The battle against global warming has received a transformational boost after China, the world’s biggest producer of carbon dioxide, proposed to set a cap on its greenhouse gas emissions for the first time.

Under the proposal China, which is responsible for a quarter of the world’s carbon emissions, would put a ceiling on greenhouse gas emissions from 2016, in a bid to curb what most scientists agree is the main cause of climate change.

It marks a dramatic change in China’s approach to climate change that experts say will make countries around the world more likely to agree to stringent cuts to their carbon emissions in a co-ordinated effort to tackle global warming.

[Source]

China now burns nearly as much coal as the rest of the world combined — one factor contributing to the record levels of PM2.5 recorded early this year in Beijing — and has been accused in the past of being uncooperative in the global fight against climate change. Amid the new leadership’s call for “ecological progress,” the Ministry of Finance hinted in February at the imminent imposition of an emission-curbing carbon tax, though the ministry later said that, due to economic concerns, the move would have to wait until after 2013. Details about another measure towards “ecological progress” were recently unveiled: the country’s first pilot carbon-trading program will launch next month in Shenzhen. From The Guardian:

The trading scheme will cover 638 companies responsible for 38% of the city’s total emissions, the Shenzhen branch of the powerful National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) announced on Wednesday. The scheme will eventually expand to include transportation, manufacturing and construction companies.

Shenzhen is one of seven designated areas in which the central government plans to roll out experimental carbon trading programmes before 2014.

[...]Li Yan, Greenpeace east Asia’s climate and energy campaign manager, said that the pilot programmes will inform the central government on how to motivate local authorities to adopt low-carbon policies.

[Source]

In a report covering both the possible carbon cap and the new pilot program, Think Progress underlines the global and local impact of carbon emission in China, and notes what China’s progress in carbon regulation implies for the U.S., the world’s second top carbon dioxide emitter:

The possibility of a carbon cap in China has been hailed as “potentially transformative” in the fight against climate change, as other major emitters such as the U.S. have historically cited China’s inaction on climate change as reason to avoid implementing meaningful greenhouse gas regulations. Previously, China has shied away from cuts in emissions, saying its main priority was the growth of its economy. In November 2012, the state-owned Xinhua quoted Xie Zhenhua, China’s chief negotiator to the UN climate change talks, as saying it was “unfair and unreasonable to hold China to absolute cuts in emissions at the present stage, when its per capita GDP stands at just 5,000 U.S. dollars.”

But now, China’s advancements in carbon regulation mean the U.S.’s strategy of waiting for China to act on climate change before it does is becoming less and less credible. China has already pledged to cut its carbon intensity, or emissions per unit of GDP, by 17 percent between 2011 and 2015 and 40 to 45 percent by 2020, compared to 2005 levels. In February, the countryannounced it would be implementing a carbon tax, but it later clarified that it would wait until 2013 is over to introduce the program. And the country has invested substantially in renewable energy, spending $65 billion on clean energy projects in 2012, nearly twice as much as the U.S.’s $35.6 billion.

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The government will collect the environmental protection tax instead of pollutant discharge fees, as well as levy a tax on carbon dioxide emissions, Jia Chen, head of the ministry’s tax policy division, wrote in an article published on the MOF’s website.

It will be the local taxation authority, rather than the environmental protection department, that will collect the taxes.

The government is also looking into the possibility of taxing energy-intensive products such as batteries, as well as luxury goods such as aircraft that are not used for public transportation, according to Jia.

To conserve natural resources, the government will push forward resource tax reforms by taxing coal based on prices instead of sales volume, as well as raising coal taxes. A resource tax will also be levied on water.

The Responding to Climate Change website looks at how this new effort will work with the current trial cap-and -trade program that China announced early this year:

Joanna Lewis, assistant professor at Georgetown University and an expert in Chinese energy policy told RTCC it is unclear how the two would work together.

“The government has been discussing the implementation of a carbon tax for several years so it will be interesting to see if it happens this year,” she said.

It is also not yet clear whether the tax would apply to the same facilities covered under the pilot cap and trade programs for CO2, and if so how the two programs would interact.”

“Further regulation of CO2 could help to address current air pollution challenges if the environmental protection tax includes a range of pollutants, or if facilities curbing emissions through means that end up reducing other pollutants as well.

At the Atlantic, James Fallows summarizes several of the main points worth considering when discussing the carbon tax:

Here are your talking points for the next time this topic comes up at a dinner party:
Environmental carnage of all sorts is a truly major emergency in China, both in the short term and as a potential limit on the country’s development;

Chinese emissions are a problem not just for its own people but also for the world. It has now overtaken the U.S. as the biggest carbon emitter; most of the coal that is burned anywhere on Earth is burned in China.

Contrary to what you might think, China’s economy is relatively less efficient, and more polluting, than those of rich countries. It takes more energy to heat and cool the standard Chinese building than one in Europe or the US; Chinese farmers use more water, fertilizer, and pesticide per unit of output than is typical even with mechanized farming in the US; Chinese factories put out more air and water pollution per dollar of production than rich-country counterparts. On a per capita basis, the Chinese economy uses less energy than America’s. On a per dollar (or per RMB) basis, it uses more. Simplest way to remember this point: China’s economy is nowhere near as large as America’s now, but it puts out more emissions.

In a blog post, Ella Chou raises several questions that come up with the announcement:

The point of a carbon tax, be in China or elsewhere, is to set the price signal straight. We tax income; we tax property; we tax goods and services — all the things we want more of, so wouldn’t it be logic to actually tax the thing we want less of: pollution?

My environmental law professor Jody Freeman, who served as Counselor for Energy and Climate Change in the Obama White House before coming back to Harvard, told us that she used to say two words to almost everyone she met at the White House – “carbon tax”, and they would look at her as if she was crazy. This needs to be changed. If the giant climate rally in DC this past Sunday is any indication, that is we need a sensible policy to address the reality and challenges of climate change now. And in the case of China, I think starting with adjusting the distorted price signals, while giving due consideration to the widening income gaps and social injustices, is essential.

