BEIJING - As global concern about climate
change and rising carbon dioxide emissions grows,
China - the developing world's biggest polluter -
is sending confusing signals about its willingness
to clean up energy production and tackle
environmental pollution.
China,
which accounts for 12% of global carbon-dioxide
emissions, was among some 141 countries that had
ratified the UN Kyoto Protocol on global warming
when it took effect in February last year. The
move enabled Beijing to paint itself
as a
defender of the environment
while condemning the United States, which has
withdrawn from the treaty, as "irresponsible".
Since last February, though, China
has also joined an alternative forum to the Kyoto
Protocol - the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean
Development and Climate. The forum, nicknamed the
"coal pact", groups the world's six leading
greenhouse-gas (GHG) emitting nations: the US,
Australia, China, India, Japan and South Korea.
Rather than committing countries to
firm targets for cutting GHG emissions as in the Kyoto
Protocol, the "coal pact" aims to promote
technologies that reduce emissions of carbon
dioxide in coal and allow it to burn more cleanly.
Environmentalists have lambasted the forum as an
attempt to divert attention from the refusal of
the US and Australian governments to sign the
Kyoto Protocol.
China, however, has signed
both pacts - an ambiguous stance reflecting its
conflicting interests of meeting its fast-growing
economy's voracious energy demands and placating
worldwide concern about global warming. Last week,
it also attended the first conference of the
Asia-Pacific Partnership, presided over by
Australian Prime Minister John Howard, in Sydney.
Officially, Beijing has manifested
polite but restrained support for the new
climate-change coalition. The Sydney meeting received
little attention in the state-run media compared with the
Montreal meeting in December, when Kyoto
signatories negotiated the extension and
strengthening of the landmark 1997 UN agreement.
"Although the Asia-Pacific partnership on
clean development and climate is a good step on
the long road to fighting global warming, it
provides no concrete and effective measures on
cutting greenhouse emissions as yet," said Zhang
Jianyu, a researcher with Beijing Tsinghua
University.
Yet, despite throwing its
weight behind the Kyoto treaty, Beijing sees few
short-term solutions to satisfying growing energy
demand beyond bringing new coal-fired power plants
on line. China is planning 562 new coal-fired
power stations - nearly half the world's total of
plants expected to come online in the years up to
2012, when the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol
ends. Such is the scope of the power plant
expansion that China's increases in GHG emissions
in coming years may well dwarf the 5% cuts in
emissions required under Kyoto during the
2008-12 period.
For a start,
emissions of carbon dioxide from China are increasing
faster than from any other country in the world. In
1990, China accounted for some 10.5% of world
carbon-dioxide emissions. That figure rose to 12.7% in
2001 and is now second only to the US, whose 25%
share China is likely to match within a few
decades.
China is the world's biggest coal
producer, and oil consumption has doubled during
the past two decades of rapid industrialization.
This is one of the reasons why Beijing sees the
"coal pact" as a useful forum for acquiring
technologies that enable the capture and storage
of carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plants.
During the January 11-12 Sydney meeting,
Australian Electric Power president Michael Morris
claimed that if all countries adopted clean fossil
fuel-burning technology advocated by the delegates
of the Asia-Pacific Clean Development and Climate
Partnership, then emissions would be reduced by
three times the level envisaged under the Kyoto
Protocol.
Yet by signing and ratifying
the UN Kyoto Protocol, China stands to gain more
than just accolades for its symbolic lead in the
fight against global warming. The international
mechanisms under the Kyoto treaty could give China
much of the environmental investment it needs for
free.
Since it is a developing nation,
China would be exempted from reducing its own
carbon dioxide output under the protocol. Under
the terms of the treaty, only industrialized
nations, which are mainly responsible for the
present high levels of gases in the atmosphere,
must reduce their emissions by an average of 5.2%
below 1990 levels by 2012.
But as the
developing world's biggest polluter, China stands
to benefit substantially from the treaty because
it provides for a clean defense mechanism (CDM)
that allows polluters in one country to earn
credits by reducing GHG emissions in another.
While the CDM market is still relatively small, it
has more than doubled since 2001. The United
Nations CDM executive board has already approved
some 25 CDM projects from China.
Already,
Chinese energy officials estimate that CDM
projects would have brought an increase of US$250
million in foreign investment in 2005. That figure
is expected to double in 2010, according to the
China Environment News. "In 2006, we will submit
between 200 and 300 CDM projects for approval," Lu
Xuedu, a senior official with the ministry of
science and technology was quoted as saying by the
newspaper.
The International Energy Agency
(IEA) has forecast an even more optimistic
potential for CDM trades in China. The IEA expects
China to account for 40% of an annual market of
250 million tons of carbon dioxide traded in 2010.
That would translate to environmental projects in
China worth more than $1 billion a year.
