China digs in on rich-poor climate pact divide

* China says preparing to cope with delay in climate pact
* Envoy blames stalling by rich nations
* Talks shadowed by who cuts and counts emissions
Chris Buckley Reuters AlertNet 7 Oct 10;

TIANJIN, China, Oct 7 (Reuters) - China said on Thursday it will not bow to pressure to rethink a key climate change treaty and was preparing to cope with a "gap" in the pact after 2012 if rich nations fail to add new greenhouse gas goals in time.

Envoys from 177 governments are holding week-long talks in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin on the shape of a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol, the U.N.'s main weapon in the fight against climate change.

Kyoto's first phase, which binds about 40 rich nations to meet emissions targets, expires in 2012 and it is not clear on what happens after that, worrying investors who want long-term certainty on climate policies and financing.

"Of course, now we're discussing the legal issues if it happens," said Su Wei, a senior Chinese climate change negotiator, referring to a possible gap in Kyoto.

"I think that from a practical angle that is necessary, but it seems a bit early, prejudging the negotiations," he added.

The United Nations has been stepping up efforts to convince countries to avoid a gap after 2012 and to ensure certainty for the U.N.'s $2.7 billion carbon market that is part of Kyoto.

This is a game of bargaining "chicken" between rich economies and emerging powers that could trouble a higher level meeting in Cancun, Mexico, in less than two months intended to lay the foundations for a new, legally binding climate deal.

Talks have snagged on distrust between rich and poorer nations, especially over how to share reducing emissions, called "mitigation", to avoid dangerous climate change, which could trigger more extreme weather, crop failures and rising seas.

"In order to square the circle, mitigation is still a key issue," said Vicente Paulo Yu, a development expert attending the talks for the Philippines.

"We have to get something from developed countries in terms of their commitments and something in terms of developing countries' actions."

Nearly all wealthy countries have signed up to legally binding emissions goals under Kyoto, with the big exception of the United States, which refused to become a party.

Developing nations, including the world's top carbon emitter China, are obliged to take voluntary steps to curb the growth of their emissions.

The United States and other rich nations want a new global pact to do away with that either-or division to reflect the surge in emissions from the developing world, now accounting for more than half of mankind's annual greenhouse gas emissions.

SHARING THE BURDEN

"It's about trust and about sharing the burden of emissions reductions," said Nina Jamal, a climate policy campaigner observing the talks in Tianjin.

"If we don't have progress on the mitigation agenda, there might be a risk that the other negotiation topics would be delayed."

Talks last year failed to agree on a binding treaty and climaxed in a bitter meeting in Copenhagen, which produced a non-binding accord that later recorded the emissions vows of participant countries.

The question now is whether those pledges are formalised under Kyoto or under a new treaty. Under a new deal, rich nations want China and other big emerging emitters to bring their domestic reduction efforts under firmer international vetting.

Su told Reuters his government would not bend to Western demands and was reluctantly thinking about how to handle the likelihood that the first phase of Kyoto could expire with no full legal extension to replace it.

Su said rich nations were to blame for failing to offer make greenhouse gas vows for Kyoto in time to ensure a seamless extension of the agreement from 2013.

"Even if Cancun makes no decision on the developed countries' emission targets in the second phase (of Kyoto), then after Cancun we'll accelerate the process. I think that at the most we can't delay it beyond a year." (Editing by David Fogarty AND Jonathan Thatcher)

Host China plugs its climate efforts at UN talks
Dan Martin Yahoo News 7 Oct 10;

TIANJIN, China (AFP) – China has seized on its hosting of UN climate talks this week to showcase its efforts to curb carbon emissions, and environmentalists say the top greenhouse gas polluter is making huge progress.

China's phenomenal economic growth has made it the biggest source of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, and those emissions will continue to soar due to its dependence on carbon-belching coal.

But amid US-led pressure to do more, China has outlined an array of measures to curb emissions that environmentalists say helps its bargaining position in United Nations negotiations on a global warming treaty.

And while China was blamed by some rich nations for the failure of a climate summit in Copenhagen last year, few are developing clean energies as aggressively, say experts at the week-long talks in the city of Tianjin.

"The Chinese are out of the starting blocks and the United States is still taking off its sweatsuit," said Jake Schmidt, global climate policy director for the US-based Natural Resources Defense Council.

China says in the past five years it has phased out obsolete and inefficient power plants equal to the power capacity of Britain.

It last year invested a world-leading 34.6 billion dollars in clean energy initiatives -- 30 percent of the global total and nearly double US spending.

The government has said another 738 billion dollars will be spent in the next decade.

Its ambitious renewable energy goals, backed with both incentives and mandatory targets, saw China become the leading manufacturer of wind turbines last year.

It became number three in the world in installed wind power capacity and is expected to pass the United States and Germany to take the top spot in 2010.

China also is on course to become a world leader in several other areas such as carbon capture.

On the macro-level, China has set a 2020 target to reduce carbon emissions per unit of gross domestic product -- or carbon intensity -- by 40-45 percent from 2005 levels.

China has held a series of press events in Tianjin to highlight its clean energy efforts, the latest salvo in its decades-long dispute with rich nations in which each side insists the other should do more to fight global warming.

"Our efforts have been tremendous and so have the achievements," China's top climate official Xie Zhenhua told reporters in Tianjin on Monday.

If China can hit its target of improving its energy efficiency this year, it would have avoided emitting about 4.3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from 2006-2010, according to the US-based Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

China's 2007 emissions were 6.5 billion tonnes.

The Tianjin event is a prelude to a UN summit starting next month in Mexico, where countries will again try to make progress on forging a global climate change treaty.

Yang Ailun, climate and energy campaigner for Greenpeace China, said Beijing's clean energy efforts had given it a stronger hand in the negotiations.

"China has been doing a lot at home and this has given them more leverage, especially when the United States seems to be backtracking. China is in a rather comfortable position right now," she said.

China's clean energy policies however still attract criticism because its emissions will continue to rise for years as its expanding economy gobbles up energy, 70 percent of which comes from coal.

The United States and other developing nations also remain frustrated over China's refusal to commit through the UN process to emission reduction targets.

Nevertheless, merely continuing with the measures of the past five years would reduce China's carbon intensity 37 percent by 2020, said Barbara Finamore, the NRDC's China director.

She said Beijing was expected to announce further aggressive steps for the next five years in 2011.