meteorological Administration (CMA) the responsibility of advising the government on policy options.

At the international level, China saw climate change negotiations as an integral part of its foreign policy, and a terrain on which it, and other developing countries, would need to protect development rights and opportunities.

After the Kyoto Protocol was negotiated in 1997, the Chinese government shifted responsibility for climate change policy from the CMA to the more powerful State Development and Planning Commission (now the National Development and Reform Commission). The move indicated a shift in perspective: for China, climate change had become predominantly a development issue.

Despite this, China has responded positively to international initiatives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, such as carbon capture and renewable energy development. In the forthcoming post-Kyoto negotiations, China is likely to be more flexible and open to international cooperation: the expression ‘medium level development’ has not been mentioned again. Although China labels itself a developing country, the image it wishes to cultivate — of a large and responsible country — will probably make it more flexible in international negotiations.

Diversify, diversify, diversify

Despite refusing to reduce emissions in international negotiations, at home China has been making continuing and increasing efforts to diversify its energy sources and increase energy efficiency. However, this is not primarily because China wants to comply with global climate change policy. Instead the reasons are social and economic: China is concerned about secure energy supplies and pollution control.

Nonetheless, the results are consistent with international climate change policy. China is actively promoting a variety of ways of generating energy, and this means investigating, investing in, and adopting clean and renewable sources of energy, such as hydropower, nuclear, solar, wind, and biomass.

South-west China, for instance, is expected to be able to generate more than 40 gigawatts of hydropower — enough to power dozens of cities with populations of half a million — by 2020. Six regional nuclear power plants are being built or have recently been completed, each capable of generating energy on the scale of gigawatts.

In February 2005, the government adopted the Renewable Energy Law, providing financial incentives to those developing wind, solar and bio-energy. In rural areas, each year the government allocates ten billion yuan (US$1.25 billion) to subsidise the use of biogas by rural households. And the recently announced National Plan for Medium and Long Term Scientific and Technological Development prioritises the development of renewable energies.

China’s ‘five-year plans’ set targets for saving energy. The National Development and Reform Commission has laid out ten projects to save 240 million tce during the ‘eleventh five year plan’, from 2006-2010.

Looking ahead

As post-Kyoto negotiations evolve, many feel that China will have to consider committing to reducing emissions after 2012. Given the 76 million rural people living in extreme poverty in China, with average income levels below US$110 in 2004, there is still a long way for China to go on its path to development. But the size and scale of industrialisation and urbanisation in China are unprecedented.

In this context, it is in China’s interest to help mitigate the effects of climate change both internationally and domestically. Cooperating will help China become more energy efficient and use more energy from renewable resources. Spurred on by this, China is more likely to participate in global initiatives on energy efficiency, development of renewable energy, and carbon capture and storage, than to commit to reducing its emissions.

Pan Jiahua is executive director of the sustainable development research centre of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

References

Baumert, Kevin and Jothasan Pershing, 2004. Climate Data: insights and observations. Pew Centre on Global Climate Change. Washington DC.

CSB (China Statistical Bureau), 2005. Statistical Bulletin of the National Economy and Social Development, 2004. 28 February 2005. http://www.stats.gov.cn/ tjgb/ndtjgb/gqndtjgb/t20050228-402231854.htm.

GOC (Government of China), 2004. Initial National Communication on Climate Change. China Planning Publishing Press. Beijing.

NDRC (National Development and Reform Commissions) 2004. Interim CDM Measures. http://www.ccchina.gov.cn/cdm.

Liu, Jiang. 2005. Speech at the High Level Seminar on Celebrating Kyoto Protocol Coming into Force. Beijing, 16 Feb. 2005. http://ccchina.gov.cn/source/aa/

Qin, Dahe, ChenYiyu, and Li Xueyong (editors), 2005. Climate and Environmental Change in China (two volumes). China Science Press (in Chinese), Beijing.

Zhou, D., Dai, Y. Yi, C., Guo, Y. and Zhu, Y.: 2003, China’s Sustainable Energy Scenarios in 2020, China Environmental Science Press, Beijing, August 2003