[...] As previously stated, this environmental tax is mainly converted from pollution discharge fees. Previously, pollution discharge was inspected by and the fee was charged by environmental protection bureaus. The environmental tax, however, is collected by the tax bureau according to the amount of pollution discharged by factories, and that amount is corroborated by the environmental protection bureau. That is to say, the environmental protection bureau becomes an agency that collects statistics for tax purposes.

Chou also points out the proposed tax itself would be “puny” (10 yuan [US $1.5] per ton of carbon dioxide in 2012, with gradual increase to 50 yuan [$7.9] per ton by 2020). For Forbes, Tim Worstall writes that even though it is small, the tax could still be effective:

But there’s two things which should be pointed out about even this lower number.

The first is that there’s a reasonable assumption that if the Chinese Government starts taxing fossil fuels then it will also, at the same time, stop subsidising them. And it does indeed subsidise the use of fossil fuels in a very large way. So the effect would be much larger than just the tax itself: it would also include the removal of the subsidies. And do note that the International Energy Authority has stated that simply removing those fossil fuel subsidies (not just in China, but in Russia, Iran, Saudi and so on as well, the places which cumulatively spend hundreds of billions a year on such subsidies. And no, we, the advanced or industrialised nations, we really don’t offer such subsidies, not in any great amount at least and all entirely dwarfed by the taxes we impose on such fuels.) would take us one third to one half of the way to controlling climate change all on its own.

So that’s good news, even given the low level of the tax. And it is a low level: lower than Tol or William Nordhaus would suggest for example. And yet it is obeying another basic rule which both would advocate. That a tax should start small and then grow. The reason being that this allows industry to adjust along with the capital cycle.

A post on the Washington Post blog points out that the economic impact of the tax will likely reach beyond’s China’s borders:

Much of the cost of China’s carbon tax would be borne by other countries. Last year, John Lee of the Center for International Security Studies argued that any carbon tax in China would mostly fall on the country’s exporters, who would in turn pass the cost on to consumers in the United States and Europe. “Beijing has consistently argued that the end-consumer country, and not the producer country, should bear the burden of paying for carbon emissions,” Lee notes.

Now, that’s still a significant step. Export manufacturing is responsible for anywhere from 20 percent to 50 percent of China’s greenhouse-gas emissions, after all. But it does help explain why Chinese officials are relatively sympathetic to this idea.

But, as the post also points out, China’s proposal is larger than anything under consideration by the U.S. Congress.

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“I haven’t seen the smog stay so long like this for years,” a 40-year-old woman who only gave her last name, Zhou, said after buying two air purifiers for more than 13,000 yuan($2,000) each in downtown Beijing. “This seems to be the only solution for us. You used to just open the windows to get fresh air at home, but now you can’t do that since it’s even dirtier outside.”

[...] Official measurements of PM2.5 rose to 993 in Beijing on Jan. 12. The city has proposed rules to scrap old vehicles, ban new cement and steel factories, and impose fines for roadside vendors barbecuing food on smoggy days.

Further measures to clean up the capital may be difficult because much of Beijing’s smog comes from surrounding regions, Ma Jun, a Beijing-based environmentalist and founder of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, said in a phone interview.

“China is the world’s biggest steel producer, and half of China’s steel is produced in areas around Beijing such as Hebei and Tianjin, mostly by burning coal,” Ma said. “How can the region stand this?”

People with an entrepreneurial spirit have started to make money by selling fresh air in cans. From John Garnaut at The Sydney Morning Herald:

Chen Guangbiao, whose wealth is valued at $740 million according to the Hurun Report, sells his cans of air for five yuan each.

It comes with atmospheric flavours including pristine Tibet, post-industrial Taiwan and revolutionary Yan’an, the Communist Party’s early base area.

Mr Chen told Fairfax Media he wanted to make a point that China’s air was turning so bad that the idea of bottled fresh air is no longer fanciful.

“If we don’t start caring for the environment then after 20 or 30 years our children and grandchildren might be wearing gas masks and carry oxygen tanks,” said Mr Chen.

James Fallows at The Atlantic notices a less humorous related phenomena: birth defects and cognitive disorders related to the heavy pollution:

Some related notes that have come in, about a problem increasingly recognized inside China as a national emergency. From a reader in the United States:

“[...A]long with the disappearance of children with no identified medical needs, we have seen a huge increase in the number of children with identified medical needs.  Every month, I place children (from 9 months to 14 years) who have cleft lip and/or cleft palate; missing fingers, hands, toes, parts of arms or legs; malformed internal organs; genetic disorders; etc. ”

[...] From another reader, this link to an article on the possible relationship between certain forms of pollution and autism. And from a technically trained reader who has been living and working in China:

“It is not hard to believe, if the vegetables they ate spent the entire season grown in soil and air laden with heavy metals, the water they drank is contaminated with metals and VOCs [Volatile Organic Compounds], and the air the breath is full of PM2.5 dust which can pass through the alveoli sacs into the blood stream, and through the blood/brain barrier, directly into their growing brains.  Certainly, we are aware of how heavy metals retard brain development…”

See more on air pollution via CDT.

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First, the inauguration of pro-market president Xi Jinping marks a shift away from the conservation-oriented, government-planned approach of his predecessor toward a model marked by increased privatization, including tax cuts for private enterprises, relaxed political controls, programs to boost domestic consumption and intensified resource exploitation. Xi insists that low-carbon growth will remain a priority and that the ambitious energy-saving targets of the twelfth Five Year Plan, issued in March 2011, will be met. But the targets were written in such a way that many of the details for implementation are open to interpretation. While the government had previously signaled that it would rely on growth in wind and solar to meet its goal (11.4 percent of total energy from renewable sources by 2015), it now looks like the bulk of that will come from nuclear and hydroelectric. Wind and solar are growing, but as a proportion of China’s total energy expenditure, coal is growing much faster.

