China’s future emission reduction challenge and implications for global climate policy

In December 2015, China joined 190 plus nations at Paris in committing to the goal of limiting the rise in global average temperature to ‘well below’ 2°C. Carbon budget analysis indicates that goal will require not only that the European Union and US reduce their emissions by greater than 80% by 2050, but that China at least comes close to doing so as well, if any budget is to be left over for the rest of the world (RoW). Given that RoW emissions are, and will come from, low-income and emerging nations, China’s emission reduction potential is of no small consequence. In this paper, we use the Kaya identity to back out changes in the drivers of CO₂ emissions, including gross domestic product (GDP), energy intensity (E/GDP) and the carbon content of energy (C/E), the latter two calculated to be consistent with China’s long-term GDP growth rate forecasts and specified 2050 CO₂ emission reduction targets. Our results suggest that even achieving China’s highly optimistic renewable energy targets will be very far from sufficient to reduce China’s CO₂ emissions from 9.1?Gt it emitted in 2015 to much below 3?Gt by 2050. Even reducing its emissions to 5?Gt will be challenging, yet this falls far short of what is needed if the world is to meet its ‘well below’ 2°C commitment.

Key policy insights

• Under the Paris Agreement there is great pressure on China to very substantially reduce its emissions by 2050.

• While China has attached great importance to renewables and nuclear energy development, even achieving the most optimistic targets would not be sufficient to reduce China’s emissions from 9.1?Gt in 2015 to much below 3?Gt by 2050.

• China’s emission reduction potential falls far short of what is needed if the world is to meet its Paris ‘well below’ 2°C commitment, even if the EU and US reduce their emissions to zero by 2050.

• Emission cuts consistent with the Paris Agreement will require that China and the world give much greater weight to advancing research and development of scalable low-, zero- and negative-carbon sources and technologies.

     

China’s pathway to carbon neutrality for the iron and steel industry

As a hard-to-abate sector, the iron and steel industry is responsible for 22% of China’s total carbon emissions and therefore plays a crucial role in achieving China’s carbon peaking and neutrality target. Nearly 90% of China’s iron and steel output is produced with coal-based blast furnaces, which results in high carbon emission intensity. To peak China’s carbon emissions and achieve the carbon neutrality target, it is essential to accelerate the application of breakthrough technologies such as carbon capture and storage (CCS) and hydrogen-based steel-making. This paper estimates the future CO₂ emissions from China’s iron and steel industry in pathways that consider the influence of different technology portfolios, technology maturity, decarbonization of power systems, and future steel production output. The results show that using currently available technology, China’s iron and steel industry can reduce CO₂ emissions by more than 50%. However, it cannot achieve the neutrality target without using innovative technologies. By combining conventional strategies with net-zero emission technologies such as CCS and hydrogen metallurgy, approximately 80–90% emission reduction can be achieved, thus leading to a carbon neutrality pathway, which can meet the 1.5°C targets of the carbon budget limit either. In the future, carbon emissions' reduction potential will be influenced by the decarbonization of power systems and the diffusion rate of innovative technologies. To achieve carbon neutrality, it is essential to act sooner and faster.     

Economic instruments for mitigating carbon emissions: scaling up carbon finance in China’s buildings sector

The relevance and cost-effectiveness are key criteria for policymakers to select appropriate policy and economic instruments for reducing carbon emissions. Here we assess the applicability of carbon finance instruments for the improvement in building energy efficiency by adopting the high efficiency standards as well as advanced energy supply systems, building on a case study in a northern city in China. We find that upgrading the current Chinese BEE standard to one of the best practices in the world coupled with the state-of-the-art energy supply system implies an abatement cost at 16US$/tCO₂, which is compatible with the international carbon market price. The institutional reorganization turns out to be indispensable to facilitate the implementation of the proposed scheme of local government-led energy efficiency programme in the form of programmatic CDM in China’s buildings sector. We show that with international support such as carbon finance, the BEE improvement will facilitate city’s transition to low-carbon supply in the longer term. More importantly, it is argued that demand-side energy performance improvement in buildings should be considered a prerequisite to shifting low-carbon energy supply technologies such as fuel-switching, renewable power generation and Carbon Capture and Storage to address climate mitigation in light of cost-effectiveness and environmental integrity.     

