China unveils carbon target for Copenhagen deal

Emma Graham-Harrison and Chris Buckley, Reuters 26 Nov 09;

BEIJING (Reuters) - China unveiled its first firm target to curb greenhouse gas emissions on Thursday, a carbon intensity goal that Premier Wen Jiabao will take to a summit in Copenhagen next month hoping to aid a global climate deal.

The announcement came a day after the United States, the second biggest emitter of greenhouse gases behind China, unveiled a plan to cut emissions by 2020 and said President Barack Obama would attend the U.N.-led talks in Copenhagen.

China said Wen would go to the December 7-18 talks and pledged to cut the amount of carbon dioxide produced for each yuan of national income 40-45 percent by 2020, compared to 2005 levels.

It was hailed as a vital commitment toward rekindling talks to fix a new framework for tackling global warming, although analysts cautioned it was technically quite modest for China.

"The U.S. commitment to specific, mid-term emission cut targets and China's commitment to specific action on energy efficiency can unlock two of the last doors to a comprehensive agreement," said Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat.

Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen praised Wen's decision to attend and said China was "very active and constructive."

Even so, China's emissions were still likely to double by 2020 with the new target, said Frank Jotzo, deputy director of the Australian National University Climate Change Institute.

Without a goal "under a business as usual scenario, China's emissions might increase over two and a half times," he said.

"China has taken what is universally expected to happen, and dressed it up as a new and ambitious policy decision," said Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish statistician and author of "The Skeptical Environmentalist."

The U.N. talks have run out of time to settle a legally binding deal after arguments between rich and poor nations about who should cut emissions, by how much and who should pay. But hopes are growing that a substantive political pact can be agreed at the December meeting instead.

China's target comes after big emitters Brazil and Indonesia announced tough 2020 reduction targets. Wednesday's 2020 target from the United States and Obama's attendance are also expected to help the Copenhagen talks, analysts say.

But in a reminder of the serious disputes that still shadow the summit, China's top climate envoy took aim at developed nations he said were slacking in their efforts to cut emissions and said the new Chinese target was only "domestically binding."

"So far we have not seen concrete actions and substantive commitments by the developed countries," Xie Zhenhua, deputy head of the planning body the National Development and Reform Committee, told a hastily arranged news conference in Beijing.

TOUGH GOAL?

China's cabinet said its goal, which allows greenhouse gas emissions to grow as the economy expands, was a demanding one for the developing country. It will unveil new policies including taxes and financial steps to reach it.

The target does not include carbon sinks, Xie said, and will be calculated based on energy consumption and "production processes" -- probably industrial output. Extra cuts could therefore come from forests, which absorb carbon dioxide.

Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei said the plan "shows China's highly responsible attitude toward the future of mankind."

A five-year drive to boost energy efficiency and renewables by 2010 will take Beijing around half-way to meeting the carbon intensity goal by the end of this decade.

But the country's still-rapid industrialisation, and its efforts in recent years, meant harder work for smaller gains in future, said Dai Yande, deputy head of the Energy Research Institute under the National Development and Reform Commission.

"It's an arduous task for China, as everybody knows energy intensity tends to rise during industrialisation and thus it's difficult to cut down emissions," Dai said.

NEGOTIATIONS AHEAD

China said the intensity goal was a "voluntary" one that would only be binding domestically, leaving room for negotiation about what international commitments Beijing will sign up for.

"I think the question that will immediately follow this is the favorite three initials that the United States keeps talking about, M, R, and V, how China is going to measure, report and verify these cuts," said Chris Raczkowski, China managing director for Ecofys, a renewable energy consulting company.

As a developing country, China is not obliged by current treaties to accept binding caps on its emissions, and it and other poor countries have said that principle should not change in any new deal that emerges from Copenhagen.

The United States will pledge to cut its greenhouse gas emissions roughly 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, a drop of about 3 percent below the 1990 benchmark year used in U.N. treaties -- and far below the 25-40 percent cut outlined by the U.N. climate panel.

Australia's troubled carbon trade scheme was thrown into confusion on Thursday after several opposition lawmakers resigned their party positions and promised to ignore a deal to support the government's planned laws.

(Additional reporting by David Stanway, Jim Bai and Ben Blanchard in BEIJING; Nina Chestney and Gerard Wynn in LONDON and Alister Doyle in OSLO; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

Q+A: What is China's "carbon intensity" target?
Reuters 26 Nov 09;

BEIJING (Reuters) - China has unveiled its first firm target to curb greenhouse gas emissions, laying out a carbon intensity goal that Premier Wen Jiabao will take to climate talks as his government's central commitment.

Following are questions and answers about carbon intensity.

WHAT IS CARBON INTENSITY?

Carbon intensity is the amount of carbon dioxide emitted for each unit of economic output. Often carbon dioxide is measured in tonnes, while gross domestic product (GDP) in a local currency represents economic output, but any units can be used.

Other greenhouse gasses like methane are added to the total by calculating the amount of carbon dioxide that would have the equivalent global warming potential.

Emissions are usually calculated indirectly, through looking at inputs such as the amount of coal burned in a power plant, rather than attempting to capture and weigh carbon dioxide gas.