…

Second, shifts in US energy consumption patterns, as well as changes in estimates of global oil reserves, will affect China’s long-term energy strategy. The International Energy Agency reports that discoveries of shale gas combined with new drilling technologies will make the United States the world’s largest oil producer by 2020. This is expected to make oil reserves in the Middle East and Central Asia newly available to China—which could reverse the shortage-driven incentive structure that promoted growth in China’s renewable energy sector. At the same time, China discovered that it may have the largest shale gas reserves in the world. A Chinese shale gas boom, coupled with increased output from coal and imported oil, could marginalize wind and solar energy. Moreover, with Washington now looking to shale gas rather than wind and solar for new energy resources, prospects for increased US consumption of China’s green exports are diminished.

…

Third, consumption patterns have eroded one of China’s most promising areas for low-carbon development: electric vehicles. A recent McKinsey & Co. report ranked China’s EV market a dismal fifth behind Japan, the United States, France and Germany. Even with generous subsidies for consumers and manufacturers, EV sales are sluggish, accounting for less than 0.02 percent of total vehicles sold (in the United States, it’s 0.09 percent). Demand is growing for gas-guzzling SUVs as well as luxury and medium-weight vehicles, especially foreign models, with imports of foreign-manufactured cars nearly doubling in 2010. The top-selling car in 2011 was the Buick Excelle, followed by the Volkswagen Lavida and the Chevrolet Cruze. China’s domestic vehicle manufacturers are drastically scaling back their small, fuel-efficient models and EV fleets and attempting to regroup around the new high-carbon model. In fact, China’s EV manufacturers are turning away from personal cars altogether and focusing on hybrid and electric city buses and taxi cabs. The major buyers of EVs are local governments and large state-owned corporations, not individuals.

The most glaring sign of resilience in China’s high carbon growth model, air pollution, hit record levels in Beijing last week. But the Economist reports that other cities in China are wrapped in smog too:

China’s crisis in air quality is indeed a national one. This month dozens of other cities, from Shandong province in the east to Guizhou in the south-west, recorded pollution spikes. Experts attribute this to an exceptionally cold winter that has caused more burning of coal and other fuels than usual, to temperature inversions over some places, and to unfortunate wind patterns in others.

…

Now officials must contend with the political impact of bad air. China’s government has long staked its legitimacy on being able to generate improved standards of living, and people have grown used to complaining about things they do not like. Adding chronically poisoned air to the mix could prove volatile, some think.

Dai Qing, a veteran environmental activist, says that the angry reaction to this month’s extreme pollution shows that the issue now overshadows other pressing problems such as corruption and infringements on people’s liberties. “For years, we environmentalists have been telling the authorities that GDP growth at any cost is a mistake,” she says.

The pollution has even reached other countries, according to researchers in the United States and Japan. Writing from Los Angeles, where he’s seen his share of bad smog in the past, UC Irvine’s Jeffrey Wasserstrom agrees that the Chinese Communist Party may be choking:

But public-health scares and heavy smog in Beijing and others places—believe it or not, at times other cities have even darker skies than the capital—are leaving some people skeptical about whether things are really getting better simply because they can now buy things at a mall. Is life really improving, they ask each other in private conversations, in online forums, and at protest rallies, if doing ordinary things like drinking milk and playing outside can cause your child to get sick? How can we trust a government, they wonder, that tries to hide the truth about obvious dangers, by censoring reports of doctored food and drink and until very recently used the word fog to describe the noxious substance that made it hard to see even nearby skyscrapers?

In most places, a smog crisis is an environmental danger and, on some days, a public health emergency. In China, the grey skies overhead strike at the very legitimacy of the country’s ruling party. At its worst, Los Angeles never had anything that could compare to that.

Still, writes NPR’s Louisa Lim, transparency has brought more scrutiny to the China’s “airpocalypse” ever since the government started releasing hourly PM2.5 readings this year. And The Atlantic’s James Fallows points out that the smog has seen a lot of recent coverage in the Chinese press, which used to downplay the issue.

Disputing other explanations, such as China’s experience with SARS and the perception of Xi Jinping as a reformer, The Atlantic’s Matt Shiavenza explores what may have really caused the unexpected silver lining:

Why, then, would the Chinese government allow such candor on the pollution question? Social media plays a role. Prominent Beijing real estate developer Pan Shiyi regularly tweets information about pollution to his several million followers on Sina’s Weibo, and the flurry of similar comments by more ordinary users has brought the pollution issue into the open. At a basic level, the government understands that once an issue hits critical mass, there’s little point in perpetuating the myth any further.

Also, unlike other issues which threaten the Chinese government’s hold on power, environmental concerns do not discriminate by class or income level. While many of Beijing’s citizens may not pay attention to esoteric political issues, the Communist Party surely believes that pollution has the potential to unite a large number of people against its governance. That, more than anything else, may explain why the government has approached this issue with unusual openness.

Still, the pitfalls of China’s rapid economic growth are felt beyond the skies. Writing for The Council on Foreign Relations, Elizabeth Economy reminds China watchers that “the country’s water pollution is easily as alarming:”

[...] According to one 2011 report, in 2010, “up to 40 percent of China’s rivers were seriously polluted” and “20 percent were so polluted their water quality was rated too toxic even to come into contact with.” Part of the explanation may rest in the “estimated 10,000 petrochemical plants along the Yangtze and 4000 along the Yellow rivers.” (And the Yellow and Yangtze are not even the most polluted of China’s seven major rivers.) On top of whatever polluted wastewater might be leaching or simply dumped into China’s rivers from these factories, the Ministry of Supervision reports that there are almost 1,700 water pollution accidents annually. The total cost in terms of human life: 60,000 premature deaths annually.