Drivers of change in Brazil’s carbon dioxide emissions

Brazil’s economic development has been underpinned by a diverse and – in a global comparison – unusual set of energy carriers, notably hydroelectricity and ethanol from sugar cane. Its energy mix makes Brazil one of the least energy-related carbon-intensive economies worldwide. Given that the country is fast becoming one of the world’s economic powerhouses, decision-makers need to understand the drivers underlying past and current carbon dioxide emissions trends. We therefore investigate a) which key long-term drivers have led to Brazil’s unique emissions profile, and b) the implications of these drivers for Brazil’s national policies. We show that Brazil’s emissions are growing mainly due to increasing individual standards of living, exports and population size, and that this growth is so far unchallenged by technological and structural improvements toward lower emissions intensities and more efficient production structures. As these trends are likely to continue amidst growing international pressure on key economies to reduce their carbon emissions, a decoupling of drivers from emissions is needed to simultaneously meet development and environmental goals.     

Biofuel’s carbon balance: doubts, certainties and implications

In addition to lower carbon dioxide emissions, policies to reduce fossil fuel combustion can yield substantial air quality co-benefits via reduced emissions of co-pollutants such as particulate matter and air toxics. If co-pollutant intensity (the ratio of co-pollutant impacts to carbon dioxide emissions) varies across pollution sources, efficient policy design would seek greater emissions reductions where co-benefits are higher. The distribution of co-benefits also raises issues of environmental equity. This paper presents evidence on intersectoral, intrasectoral and spatial variations in co-pollutant intensity of industrial point sources in the United States, and discusses options for integrating co-benefits into climate policy design to advance efficiency and equity.     

Temporal variation and source identification of black carbon at Lin’an and Longfengshan regional background stations in China

Black carbon (BC) is a component of fine particulate matter (PM_2.5), associated with climate, weather, air quality, and people’s health. However, studies on temporal variation of atmospheric BC concentration at background stations in China and its source area identification are lacking. In this paper, we use 2-yr BC observations from two background stations, Lin’an (LAN) and Longfengshan (LFS), to perform the investigation. The results show that the mean diurnal variation of BC has two significant peaks at LAN while different characteristics are found in the BC variation at LFS, which are probably caused by the difference in emission source contributions. Seasonal variation of monthly BC shows double peaks at LAN but a single peak at LFS. The annual mean concentrations of BC at LAN and LFS decrease by 1.63 and 0.26 μg m^–3 from 2009 to 2010, respectively. The annual background concentration of BC at LAN is twice higher than that at LFS. The major source of the LAN BC is industrial emission while the source of the LFS BC is residential emission. Based on transport climatology on a 7-day timescale, LAN and LFS stations are sensitive to surface emissions respectively in belt or approximately circular area, which are dominated by summer monsoon or colder land air flows in Northwest China. In addition, we statistically analyze the BC source regions by using BC observation and FLEXible PARTicle dispersion model (FLEXPART) simulation. In summer, the source regions of BC are distributed in the northwest and south of LAN and the southwest of LFS. Low BC concentration is closely related to air mass from the sea. In winter, the source regions of BC are concentrated in the west and south of LAN and the northeast of the threshold area of s_tot at LFS. The cold air mass in the northwest plays an important role in the purification of atmospheric BC. On a yearly scale, sources of BC are approximately from five provinces in the northwest/southeast of LAN and the west of LFS. These findings are helpful in reducing BC emission and controlling air pollution.     

