By Paul Homewood
h/t Joe Public
You may have seen this claim:
CO2 emissions in China may peak up to a decade earlier than the nation has pledged under the Paris Agreement, according to a new study.
With its enormous population and heavy reliance on coal, China is by far the world’s biggest polluter, responsible for more emissions than the US and EU combined.
One of the drivers behind Chinese emissions is the intense urbanisation that has taken place across the country in recent years, as millions of people flock from rural areas to rapidly expanding cities.
However, in new analysis published in Nature Sustainability, a team of researchers has shown that as China’s burgeoning cities become wealthier, their per capita emissions begin to drop.
According to their analysis, this trend could in turn trigger an overall dip in CO2 levels across the nation, and mean that despite the current target for emissions peaking by 2030, they may in fact level out at some point between 2021 and 2025…..
This trend has already been seen in some of the nation’s largest cities, such as Beijing, which saw its emissions peak at 9 tonnes of CO2 per capita around 2007. While the researchers say each city’s emissions peak will be different, their results suggest they will take place once per capita GDP reaches around US$21,000 [see figure below].
https://www.carbonbrief.org/chinas-emissions-could-peak-10-years-earlier-than-paris-climate-pledge
In fact the study is hopelessly flawed. as even the article states, as cities grow wealthier they consume more energy for things like transport and buildings. In addition, of course, they also but more goods, food and so on, all of which are energy intensive:
“Industries are currently the major sources of emissions in Chinese cities, which is very different from the cities of developed countries. Emissions of transportation and buildings are growing rapidly when the cities become wealthier.”
The key is that bit about industry.
In the west, we have seen a gradual decline of heavy industry. But this has not disappeared, it has simply migrated abroad.
And as climate economics expert Jan Korsbakken points out in the article:
The large cities in the study that have already managed to reverse their emissions growth have done so by cutting down on heavy industry and power generation within their city limits. However, this means they have to import more industrial products and electricity from elsewhere, as Korsbakken explains:
“All cities can’t do that. At some point, you run out of places to move the heavy industry and power plants to. They could potentially move much of their industrial production abroad and import the products, but then emissions would need to go up in some other countries.”
It may be that China will eventually get to the stage where its heavy industry begins to decline, to be replaced by imports from other countries. After all, we have seen exactly the same phenomenon in Japan in the last decade or two. But this will have no effect on global emissions.
And it most certainly won’t happen overnight. China’s build up of heavy industry over the last two decades has been so immense, that it is hard to see any other country or combination of countries replicating it.
In any event, China’s Communist Party would never allow its economic base to be eroded in any significant way for political and strategic reasons.
Meanwhile, back in the real world:
Long-term cuts in coal consumption are a key part of China’s energy, environment and climate goals, but the fivefold increase in new mine approvals in the first-half of 2019 suggests China’s targets still provide ample room for shorter-term growth.
China’s energy regulator gave the go-ahead to build 141 million tonnes of new annual coal production capacity from January to June, compared to 25 million tonnes over the whole of last year, Reuters analysis of approval documents showed.
The projects included new mines in the regions of Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Shanxi and Shaanxi that are part of a national strategy to consolidate output at dedicated coal production “bases”, as well as expansions of existing collieries, the National Energy Administration (NEA) documents showed.
The Reuters article also falls for the” reducing share of coal”:
Beijing aims to raise the share of non-fossil fuels in its overall energy mix to 15% by the end of next year from around 14.3% currently, and to 20% by 2030. It cut the share of coal to 59% last year, down from 68.5% in 2012.
In fact, coal consumption in China is virtually unchanged since 2012, when it was 1927 Mtoe. According to BP, it was 1906 Mtoe last year.
via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
August 8, 2019 at 05:03AM
Iowa Climate Science Education 
Reblogged this on Climate- Science.
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