While the macro picture is concerning, even more worrying is that individual Chinese don’t know whether their water is safe to drink or not. A Chinese newspaper, the Southern Weekly, recently featured an interview with a married couple, both of whom are water experts in Beijing (available in English here). They stated that they hadn’t drunk from the tap in twenty years, and have watched the water quality deteriorate significantly over just the past few years, even while state officials claim that more than 80 percent of water leaving treatment facilities met government standards in 2011.

…

In the 1950s, China, like other countries, neither understood well nor had the capacity to deal effectively with the environmental and health challenges its rapid development was creating. Today, however, China has both the knowledge and the capability. In the midst of the recent air pollution crisis, Premier-elect Li Keqiang said it would take time to address the air pollution problem: “There has been a long-term buildup to this problem, and the resolution will require a long-term process. But we must act.” In the meantime, the Chinese people can only wear their masks, buy their bottled water, and hope they are not in this year’s batch of pollution-related casualties.

Listen also as Tom Gjelten of NPR discusses the cost of growth in China, and read more about pollution in China at CDT.

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The across-the-board coverage of Beijing’s brown, soupy air, which has been consistently rated “hazardous” or even worse by foreign and local monitors since last week, was the most open in recent memory. Since 2008, when Beijing made efforts to clean up the city before the Summer Olympics, the air has appeared to degrade in the view of many residents, though the official news media have often avoided addressing the problem.

The wide coverage on Monday appears to be in part a reaction to the conversation that has been unfolding on Chinese microblogs, where residents of northern China have been discussing the pollution nonstop in recent days.

The problem is so serious — the worst air quality since the United States Embassy began recording levels in 2008 — that hospitals reported on Monday a surge in patient admissions for respiratory problems. Beijing officials ordered government cars off the road to try to curb the pollution, which some people say has been exacerbated by a weather phenomenon, called an inversion, that is trapping dirty particles.

“I’ve never seen such broad Chinese media coverage of air pollution,” said Jeremy Goldkorn, a business consultant in Beijing who tracks the Chinese news media. “From People’s Daily to China Central Television, the story is being covered thoroughly, without trying to put a positive spin on it.”

One notable media report was an editorial in the Global Times, translated for their English edition, which called for transparency and public involvement in finding solutions to pollution:

On this issue, the government cannot afford to make decisions for the society. Previously, governments used to deal with the pollution information in a low-key way and made the choice between development and environmental protection for public. However, when public opinion didn’t go for this way of thinking, it led to some conflicts.

In future, the government should publish truthful environmental data to the public. Let society participate in the process of solving the problem.

The public should understand the importance of development as well as the critical need to safeguard the bottom line of the environmental pollution. The choice between development and environment protection should be made by genuinely democratic methods.

Currently, Chinese public opinion prefers sensational news. Against such condition, the governments cannot always think about how to intervene to “guide public opinion.” It should publish the facts and interests involved, and let the public itself produce a balance based on the foundation of diversification.

The government is not the only responsible party for environmental pollution. As long as the government changes its previous method of covering up the problems and instead publishes the facts, society will know who should be blamed.

The Wall Street Journal has more examples of reporting in the Chinese media:

State broadcaster China Central Television made poisonous air the lead item in its prime-time news broadcast Sunday evening, and again on its midday news program on Monday. The 30-minute Sunday night news broadcast featured nearly eight minutes of air pollution coverage, including a special “from the editor” on-air commentary.

“Everyone is the victim of polluted air, and everyone is capable of reducing the smoggy air,” said CCTV in the commentary. “Environment protection policies should be strengthened. Governmental departments should take the lead and drive official cars less frequently.”

Government officials were ordered to reduce vehicle use over the weekend, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency, which also covered the pollution story extensively.

For more links to Chinese media reports, see Bill Bishop’s Sinocism newsletter.

On his blog, the New Yorker’s Evan Osnos writes about the shifting public consciousness on the issue:

The smog this weekend passed another threshold I hadn’t seen before: a test we might call “the local tolerance.” For years, Chinese people called their smog “fog,” a subtle way of saying, in effect, Western countries were polluted on their way up, too, so give us a break. Not anymore. The Chinese press was full of stories about smog this weekend, including a reminder of the hideous fact that high levels of particulate matter caused a combined eight thousand five hundred and seventy-two premature deaths in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Xi’an last year, according to estimates in a study by Greenpeace and Peking University’s School of Public Health.

Someday, I’ll write about the political effects of environmental pollution, about how, when the middle class in places like Hungary and Taiwan eventually got fed up with their ruling parties, one of the first issues around which they organized was the environment, because it was visceral and seemingly apolitical.

But not today. Today, I’m lying low and taking shallow breaths.

Despite recent efforts to alleviate the current cloud of pollution, Didi Kirsten Tatlow writes in the International Herald Tribune that the scale of China’s economic growth (which may be slowing down but is still formidable) means environmental problems are likely to persist:

The scale of the problem is, quite frankly, overwhelming. A very revealing chart by Edgar, the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research, from the European Commission, estimates that in 2011 China produced 9.7 million kilotons of carbon dioxide, nearly double United States’ 5.42 million kilotons.

Indeed, were the Chinese cement industry a country, it would be the sixth biggest emitter of carbon dioxide in the world, producing 820,000 kilotons in 2011, slightly ahead of Germany’s total carbon dioxide emissions that year of 810,000 kilotons, according to Edgar. Germany was the sixth most polluting nation in the world, with the United States the second and China the first, according to the chart.

But something else stands out here: China’s population of more than 1.3 billion is about 4.5 times that of the United States’ approximately 300 million. So though it leads the world in carbon dioxide emissions, it is still, per capita, far less polluting than the United States.

Unfortunately, that may change. China’s economy may overtake the U.S. economy sometime within the next decade or two, meaning that we may be facing a truly astonishing problem. As Ma Jun, the director of the Chinese Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs told the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post: “It is no secret that our way of development is not sustainable and the total pollution emissions in the region have far exceeded the maximum ecological capacity.”