Thermodynamic consistency of Raoult’s Law and Henry’s Law approaches for multiphase organic aerosol partitioning

Partitioning of semivolatile organic compounds between gas, organic aerosol, and aqueous aerosol phases has been described in atmospheric models using Raoult’s Law and/or Henry’s Law, with activity coefficients accounting for nonideal behavior in the aerosol solutions. Raoult’s Law and Henry’s Law are thermodynamically consistent with each other as long as the parameters defining their different reference states are accurately known. Unfortunately, saturation vapor pressures, Henry’s law constants, and activity coefficients for organic aerosol compounds must typically be estimated. As a result, thermodynamic inconsistencies can arise when using Raoult’s and Henry’s Law approaches together due to errors in estimation methods. A test of predicted partitioning parameters for representative semivolatile organics suggests overall errors of at least an order of magnitude. Box model simulations with a simplified partitioning scenario demonstrate that these estimation errors can significantly alter partitioning for many compounds and, more importantly, that thermodynamic inconsistencies will lead to even greater errors than those due solely to uncertain parameters. To avoid these errors, a common reference state should be used to define equilibrium among all phases, improved estimation methods and measurements should continue to be pursued, and alternative reference states that better represent typical organic aerosol mixtures should be explored.     

Predicting the future climatic suitability for cocoa farming of the world’s leading producer countries, Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire

Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire are the world’s leading cocoa (Thebroma cacao) producing countries; together they produce 53 % of the world’s cocoa. Cocoa contributes 7.5 % of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Côte d’Ivoire and 3.4 % of that of Ghana and is an important cash crop for the rural population in the forest zones of these countries. If progressive climate change affected the climatic suitability for cocoa in West Africa, this would have implications for global cocoa output as well as the national economies and farmer livelihoods, with potential repercussions for forests and natural habitat as cocoa growing regions expand, shrink or shift. The objective of this paper is to present future climate scenarios for the main cocoa growing regions of Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire and to predict their impact on the relative suitability of these regions for growing cocoa. These analyses are intended to support the respective countries and supply chain actors in developing strategies for reducing the vulnerability of the cocoa sector to climate change. Based on the current distribution of cocoa growing areas and climate change predictions from 19 Global Circulation Models, we predict changes in relative climatic suitability for cocoa for 2050 using an adapted MAXENT model. According to the model, some current cocoa producing areas will become unsuitable (Lagunes and Sud-Comoe in Côte d’Ivoire) requiring crop change, while other areas will require adaptations in agronomic management, and in yet others the climatic suitability for growing cocoa will increase (Kwahu Plateu in Ghana and southwestern Côte d’Ivoire). We recommend the development of site-specific strategies to reduce the vulnerability of cocoa farmers and the sector to future climate change.     

The danger of overvaluing methane’s influence on future climate change

Minimizing the future impacts of climate change requires reducing the greenhouse gas (GHG) load in the atmosphere. Anthropogenic emissions include many types of GHG’s as well as particulates such as black carbon and sulfate aerosols, each of which has a different effect on the atmosphere, and a different atmospheric lifetime. Several recent studies have advocated for the importance of short timescales when comparing the climate impact of different climate pollutants, placing a high relative value on short-lived pollutants, such as methane (CH₄) and black carbon (BC) versus carbon dioxide (CO₂). These studies have generated confusion over how to value changes in temperature that occur over short versus long timescales. We show the temperature changes that result from exchanging CO₂ for CH₄ using a variety of commonly suggested metrics to illustrate the trade-offs involved in potential carbon trading mechanisms that place a high value on CH₄ emissions. Reducing CH₄ emissions today would lead to a climate cooling of approximately ~0.5 °C, but this value will not change greatly if we delay reducing CH₄ emissions by years or decades. This is not true for CO₂, for which the climate is influenced by cumulative emissions. Any delay in reducing CO₂ emissions is likely to lead to higher cumulative emissions, and more warming. The exact warming resulting from this delay depends on the trajectory of future CO₂ emissions but using one business-as usual-projection we estimate an increase of 3/4 °C for every 15-year delay in CO₂ mitigation. Overvaluing the influence of CH₄ emissions on climate could easily result in our “locking” the earth into a warmer temperature trajectory, one that is temporarily masked by the short-term cooling effects of the CH₄ reductions, but then persists for many generations.     

