Abstract
Just prior to the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit, China pledged to cut its carbon intensity by 40–45% by 2020 relative to its 2005 levels. This raises the issue of whether such a pledge is ambitious or just represents business as usual. To put China’s climate pledge into perspective, this paper examines whether this pledge is as challenging as the energy-saving goals set in the 11th 5-year economic blueprint, to what extent it drives China’s emissions below its projected baseline levels, whether China will fulfill its part of a coordinated global commitment to stabilize the concentration of greenhouse gas emissions at the desirable level, and whether it is conservative and there is room for further increase. Our balanced analysis of China’s climate pledge challenges the views of both some Western scholars and the Chinese government regarding its ambition. Given that China’s pledge is in the form of carbon intensity, the paper shows that GDP figures are even more crucial to the impacts on the energy or carbon intensity than are energy consumption and emissions data. Finally, the paper emphasizes that China’s proposed carbon intensity target not only needs to be seen as ambitious, but more importantly it needs to be credible, and suggests that international climate change negotiations need to focus on 2030 as the targeted date to cap the greenhouse gas emissions of the world’s two largest emitters in a legally binding global agreement.
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Notes
Zhang (2000b) is the expanded version of a China country paper that I initially prepared for the United Nations Development Program project on Promoting Development while Slowing Greenhouse Gas Emissions Growth. When the draft of that China country paper was released, the Washington DC-based Resources for the Future made a press release: “Is China taking actions to limit its greenhouse gas emissions?” 15 September 1998.
China is not the first country to commit to a carbon intensity target. In February 2002, the US under the Bush administration launched the Climate Policy Initiative. This initiative set the goal of cutting the greenhouse gas intensity of the US economy by 18% by 2012.
Countries differ, among others, in terms of their political systems and constitutions. As a result, commitments from national leaders have different meanings. The case of China is quite different from that of the US where political actions are required from its legislative bodies. In the case of the US, any commitments from the president before the US Congress has enacted or is on the verge of enacting a legislation capping the US greenhouse gas emissions are provisional commitments, subject to the approval of the US Senate. President Obama made this clear in his announcement about provisional US emissions targets.
This kind of reaction does not apply only to China. Similar to the reactions to China’s carbon intensity pledge, the US also received many criticisms on the stringency of its proposed intensity reduction at that time (American Bar Association Committee on Climate Change, Sustainable Development and Ecosystems 2002). While the business community sees this as a significant contribution (Fay 2002), observers view it as business as usual, with the US carbon intensity peaking in 1922 and declining at about 18% per decade ever since (Victor 2004).
Given China’s carbon intensity pledge, baseline matters here, because the extent to which it drives China’s emissions below its projected baseline depends on the baseline setting. If those policies under consideration have not been incorporated into the underlying baseline projection, that will lead to higher baseline level than would otherwise have been the case, thus resulting in a higher percentage deviation. This has been illustrated by McKibbin et al. (2010), who assume China’s carbon intensity reduction of 26% under the baseline, much lower than about 40% under the WEO 2009 baseline (IEA 2009) and 45% under the US Energy Information Administration (2009) baseline. As would be expected, McKibbin et al. find that China’s carbon intensity pledge amounts to a deviation of 22% relative to the baseline in 2020, much higher than that derived from the aforementioned WEO 2009 study.
See Zhang (2010c) for further discussion on these policies and measures.
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Acknowledgments
This paper is built on the invited luncheon speech on Climate Change Policies in the Developing World and the panel discussion on From Architectures to Climate Change Governance at the International Workshop on Climate Change Polices, Presidency of Complutense University, Madrid, Spain, 18–19 February 2010, and was presented at China Update 2010: The Next 20 Years of Reform and Development, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia, 14 July 2010, and the Third International Wuppertal Colloquium on Sustainable Growth and Resource Productivity: Harnessing Industry and Policy Towards Eco-Innovation, Brussels, Belgium, 4–6 September 2010. It has benefited from helpful comments from three anonymous referees. That said, the views expressed here are those of the author. The author bears sole responsibility for any errors and omissions that may remain.
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Zhang, Z. Assessing China’s carbon intensity pledge for 2020: stringency and credibility issues and their implications. Environ Econ Policy Stud 13, 219–235 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10018-011-0012-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10018-011-0012-4