Meanwhile, the economic and health impact from this week’s toxic cloud is already being felt. Airports have canceled flights, factories have been asked to slow production, and schools have reduced activities. A cardiologist at Peking University People’s Hospital told Bloomberg that the number of heart attacks seen at the hospital had doubled since Friday, when the pollution began to spike. Respiratory wards were overflowing over the weekend, according to the Financial Times.

The recent surge of polluted air is likely partially due to a recent cold snap, when residents burned more coal than usual to keep warm. Weather reports indicate that the extreme pollution may ease mid-week, as another cold front is expected to blow it away. By early Tuesday, the air already seemed clearer:

Hooray. Beijing air looking much better this am. twitter.com/niubi/status/2…

— Bill Bishop (@niubi) January 14, 2013

c

A photo from NASA shows the cloud of pollution over Beijing (which is within the blue circle):

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Global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) increased by 3% last year, reaching an all-time high of 34 billion tonnes in 2011. In China, average per capita CO2 emissions increased by 9% to 7.2 tonnes CO2. This is similar to per capita emissions in the European Union.

In comparison, in 2011, the United States was still one of the largest emitters of CO2, with 17.3 tonnes in per capita emissions. […]

The increase in China’s CO2 emissions was mainly due to a continued high economic growth rate, with related increases in fossil fuel consumption. This increase in fuel consumption in 2011 was mainly driven by the increase in building construction and expansion of infrastructure, as indicated by the growth in cement and steel production. Domestic coal consumption grew by 9.7% and coal import increased by 10%, making China the world’s largest coal importer, overtaking Japan.

The data are subject to several caveats, however, as The Guardian’s Duncan Clark reports. For example, the figures count emissions from a product’s manufacture against Chinese workers rather than European consumers.

The figures published on Wednesday – like most official data on carbon emissions – are based on where fossil fuels are burned. A recent UK select committee report argued that it was also important to consider the import and export of goods when considering national responsibility for climate change. This would affect today’s data, because previous studies have suggested that almost a fifth of Chinese emissions are caused by the production of goods for export.

In addition, the new county data exclude international travel, which accounts for 3% of the global total and is likely to be heavily weighted towards richer countries. Non-CO2 greenhouse gases such as methane and nitrous oxide are also excluded.

[…] But a recent study showed that even when imports and international travel are taken into account, the developed world now accounts for less than half of current global emissions. Moreover, China’s emissions may be even higher than reported today according to another study showing that the country’s official energy statistics were as much as 20% lower than they should be.

Sam Geall commented at chinadialogue:

For some commentators …, these new findings … call into question China’s claim to speak for developing countries in international climate diplomacy. The lead paragraph in Nature’s story summarises this point:

“For years China has dismissed concerns about its rising carbon emissions by pointing out that, on a per-capita basis, Chinese citizens still emit far less than their counterparts in the industrialized world. But now that China’s per-capita emissions are on par with those of the European Union, that argument will be much harder to make.”

However, climate equity isn’t only about parity between nations, but also between people and social groups within nations. One journalist tweeted me to point out that the statistics misrepresented the average person in China, given vast disparities in wealth across the country.

She has a point. A nomad on the Mongolian steppe certainly has a vastly different carbon footprint from the driver of a gas-guzzler – or “oil tiger” – in Shanghai. If it is misleading to look at countries’ emissions in terms of total volume, isn’t it also a mistake to only look at per capita emissions?

Much of the rise in China’s emissions comes from an increase in coal burning to power the country’s economic growth. Surging coal use now shows some signs of tailing off: the formidable growth in imports cited by PBL has slowed to a projected 8.4% this year, the lowest since 2008. This, together with corresponding drops in electrical output growth, has helped fuel fears of a sharp economic slowdown: vice premier Li Keqiang famously places more trust in these figures than in official GDP as measures of economic health. At Caixin, however, Yu Hairong suggests other explanations: “an easing, evolving” and less carbon-intensive Chinese economy, and a shift to alternative power sources.

For years, China’s industrial structure has been heavily reliant on power-hungry businesses including steelmaking, non-ferrous metal and chemicals production, and construction materials manufacturing. Strong growth in each of these sectors factored into soaring power consumption over the past decade, said Zhang Long, chief electricity analyst at Essence Securities.

But now, China’s economy is shifting toward service-sector growth and away from heavy industry expansion. For that reason, non-residential demand for electricity has grown much faster in the service sector than in manufacturing, steelmaking, cement production and the like.

[…] Change is also affecting the power industry’s supply structure thanks to, for example, heavier use of hydroelectric plants. NEA expects an increased emphasis on hydropower and other non-coal sources of electricity to reduce power plant demand for coal by about 8 million tons this year.

Indeed, coal-fired power plant generating capacity fell 1.5 percent in May from the same month 2011. Meanwhile, nationwide hydropower generating capacity grew 31 percent in May over the same period 2011 and 52 percent over April’s level.

chinadialogue recently posted an overview of the fierce debate over hydropower expansion (via CDT), with proponents insisting that China’s rivers remain underexploited and critics arguing that they already “can hardly breathe” under the weight of existing dams. Two more recent posts at the site examine the prospects for other coal alternatives.

One is natural gas. The PBL report cites a modest shift towards gas from other fossil fuels as a factor in declining US carbon emissions. Although still made of crushed plankton and regarded as a short-term solution at best by environmentalists, it does burn more cleanly than coal or oil in terms of both carbon and particulate matter. This makes it an attractive alternative for cities like Beijing, but as An Geng and Xu Nan explain, natural gas adoption elsewhere will be hindered by cost and supply issues.

On March 3, the Beijing Development and Reform Commission (BDRC) announced a new round of targets to cut coal use, with the aim of improving air quality and reducing PM2.5 levels. The city’s plan is to cap coal use at 15 million tonnes a year by 2015, the end of the 12th Five-Year Plan period. Now, it has said it will extend and deepen this cap, cutting use to 10 million tonnes by 2020, which represents a 60% drop on 2010 figures.