The AVOID programme’s new simulations of the global benefits of stringent climate change mitigation

Quantitative simulations of the global-scale benefits of climate change mitigation are presented, using a harmonised, self-consistent approach based on a single set of climate change scenarios. The approach draws on a synthesis of output from both physically-based and economics-based models, and incorporates uncertainty analyses. Previous studies have projected global and regional climate change and its impacts over the 21st century but have generally focused on analysis of business-as-usual scenarios, with no explicit mitigation policy included. This study finds that both the economics-based and physically-based models indicate that early, stringent mitigation would avoid a large proportion of the impacts of climate change projected for the 2080s. However, it also shows that not all the impacts can now be avoided, so that adaptation would also therefore be needed to avoid some of the potential damage. Delay in mitigation substantially reduces the percentage of impacts that can be avoided, providing strong new quantitative evidence for the need for stringent and prompt global mitigation action on greenhouse gas emissions, combined with effective adaptation, if large, widespread climate change impacts are to be avoided. Energy technology models suggest that such stringent and prompt mitigation action is technologically feasible, although the estimated costs vary depending on the specific modelling approach and assumptions.     

Institutional change and the political economy of water megaprojects: China’s south-north water transfer

This paper analyses the relationship between megaproject construction and change in water management institutions. Due to the wide geographical distribution of their costs and benefits, which often spans national and provincial borders, water supply megaprojects frequently prompt intentional or evolutionary institutional change. China’s South-North Water Transfer Project (Middle Route), the world’s largest interbasin transfer project, was completed in December 2014 and is now in operation. Based on extensive fieldwork and analysis of Chinese documents, this paper introduces the government actors involved in, and impacted by, the planning and construction of the project. By detailing the interests of these actors, and the way those interests have been affected by the political, economic and environmental changes wrought by the megaproject, it shows that the Middle Route project has already contributed to change in one major financial institution – water pricing – and is exerting pressure on at least two others—infrastructure financing and compensation. Despite the regulatory efforts of the Chinese central government, incomplete institutional change processes threaten the long-term viability of the megaproject. Megaprojects demand institutional change and this must be factored into policymaking processes; business as usual will not suffice if the real benefits of the South-North Water Transfer are to be fairly distributed and its negative social, economic and environmental effects mitigated and appropriately compensated.     

Stable and Unstable Eigensolutions of Laplace’s Tidal Equations for Zonal Wavenumber Zero

Laplace's tidal equations are of great importance in various fields of geophysics. Here, the special case of zonal symmetry (zonal wavenumber m = 0) is investigated, where degenerate sets of eigensolutions appear. New results are presented for the inclusion of dissipative processes and the case of unstable conditions. In both instances the (nonzero) eigenfrequencies are complex. In the latter case, additional stable (i.e. real) eigenfrequencies appear in the numerical results for the absolute value of the Lambparameter ε being larger than a critical value εc. Further, it is shown that any degeneracies are removed through the inclusion of dissipation. Moreover, asymptotic relations are derived employing the relation of Laplace's tidal equations for m = 0 to the spheroidal differential equation. The implications of these findings to numerical techniques are demonstrated and results of computations are presented.     

China’s changing economy and emissions trajectory: following global trends

A key climate policy issue and debate is the future trajectory of emissions of carbon dioxide of countries, their peaking dates, and rates of decline after peaking. This article analyses China’s emissions trajectory in terms of global historical trends distinguishing between industry, infrastructure, and urbanization. Growth of emissions from industrialization and infrastructure development has stabilized in 2014 with saturation levels being reached, while the process of urbanization continues with the shift of the economy to the services sector, with reduced energy use, and this is a global trend. The future trajectory of emissions will be shaped largely by growth of transport and building-related services which directly impact on and are shaped by middle-class levels of well-being. These are areas where convergence with levels of services in other urbanized countries is an important element of national policy. This global trend has not been adequately taken into account in modelling and macroeconomic analysis which ignore social processes. The article concludes that China’s 13th Five Year Plan (2016–2020) seeks to achieve a ‘moderately well-off society’ while putting a cap on total energy demand by modifying the drivers of consumption emissions compared with countries that urbanized earlier. The adoption of a public policy priority of dense mixed-use urban form, public transport, energy efficiency to enable energy system reform, and digital economy could be a model for others.

