China's 2030 CO2 Emissions Could Equal the Entire World's Today

China's 2030 CO2 Emissions Could Equal the Entire World's Today

By Alexis Madrigal February 08, 2008 | 12:40:52 PMCategories: Energy,

Policy

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/02/chinas-2030-co2.html

If China's carbon usage keeps pace with its economic growth, the

country's carbon dioxide emissions will reach 8 gigatons a year by

2030, which is equal to the entire world's CO2 production today.

That's just the most stunning in a series of datapoints about the

Chinese economy reported in a policy brief in the latest issue of the

journal Science.

Coal power has been driving the stunning, seven plus percent a year

growth in China's economy. It's long been said that China was adding

one new coal power plant per week to its grid. But the real news is

worse: China is completing two new coal plants per week.

That power is being used to drive an enormous manufacturing expansion.

China has increased steel production from 140 million tons in 2000 to

419 million tons in 2006, the authors report. Even more recent numbers

from the International Iron and Steel Institute show China's

production leading the world at 489 million tons, more than double

Japan and the US combined. That steel is getting used quickly too. In

1999, Chinese consumers bought 1.2 million cars. That number had

increased 600% by 2006, when 7.2 million cars were sold.

And yet with all these numbers, Chinese per capita emissions remain

one-quarter of our own here in the US. If the Chinese economy steps

into our carbon footprint, all other greenhouse gas reduction efforts

will be for naught.

But I have hope for China because their government knows that climate

change will impact their country as much, if not more, than many

others. That would leave them with a structural competitive

disadvantage, which the Chinese have generally avoided.

Just take a look at the Chinese water situation. Half of the country's

land is arid or semi-arid, and like the American West, vulnerable to

drying out in the early stages of climate change. Climate change

linked drying could reduce China's agricultural output by 5 to 10

percent by 2030, which would be a disaster in a country that the

authors point out has 20 percent of the world's population and 7

percent of its arable land.

Chinese government officials know they have an environmental disaster

unfolding within their country. If the US takes positive steps towards

reducing our own emissions and helping the Chinese with theirs, I

think we will find a willing partner.

After all, there is one bright spot in the journal article. China's

reforestation efforts, which replant trees that act as carbon sinks.

Forest cover has increased from 12% in 1980 to 18.2% in 2005. My

back-of-the-envelope math says that added 348,000 square miles of

forest to China. That's a whopping 223 million acres.

Another positive is that China's renewable energy production is

outstripping, on a percentage basis, coal power production. But

despite that growth, the government's 2020 targets seem low, except

for hydro, which has its own problems.

Chinese Government Renewable Energy Targets for 2020

Hydro: 300 gigawatts

Nuclear: 40 gw

Biomass: 30 gw

Wind: 30 gw

Solar: 1.8 gw

To put these numbers in perspective, China built at least 78 gigawatts

of energy capacity in 2007 alone, which brought the country over 700

gigawatts of total capacity. The vast majority of that increase, of

course, came from coal fired power plants. (US capacity is around 900

gigawatts.)

What I think policy makers in the US and China are going to realize is

that they need all the R&D resources that both sides can muster to

come up with cleaner energy technologies and more sustainable

processes. As both of countries start to experience drought and lack

of resources, it's going to make more sense to work together than to

keep playing chicken.

What Americans can't expect is that we'll be able to strongarm the

Chinese into anything. We're not dealing with a small Latin American

country or a former Soviet republic. As these raw economic numbers

make clear: they are going to generate power to build their economy,

with or without us.

The policy perspective was a joint effort between University of

Maryland professor Ning Zen, grad student Jay Gregg, and colleagues in

Beijing.

--

If you disagree with the theories and dogmas of Marxism or Scientific Socialism

then you are a tool of Capitalist interests. If you disagree with the theories

or dogmas of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming then you are a tool of

Capitalistic interests. Notice a pattern here? -- Captain Compassion

The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority but to

escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane. -- Marcus Aurelius

"...the whole world, including the United States, including all that

we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark

Age, made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights

of perverted science." -- Sir Winston Churchill

Joseph R. Darancette

daranc@NOSPAMcharter.net