Natural gas is a core part of the strategy to wean the city off coal. Under plans released in 2010, Beijing’s four remaining coal-burning power plants are due to switch over to natural-gas combined heat and power (CHP) systems by the winter of 2014 at the latest. Despite concerns about cost and supply, Beijing has pulled out the policy stops to drive through the switch, and looks set to be the first Chinese city to consign coal power to the history books. But that does not mean it will be easy for others, without the clout of the capital, to follow suit.

[…] Beijing isn’t the only city looking to gas. Shanghai also has a good number of natural gas power plants, and Chongqing is trying to subsidise a switch over from coal. For the rest of China’s cities, Beijing’s policies may look like an easy route to bluer skies. But, away from the centre of government, the pro-gas lobby may have a harder time getting its way.

Also at chinadialogue, Cui Zheng discusses nuclear energy’s possible resurgence following the publication of a new safety plan. The public opinion fallout from the Fukushima disaster, combined with a rising tide of environmental protests, may dissuade authorities from allowing a potentially destabilising revival ahead of this year’s leadership transition.

Since the days following Japan’s nuclear disaster in March last year, the number of countries to halt construction or operation of nuclear-power plants has grown, while the global nuclear industry has pinned its hopes on China coming back into the fray. Is it the case, then, as many believe, that construction will soon restart in China?

The launch of the new safety strategy has certainly had an impact on the industry. Four days after the plan was approved, investors pumped 400 million yuan (US$63 million) of funding into the Pengze nuclear plant in south-east China’s Jiangxi province, on which work stopped 15 months ago. CNNC Nuclear Power, a China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) subsidiary, passed a pre-listing environmental audit. Market analysts, meanwhile, have started recommending the purchase of nuclear shares.

[…] But at a State Council meeting on May 31, only the safety plan was passed. There was no sign of the development plan. One expert close to the nuclear policymaking process, who asked to remain anonymous, said it may still be some time before China sees its much touted nuclear spring. “For the sake of stability, nuclear construction is unlikely to get started soon,” the source said.

Still, China’s beleaguered nuclear industry may have other avenues to explore. According to The Guardian, talks are underway for the £35 billion construction of up to five power stations in the UK.

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Post tags: carbon footprint, coal imports, coal power, EU, european union, greenhouse gas emissions, hydroelectric power, natural gas, netherlands, nuclear power, United States
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Scientists found that the annual emissions reported by China’s 30 provinces in 2010 added up to 1.4 billion tonnes a year more than the total reported by its National Bureau of Statistics.

The gap between the provinces’ data and the national figure is equivalent to the entire annual emissions from Japan – the world’s fourth-largest emitter. It is 5 per cent of total global emissions.

The study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, found the gap was mainly due to differences in reported levels of coal consumption in coal washing and manufacturing.

According to Washington Post, the difference between the national and provincial statistics is equivalent to the amount of all carbon emissions from Japan last year:

According to national-level statistics, Chinese carbon emissions grew at a 7.5 percent annual pace between 1997 and 2010, largely from coal use. But according to provincial statistics, emissions grew at an 8.5 percent pace. That’s a puzzling discrepancy, and it’s not clear which figure is actually correct.

The researchers, Dabo Guan, Zhu Liu, Yong Geng, Sören Lindner and Klaus Hubacek, come up with two possible explanations for the gap. The first is that the data is simply messy, due to the fact that many smaller Chinese firms are burning coal without the national government knowing about it. That might be due to shoddy record keeping. Or it might be due to black-market activity — small inefficient coal mines and coal-washing mills that were shuttered by the government and then quietly reopened elsewhere.

So it’s a mystery. But it’s a critical mystery. As the researchers note, it’s more difficult for scientists to model future climate change if they can’t be sure of how much carbon the world’s largest emitter is actually belching out. Right now, the International Energy Agency thinks we’re on pace to warm the planet by a staggering 6°C by the end of the century. But that’s based on China’s national-level data. What if the provincial-level data is correct and China’s emissions are actually 20 percent higher? Suddenly the picture looks even hotter.

Due to this discrepancy, climate change could be occurring faster than what was previously thought as well. The Guardian adds:

China has already overtaken the US as the world’s top greenhouse gas polluter, producing about a quarter of mankind’s carbon pollution that scientists say is heating the planet and triggering more extreme weather.

But pinning down an accurate total for China’s carbon emissions has long been a challenge because of doubts about the quality of its official energy use data. It is used to compute how the planet’s climate will change, helping plan for more extremes of drought, flood and the impact on crops.

Scientists say the world is already racing towards a warming of 2 degrees Celsius or more in coming decades because of the rapid growth in emissions from burning fossil fuels and deforestation. Adding another billion tonnes into computer models would accelerate the pace of expected warming.

On the other side of this debate, Professor Wang Yi of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing claimed that the figures from the government were actually overstated. Reuters reports:

But Wang said in an interview that research being conducted by his institute pointed to the opposite conclusion.

That is because the methodology used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a U.N. panel of climate scientists, does not take sufficient account of the big differences in calorific content of China’s many grades of coal, Wang said.

“We have some preliminary calculations and current emissions may be 10-20 percent less than the result based on IPCC methodology,” he said.

Even if the findings are confirmed, Wang said they would not change the bigger picture: China pumps out more carbon than any other country, about 22 percent of the global total.

In another article from Reuters, Chinese and European airlines are also disputing claims about CO2 and possible impounding of planes:

 China will take swift counter-measures that could include impounding European aircraft if the EU punishes Chinese airlines for not complying with its scheme to curb carbon emissions, the China Air Transport Association said on Tuesday.

Chinese airlines, which have been told by Beijing not to comply with the European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme, refused to meet a March 31 deadline for submitting carbon emissions data.