WHY HAS CHINA CHOSEN CARBON INTENSITY?

Cutting carbon intensity allows China to meet international demands for it to count and curb its emissions, without giving up its insistence that development must come first while millions of Chinese citizens are still living in poverty.

By agreeing to control its emissions China will also pave the way for a carbon market, as accurate measurements of emissions are a vital cornerstone for any market for permits to emit.

However, if China's economy expands too fast, even massive improvements in carbon intensity may not be enough to contain dangerous increases in emissions.

A carbon intensity figure can be worked out for anything from a single factory to an entire country.

HOW CHALLENGING IS THE TARGET?

Beijing said it faces "special hardships" in meeting the goal, and Chinese experts said after a five-year energy efficiency drive further improvements would be tough.

But the current goal -- to boost energy efficiency 20 percent over the 5 years to 2010 -- has already brought even larger improvements to carbon intensity.

Every tonne of coal saved means a corresponding amount of emissions are avoided. And an expansion of renewable and nuclear power has further cut back China's emissions growth.

So Beijing is likely to be at least halfway to reaching its 2020 goal by the end of next year, many analysts say.

WHY NOT AN EMISSIONS CAP?

China has repeatedly rejected calls to commit to a peak year or level of emissions because of its worries such a target could hinder efforts to tackle poverty.

A cap could be a logical next step for Beijing if it can meet its initial carbon intensity targets.

Some Chinese experts have said emissions could peak around 2030-2035 with enough spending and the right policies, but officials have been more wary of such ideas.

Under the Kyoto Protocol and the U.N. framework which governs efforts to tackle global warming, developing countries do not have any binding obligations to cap emissions.

HOW DOES CHINA'S CURRENT CARBON INTENSITY STACK UP?

According to figures published by the United States Department of Energy, China in 2006 emitted 2.85 tonnes of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels for every $1,000 of gross domestic product (GDP), around 15 percent lower than a decade earlier.

In comparison, the United States in 2006 emitted 0.52 tonnes of carbon dioxide for every $1,000 of GDP, while Switzerland produced 0.17 tonnes, and impoverished Chad just 0.07 tonnes.

For further comparisons see: here

(Reporting by Emma Graham-Harrison and Ben Blanchard; Editing by David Fogarty)

China's climate pledge to meet a quarter of global needs: IEA
Marlowe Hood Yahoo News 27 Nov 09;

PARIS (AFP) – China's pledge on greenhouse gases means it would shoulder more than a quarter of the CO2 emissions cuts needed to avoid dangerous global warming, a top economist said Thursday.

"China alone would be responsible for more than 25 percent of the reductions the world needs" to limit planetary warming to 2.0 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), said Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency (IEA).

"The world needs to decrease the emissions by 3.8 gigatonnes [billion tonnes of carbon dioxide], and China would cut by around one gigatonne.

"This would put China at the forefront of the fight against climate change," he told AFP in an interview.

In a long-awaited announcement, the world's No. 1 emitter declared on Thursday it would use 40- to 45-percent less carbon per unit of GDP by 2020 compared with 2005 levels -- in essence, a massive energy-efficiency drive.

Birol also hailed Washington's announcement the day before that the US would -- relative to a 2005 benchmark -- scale back carbon emissions by 17 percent by 2020, 30 percent by 2025, 42 percent by 2030 and 83 percent by 2050.

"This decision is going to change the entire mood and structure of the Copenhagen discussion," he said of the US position.

The United States and China are the world's two biggest carbon polluters, together accounting for 41 percent of global emissions, according to IEA figures.

With the exception of India, they are also the last major emitters to put their cards on the table ahead of the December 7-18 UN climate talks in Copenhagen tasked with hammering out a durable fix to global warming.

Together, the two announcements are "extremely important and positive," Birol said.

China's voluntary commitments will require 400 billion dollars in investment in the energy sector over the next decade, the IEA has calculated.

But Beijing will reap major benefits too.

"China kills three birds with this decision," Birol said: reducing the country's CO2 emissions; improving its energy security and energy infrastructure; and catapulting China into a "green industry" leader.

Most of the policies Beijing has said it will put in place to achieve the so-called carbon intensity aim are "mainly driven by energy security and local pollution concerns," Birol added.

"But at the end of the day, they also help to address climate change. You know the dictum of Deng Xiaoping -- 'it doesn't matter if the cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice'."

A critical uncertainty remains on the US commitment, Birol said: "How much of this 17 percent reduction is domestic efforts, and how much is international offsets? This is not clear."

Under the Kyoto Protocol, the cornerstone treaty of the UN's Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), rich countries can write off greenhouse-gas reduction commitments by investing in "green" projects in developing countries.

Some experts question these "offsets," saying that they do not achieve reductions in volume terms by big emitters.

"For us [the IEA], the US efforts would have to be almost entirely domestic," Birol said.

In its Energy Outlook report released in October, the IEA calculated the carbon-cutting efforts required from each of the world's major emitters to avoid breaching the 2.0 C (3.6 F) threshold.

The projections for 2020 and 2030 seen for Beijing and Washington were "spot on," Birol said proudly. For China, the projection for 2020 is based on a forecast eight-percent annual growth in GDP.