If China's carbon usage keeps pace with its economic growth, the country's carbon dioxide emissions will reach 8 gigatons a year by 2030, which is equal to the entire world's CO2 production today. That's just the most stunning in a series of datapoints about the Chinese economy reported in a policy brief in the latest issue of the journal *Science. *
Coal power has been driving the stunning, seven plus percent a year growth in China's economy. It's long been said said that China was adding one new coal power plant per week to its grid. But the real news is worse: China is completing two new coal plants per week.
That power is being used to drive an enormous manufacturing expansion. China has increased steel production from 140 million tons in 2000 to 419 million tons in 2006, the authors report. Even more recent numbers from the International Iron and Steel Institute show China's production leading the world at 489 million tons, more than double Japan and the US combined. That steel is getting used quickly too. In 1999, Chinese consumers bought 1.2 million cars. That number had increased 600% by 2006, when 7.2 million cars were sold.
And yet with all these numbers, Chinese per capita emissions remain one-quarter of our own here in the US. If the Chinese economy steps into our carbon footprint, all other greenhouse gas reduction efforts will be for naught.
But I have hope for China because their government knows that climate change will impact their country as much, if not more, than many others. That would leave them with a structural competitive disadvantage, which the Chinese have generally avoided.
Just take a look at the Chinese water situation. Half of the country's land is arid or semi-arid, and like the American West, vulnerable to drying out in the early stages of climate change. Climate change linked drying could reduce China's agricultural output by 5 to 10 percent by 2030, which would be a disaster in a country that the authors point out has 20 percent of the world's population and 7 percent of its arable land.
Chinese government officials know they have an environmental disaster unfolding within their country. If the US takes positive steps towards reducing our own emissions and helping the Chinese with theirs, I think we will find a willing partner.
After all, there is one bright spot in the journal article. China's reforestation efforts, which replant trees that act as carbon sinks. Forest cover has increased from 12% in 1980 to 18.2% in 2005. My back-of-the-envelope math says that added 348,000 square miles of forest to China. That's a whopping 223 million acres.
Another positive is that China's renewable energy production is outstripping, on a percentage basis, coal power production. But despite that growth, the government's 2020 targets seem low, except for hydro, which has its own problems.
To put these numbers numbers in perspective, China built at least 78 gigawatts of energy capacity in 2007 alone, which brought the country over 700 gigawatts of total capacity. The vast majority of that increase, of course, came from coal fired power plants. (US capacity is around 900 gigawatts.)
What I think policy makers in the US and China are going to realize is that they need all the R&D resources that both sides can muster to come up with cleaner energy technologies and more sustainable processes. As both of countries start to experience drought and lack of resources, it's going to make more sense to work together than to keep playing chicken.
What Americans can't expect is that we'll be able to strongarm the Chinese into anything. We're not dealing with a small Latin American country or a former Soviet republic. As these raw economic numbers make clear: they are going to generate power to build their economy, with or without us.
The policy perspective was a joint effort between University of Maryland professor Ning Zen, grad student Jay Gregg, and colleagues in Beijing.
Image: flickr/wolfiewolf