Policy relevance

The article redefines climate change in terms of social processes as urban form and notions of well-being lock-in increasing levels of future emissions of carbon dioxide. There are implications for research in assessing how best drivers of emissions can be modified without affecting well-being, including renewable and digital technologies and human behaviours that drive patterns of natural resource use as well as the identification of leverage points. There are also broader implications for replacing the development cooperation model of global climate governance to focus on new values recognizing interdependencies for sharing responsibility as well as prosperity.     

Improving China’s water resources management for better adaptation to climate change

Challenged by insufficient water resources and by degraded water quality caused by widespread pollution, China faces an imbalance between the supply and the demand of water for supporting the rapid social and economic development while protecting the natural environment and ecosystems. Climate change is expected to further stress freshwater resources and widen the gap between the demand for and supply of water. As a legacy of the earlier planned economy, water resources management has been primarily supply-driven, which largely fails to account for the economic nature of water resources in relation to their natural characteristics. This paper presents a historical perspective on the water resources management policies and practices in China, and recommends demand management and pollution control as key measures for improving water resources management to adapt to climate change based on the current political, socio-economic and water resources conditions. The past and future impacts of climate change on water resources in China and the general adaptation strategies are also presented. How demand management through increasing water use efficiency, improving water rights and rights trade, and effective regulation enforcement, along with pollution control could improve China’s water resources management are discussed in details. Ultimately, China should develop a sustainable water resources management strategy based on both supply- and demand-side management options to make the limited water supplies meet the demands of economic development, social well-being and the conservation of ecosystems in the context of global climate change.     

Dams and population displacement on China’s Upper Mekong River: Implications for social capital and social–ecological resilience

China is home to nearly half of the world’s 50,000 large dams, which provide irrigation, flood protection, and hydroelectricity. Most of these projects involve substantial population displacement, which can disrupt social capital, the webs of interdependence and support that community members maintain with one another through relationships of trust and reciprocity. We use new empirical evidence to examine the association between dam-induced displacement and social capital in China and interpret our findings in the context of social–ecological resilience theory. Our focus is on agricultural households on the Upper Mekong River, where four large hydropower dams have been constructed over the past twenty years.Our broad finding is that resettlement is associated with diminished social capital, as measured by two key indicators: inter-household exchange of financial resources, and inter-household exchange of agricultural labor. These effects differ across the four dam sites in the study based on local economic conditions and changes in resettlement policy. We find that population resettlement is associated with markedly lower levels of agricultural labor exchange. In an economically under-developed setting, this reduces the depth and breadth of social support that agricultural households rely on to produce crops for subsistence and income. This in turn diminishes social–ecological resilience because social capital is a key factor that helps agricultural or resource-dependent communities manage risk and adapt to changes and stressors.We consider the policy implications of our findings in the context of scientific and industry efforts to minimize social harm, promote economic vitality, and improve the sustainability of hydropower as a form of renewable energy.     

The impacts of economic structure on China’s carbon dioxide emissions: an analysis with reference to other East Asian economies

A change in economic structure influences the total energy consumption as well as CO₂ emissions of a country, given the inherent difference in levels of energy intensity and energy fuel mix of different economic sectors. Its significance has been recognized in recent literature on China’s emission mitigation which could arguably raise China’s mitigation potential and thus the possibility of keeping the 2-degree trajectory on track. This article utilizes the past trend of economic structural change of five East Asian developed economies to project the energy consumption and CO₂ emissions of China in the coming decades. A special delineation of the economic sector is made, putting private consumption together with the three typical economic production sectors, to resolve the mismatch between the statistical data of energy consumption and economic production, in that residential energy consumption is typically merged into the tertiary sector, although it does not directly correspond to gross domestic product (GDP) output. Results suggest that the level of CO₂ emissions would be lower if China followed a development pathway emphasizing the development of the tertiary sector and continuously shrinking her secondary sector, making it possible for China to contribute more to global carbon mitigation. The impact from the rise of private consumption would be relatively insignificant compared to deindustrialization. In addition to continuous improvement in technology, economic structural change, which reduces carbon emission intensity, would be essential for China to be able to achieve the carbon emission level pledged in the Paris Agreement.

