Xi Jinping, China’s leading leader, has promoted a constructive vision of growth that is increasingly freed from greenhouse gas pollution, but the conversion of the plan into action appears to be controversial.
The big problem is coal.
Mr. Xi’s climate-saving ambitions are a pillar of a plan for the country’s post-pandemic rise, which was endorsed by the Communist Party’s legislature in China days ago.
The plan is designed to target the country on two signing commitments that Mr. Xi entered into last year. He said that China’s emissions of carbon dioxide would peak before 2030, and that the country would reach net carbon neutrality by 2060, meaning that it would emit no more greenhouse gases than it emits from the atmosphere through methods such as engineering or the planting of forests.
But an extraordinarily sharp debate has arisen in China over how aggressively to reduce the use of coal, which has fueled the industrial boom, yet in recent decades to the world that has polluted the best.
Prominent Chinese climate scientists and policy advisers want stricter emission restrictions, including virtually no new coal-fired power projects, and they anticipate a surge in solar and wind generation. Powerful provinces, state-owned enterprises and industry groups say China will have to use coal for electricity and industry for many years to come.
“There’s absolutely a strain,” said Leon Clarke, a professor at the University of Maryland and a leading co-author of a recent study on China’s options to limit emissions. ‘On the one hand, there is a feeling that coal has driven the economy and that you do not want to give it up. On the other hand, coal is the biggest target for climate action, especially in the short term. ”
China’s environmental pressure was brought to life last week when a thick smog hung over Beijing, reflecting an increase in industrial pollution.
The country’s annual carbon dioxide emissions are 28 percent of the world total, about the same as the following three largest emitters combined: the United States, the European Union and India. However, the accumulated emissions of the United States and other rich economies throughout the industrial era remain much greater than those of China.
Representatives of the coal industry who attended the national legislative session in Beijing argued that China should continue to burn coal, albeit in cleaner and more efficient plants.
The Chinese National Coal Association released a report this month proposing that its use increase modestly for the next five years and reach 4.2 billion tonnes by 2025, and also say China needs three to five “globally competitive world-class coal companies” “create.
“The key status of coal in our national energy system, and its role as ballast, will not change,” the association said in an earlier statement on the industry’s prospects for the next five years.
Provincial governments recently proposed new coal mines and power stations, promising that their projects would limit emissions. In response to the call for a carbon peak, Shanxi Province, one of China’s largest coal-producing areas, has announced plans for 40 ‘green’ efficient coal mines.
Chinese officials in such areas are also concerned about the loss of jobs and investment and the resulting social tensions. They argue that China still needs coal to provide a robust base of power to supplement its solar, wind and hydropower resources, which are more prone to volatility. And many energy companies that support these views are state controllers who have easy access to political leaders.
“Local governments view coal power as a robust energy shield,” Lu Zhonglou, a Chinese businessman who sold his coal mines a few years ago and still watches the industry, said in a telephone interview. “You can’t write off coal too early.”
But proponents of the green transition in China, including government advisers, argue that the growth of fossil fuels and the relocation of old-school heavy industry will benefit growth, innovation, health and the environment. Some believe that China could increase wind and solar resources and reach a carbon peak much earlier than 2030, which would lower the cost and technological barriers to achieving carbon neutrality.
“There is still a lot of hard work to be done for the time after 2030,” said Lauri Myllyvirta, who monitors Chinese climate and energy policy as chief analyst at the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air in Helsinki. “The core of the contradiction between the expansion of the smoking cane economy and the promotion of green growth seems to be unresolved.”
China’s new plan is apparently giving the various camps a foothold in the carbon debate. The plan promises green growth and expansion of hydro, solar and wind power, in addition to the construction of nuclear power stations. The plan says by 2025 that non-fossil fuel resources will produce a fifth of China’s energy.
Yet it seems that the plan also encourages defenders of coal and disappoints environmental groups and climate policy experts. It does not contain an absolute ceiling for the annual release of carbon dioxide and indicates that coal-fired power stations continue to build.
“Many areas still believe they can significantly increase fossil fuel use by 2030,” said Wang Jinnan, president of the Chinese Academy of Environmental Planning and a senior member of the national legislature, in an interview with a Chinese magazine. . the academy’s website. “It will have a huge negative impact on China reaching carbon neutrality by 2060.”
Mr. Xi may face calls from abroad to offer more ways to curb emissions as China turns the plan into real-world policy. For China, action on climate change is also a way of building goodwill, including with the United States and the European Union.
The important questions are not only when China’s emissions will peak, but how high they will be and how long it will take to drop drastically.
An international agreement to limit global warming in this century to below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), and to 1.5 degrees Celsius if possible, is not possible without more urgent efforts from China and the other major powers to about mid-century to achieve carbon neutrality.
“The longer the delay, the more difficult it is to reach those medieval targets. It’s just math, ”says Kelly Sims Gallagher, a professor at Fletcher School of Tufts University who studies China’s climate policy. His plan, she said, “will not have the effect of gaining new momentum in the global climate negotiations.”
Mr. Xi has a political interest in the issues. He promoted himself and China as guardians of an ‘ecological civilization’ and made the cleaning of China’s air, water and land a basis for public professions. When he announced China’s promise last year to limit greenhouse gas emissions, he also called for a ‘green recovery’ from the Covid-19 pandemic.
China’s air pollution has declined significantly over the past few years. Mr. Xi has created environmental inspection teams to pressure officials who are usually set on economic and political goals. The inspectors flashed their teeth earlier this year when they made strikingly blunt criticism of the National Energy Administration, which helps oversee the approval of power stations.
“Protecting the environment did not enjoy the highest priority,” the inspectors wrote in their report on the administration. They have criticized the government for pursuing coal-fired power projects in eastern China, where strict pollution limits are supposed to apply. Over the past few days, environmental authorities have also raided steelmakers in Tangshan, an industrial city in the north, which have been found to be breaking pollution lines, including submitting false data.
But Covid’s recovery to China was far from complete. After emissions plummeted in the first months of last year, when China’s outbreak was at its worst, it picked up again as spending on infrastructure and industry lifted the economy and coal use. China’s approval for new coal plants has increased in recent years, and more are in the pipeline.
Finally, China’s greenhouse gas emissions rose by 1.7 percent in 2020 compared to the previous year, according to the Rhodium Group, an economic research firm, the only major economy to rise that year.
To get away from coal, China has to face the cost of shutting down mines and plants, including the needs of millions of potential miners and other workers. Many coal-dependent regions and their workers seem unprepared for the possible relocation.
“I never thought about shutting down the coal mine, and I never thought about leaving,” Gui Lianjun, a 39-year-old miner in Shenmu, a coal city in northwest China, telephoned. said. He sounded unhindered when asked about the link between coal and global warming.
‘The government has closed a mine due to global warming? “I do not think it is possible,” he said. “I’ve never heard of the reason.”
Liu Yi contributed research.