A new stand-off looms after EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard said the carriers would have until the end of this week to submit their data or face enforcement action.

“Chinese airlines are unanimous on this. We won’t provide the data,” Wei Zhenzhong, secretary general of the China Air Transport Association, said on the sidelines of an International Air Transport Association (IATA) meeting in Beijing.

“We would not like to see a situation of ‘you hold up my planes and I hold yours’,” Wei said.

Read more about the environmental crisis, via CDT.

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Post tags: air pollution, air quality, airlines, greenhouse gas emissions, pollution
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This sweeping continues within China. While the country’s population became mostly urban for the first time late last year, its pollution balance has tipped in the opposite direction, with the countryside now polluting more than the cities. In addition to agriculture and changing lifestyles, the shift has been fuelled by relocation of industry and waste to rural areas where environmental enforcement is often weaker, and local communities less able to resist. Caixin spoke to Tsinghua professor Li Dun about rural pollution with Chinese characteristics:

The environmental issues facing rural China differ from those facing developed countries and other developing nations. It is an environmental and ecological deterioration that has occurred in the wake of the collapse of the state monopoly of grain and the people’s commune system which left in place the hukou system and its legacy of official separation between rural and urban areas.

From this system sprung an unspoken yet not entirely unconscious arrangement: The countryside was where you could sweep under the rug all of the waste and heavy polluters from the shiny prosperous new cities.

Chemical and smelting enterprises that were originally located in the cities were prompted to relocate to rural areas. Any firm whose polluting activities caused public protest was relocated to more remote and less developed locales in rural areas where no complaints would be heard. Highly dangerous materials such chemicals, heavy metals and even radioactive waste were stockpiled in rural areas or just abandoned. Industrial waste was frequently sent to rural areas to be disassembled and dealt with, while conventional city waste also arrived to be disposed with in rural landfills.

Rugs are not effective long-term storage solutions. Use of the countryside as a dumping ground now undermines the food and water security of China as a whole, and Western outsourcers of pollution can also find it coming back to haunt them. A recent study in the Journal of Geophysical Research found that as much as 20% of California’s ground-level ozone originated in East Asia, and had been blown across the Pacific. Other pollutants ride cargo ships: at The Diplomat, Greenpeace’s Monica Tan describes the reshoring of hormone-disrupting nonylphenol (NP) used in the Chinese textile industry:

The use of NP in clothing manufacturing has effectively been banned within the EU, with similar restrictions also in place in the United States and Canada. Of course, this is hardly the first time multinational companies have taken advantage of lax standards in other countries. Exporting the manufacturing industry hasn’t been accompanied by the export of high environmental protection standards, and has led to a host of pollution problems in China, most pressingly water pollution. Ask any local, it seems, and it’s hard to find a river clean enough to swim in in this country ….

In the latest toxics report to be commissioned by Greenpeace, simulations of standard domestic laundering on 14 clothing samples found that a single wash can wash out a substantial amount of the nonylphenol ethoxylates (NPE) residues present within textile products. More than 80 percent were washed out for half of the plain fabric samples tested. This suggests that all residues of NPEs within textile products will be washed out over their lifetime, and that in many cases this will have occurred after just the first few washes ….

In short, brands are making their consumers unsuspecting accomplices in the release of these hazardous substances into public water supplies. And, let’s not forget, we’re talking about a substance that has been effectively banned or heavily restricted in the EU, United States and Canada.

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Post tags: exporting pollution, food security, greenhouse gas emissions, greenpeace, industrial pollution, outsourcing, rare earth elements, rural areas, rural development, rural urban divide, textiles, water crisis
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Why is a carbon tax a good idea? For a start, some estimates suggest levying a carbon tax could help encourage improvements in industrial energy efficiency of anywhere from 5 percent to 25 percent. And levying a carbon tax can also help save energy by increasing fossil fuel prices. In 2009, Beijing’s municipal government imposed a carbon tax on gasoline for the first time. Despite car numbers increasing by 40 percent, gasoline consumption increased by just a few percentage points, while diesel consumption fell.

Levying a carbon tax would also help reduce carbon emissions. China’s economy is expected to continue to be dominated by coal, which remains the cheapest and most readily available large-scale energy source in the country. A carbon tax would encourage both private and state-owned enterprises to reduce emissions.

There is a downside – carbon taxes are likely to be regressive, meaning the poor would ultimately likely be hit hardest as they saw prices rise. With this in mind, then, the Chinese government would do well to consider combining a carbon tax with other measures.

See also a McKinsey Group podcast in which several leaders of its China practices discuss, among other aspects, what government policy changes are needed to ensure that China consumes energy more efficiently as its share of global demand continues to grow.

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Post tags: carbon tax, government subsidy, greenhouse gas emissions, renewable energy
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The Chinese air regulator said China’s carriers are barred from paying the charges or other fees without government permission, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. It said Beijing will consider unspecified measures in response to protect Chinese companies.

There was no indication there would be any immediate impact on flights between China and Europe or penalties for Chinese airlines. The charges took effect in January but money will not be collected until next year.

The dispute highlights Beijing’s complicated status in global climate efforts.

China is the biggest source of climate-changing gases but as a developing country is exempt from Kyoto Protocol emission limits. Owners of Chinese power plants and factories have received billions of dollars from a European system that pays developing countries to curb emissions but Beijing has resisted binding limits.

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Post tags: airlines, EU, greenhouse gas emissions
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Japan had held the No.1 position since at least 1975 until 2010, the International Energy agency’s Coal Information showed.

China, also the world’s biggest coal producer and consumer, imported 182.4 million tonnes of the fuel in 2011, 10.8 percent higher than a year earlier, data from the country showed.

Japan’s customs-cleared imports fell 5.1 percent to 175.2 million tonnes last year, hurt by slack demand for coking coal as steelmakers curbed production.

It is unclear whether China will retain this position, however, as a Reuters poll last month showed the country’s coal imports are expected to grow at a slower pace in 2012, as domestic appetite moderates and home production rises.