Key policy insights

• For China, significant economic structural reform, particularly deindustrialization, is necessary to achieve the goal of ‘peak emission by 2030’.

• Any additional contribution from China to the global effort to maintain a 2-degree trajectory would be limited – from a ‘fair-contribution’ perspective based on share of population or GDP – because the implied mitigation targets would be almost impossible to achieve.

• If developing countries follow the pathway of developed economies, particularly in developing energy-intensive industries, energy consumption and CO₂ emissions would significantly increase, reducing the possibility of keeping global temperature rise within the 2-degree Celsius benchmark.

     

Numerical Study of Ural Blocking High’s Effect Upon Asian Summer Monsoon Circulation and East China Flood and Drought

In terms of Kuo-Qian p-sigma incorporated coordinate five-level primitive equation spheric band (70oN-30oS) model with the Ural high’s effect introduced into it as initial and boundary conditions, study is made of the high’s in-fluence on Asian summer monsoon circulation and dryness / wetness, of eastern China bated on case contrast and control experiments. Results show that as an excitation source, the blocking high produces a SE-NW stationary wavetrain with its upper-air atnicyclonic divergent circulation (just over a lower-level trough zone) precisely over the middle to lower reaches of the Changjiang River, enhancing East Asian westerly jet, a situation that contributes to perturbation growth, causing an additional secondary meridional circulation at the jet entrance, which intensifies the updraft in the monsoon area. As such, the high’s presence and its excited steady wavetrain represent the large-scale key factors and acting mechanisms for the rainstorm over the Chamgjiang-Huaihe River catchment in the eastern part of the land.     

Anti-corruption and corporate environmental responsibility: Evidence from China’s anti-corruption campaign

Taking advantage of China’s vigorous anti-corruption campaign implemented in 2013, this study examines the impact of anti-corruption activities on the corporate environmental responsibility (CER) performance of listed Chinese enterprises from 2010 to 2016. The empirical analysis employs a Difference-in-Differences design to identify the causal effect by using the anti-corruption campaign as an exogenous policy shock. Results indicate that China’s unprecedented anti-corruption campaign launched in 2013 significantly improves the CER performance of high-corruption enterprises. Such an effect is most evident for state-owned enterprises, especially local government-owned ones and those in pollution-intensive industries. These results remain after a series of robustness tests. The mechanism results suggest that the promotion effects of the anti-corruption campaign on CER performance can be achieved through environmental regulations, corporate rent-seeking, and innovation behaviors. Moreover, anti-corruption improves the profitability of enterprises, but the effect is significantly offset by increased CER activities.     

Who and what are carbon markets for? Politics and the development of climate policy

Why have carbon markets been rapidly adopted as policy solutions to climate change in the last decade? Perhaps surprisingly, this question has attracted virtually no attention in the large literature on such markets. The standard arguments given for why carbon markets are good ways to respond to climate change do not explain why such markets have flourished as governance mechanisms in relation to climate. Carbon markets have spread and become taken-for-granted because of the potential they give to certain powerful actors (financiers, specifically) to create new cycles of investment, profits and growth. As a consequence, they make possible a political coalition combining financiers with environmentalists. This coalition has considerable potential to legitimize substantial cuts in carbon emissions in the face of continued opposition from other interests. It is the combination of these two elements – the promotion of specific growth sectors and the construction of a political coalition – that constitutes the principal political virtue of carbon markets. In order to demonstrate this claim, the history of emissions trading is traced and the implication of this analysis is explored for the further building of climate governance centred on carbon markets.