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Post tags: coal imports, economic growth, greenhouse gas emissions, Japan
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Construction slowed following the tsunami, to allow for design adjustments and “stricter construction requirement for endurance concerns”, the Xinhua news agency said, citing remarks by Wang Binghua, board chairman of the State Nuclear Power Technology Corporation (SNPTC) on Saturday.

The tsunami badly damaged reactors in Japan and led to questions over the safety of China’s ambitious nuclear plans. China plans to start building new capacity almost equal to Japan’s entire nuclear power sector by 2015, to reduce its dependence on coal.

Wang said an optimized construction schedule would allow the No.1 unit of the Sanmen nuclear power plant, in east China’s Zhejiang province to begin operation in 2013.

The AP1000, a water pressurized reactor, began construction in 2009, and it is the world’s first reactor that was built according to the US-based company Westinghouse’s design. The Times of India adds:

Wang also attributed the delays to Westinghouse’s design adjustments during construction and a stricter construction requirement for endurance concerns.

Simultaneously, China has rolled out its advanced 1,000-megawatt pressurised water nuclear power reactor, ACPR-1000 which could allow it to export technology to other countries, including Pakistan, without the constraints of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) issues.

The reactor was “independently” developed by China Guangdong Nuclear Power Corporation, with full IPR and made its debut at the 13th China Hi-Tech Fair in southern city of Shenzhen, state-run People’s Daily reported recently.

China currently has 13 nuclear power plants with varied capacities and constructing 27 others, mostly with 1000mw capacity, made with US, French and Japanese technologies.

See also China may approve nuclear project after revising saftey reviews.

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Post tags: energy demand, greenhouse gas emissions, nuclear, nuclear energy
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Pollution costs China, the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, hundreds of millions – perhaps billions – of yuan annually. It also threatens the ability of the world’s second-largest economy to evolve into a fully developed, first world country from its current industrializing state.

“There’s no way they can grow to high income levels with the levels of pollution they have,” said Carter Brandon, environmental co-ordinator for the World Bank in Beijing.

The World Bank estimates that, in 2009, the effects of air pollution were equivalent to about 3.3 per cent of China’s gross domestic product. The impact on health alone, including premature deaths, amounted to about 700 billion yuan ($110.2-billion U.S.) in 2009.

A string of days with poor air quality caused hundreds of flight delays and cancellations in Beijing at the beginning of December, and prompted

See also chinadialogue’s top 10 most-read stories of 2011, four of which are on air pollution.

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Post tags: air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, gross domestic product
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Angry crowds smashed and overturned police cars and riot police fired teargas in Haimen town in Shantou city on Wednesday, the second day of the unrest, newspapers reported.

…

Government officials, including those from the security arm, have been vague and appeared to play down the unrest. A Shantou official told Reuters by telephone on Wednesday that there had been injuries but no deaths.

…

Witnesses said police fired four rounds of teargas and beat up protesters, who do not want another power plant when existing power facilities there were already polluting air and seawater and had greatly reduced their catch at sea, Mingpao reported.

NBC’s Adrienne Mong also reported via Twitter around mid-day on Thursday that Chinese police had blocked off the highway entrance to Haimen and fired a tear gas-like substance to disperse a crowd of onlookers that attempted to approach.

Villagers first took to the streets in Haimen on Tuesday, angry over recent reports in the state media that proposed expansion plans to a power plant failed environmental safety tests. AFP reported that 15-year-old boy had been killed and more than 100 others badly beaten by riot police, though a local official denied that any deaths had occurred during an interview with Reuters. Authorities agreed on Tuesday to suspend the power plant project, but residents have continued to protest and demand that the project be cancelled altogether. The ongoing situation in Haimen also comes in the wake of comments made yesterday by Politburo member and security chief Zhou Yongkang that authorities should enforce the law in a civil manner to avoid further violent disputes. From AFP:

“(We must) deepen our efforts to mediate conflicts and disputes, improving the system of mediation to resolve conflicts and disputes at the grassroots level and nip them in the bud,” said Zhou, in comments reported by the official Xinhua news agency.

“We must also adhere to civilised standards of law enforcement, and deal with mass incidents and individual extremist events according to the law.”

…

Zhou did not explicitly mention the handover, but he said 2012 was a year of “special significance” for the country’s development.

“Every political and legal organ must enhance their political awareness… and their sense of responsibility,” he said.

“We must take the initiative and effectively prevent and crack down on all separatist and disruptive, violent and terrorist criminal activities.”

Videos of the protests and subsequent police action have been posted on YouTube:

(h/t Jordan Pouille)

Photos have also been posted to Google Plus, including the following (h/t Wen Yunchao):

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: CCP, coal power, greenhouse gas emissions, Guangdong, Haimen, police brutality, Politburo, pollution, Zhou Yongkang
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Authorities will also start to monitor the smallest and most dangerous airborne pollution, known as PM2.5, in densely populated areas such as Beijing and Tianjin, the government said in a statement on its environmental targets.

“Urban and rural drinking water supply and environmental security should be protected effectively, water quality should be improved greatly and heavy metal pollution should be controlled effectively.”

The council has also vowed to improve the safety of nuclear energy production and lower the number of cars registered before 2005 on the road. These announcements come after protests that claim that the environment is ruining the people’s health. AFP adds:

Millions of Chinese went online to vent their anger after thick smog blanketed Beijing earlier this month, raising health fears and causing hundreds of flights to be cancelled.

Public angst in the Chinese capital over heavy pollution has been compounded by official data showing air quality is good, or only slightly polluted, when smog is visible and figures published by the US embassy rank it as “very unhealthy”.

Protests over environmental pollution are also increasing. In the latest incident, residents in the southern town of Haimen stormed government buildings on Tuesday to protest against a power plant they say is damaging their health.

See also: Beijing air quality officially at crisis level via CDT.

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