China's top climate think tanks released a report today pushing for cuts in carbon emissions and reduction of coal use over the next five years.
A coal mine near Hailar. Inner Mongolia
A coal mine near Hailar. Inner Mongolia, in China. (Photo: "Inner Mongolia" by HerryLawford. Licence CC BY 2.0)
Published by the Institute of Climate Change and Sustainable Development, at Tsinghua University, the report summarises key findings of 18 different studies by government think tanks and marks the beginning of a climate seminar in the capital, Beijing.
Some of China's leading climate experts were in attendance including Xie Zhenhua, a special adviser on Climate Change Affairs of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE), and Zhao Yingmin, vice-minister of the MEE. Both men are widely expected to play a major role in helping to frame the country's main climate goals for 2021-25.
“China should strictly control coal consumption and the expansion of coal-fired power capacity in the next five years, aiming to cap carbon emission from coal sectors by 2025 and even realise negative growth”, said He Jiankun, vice director of the National Export Committee on Climate Change, and a report contributor, at a keynote speech at the seminar, according to reports in Reuters.
“China is still expected to see a growth of natural gas consumption in 2026-2030, so the growth of carbon emission from gas use should be offset by the reduction from the coal sector,” He added.
China is responsible for around 29% of global CO2 emissions and it is widely expected that the government will give its backing to ambitious climate goals, possibly even aiming for lower economic growth targets at the upcoming Communist Part conclave which will determine the country's 14th Five-Year Plan for 2021-2025.
The report spelt out the fact that immediate cuts to total energy consumption were necessary in order to keep temperatures to under 1.5°C by 2050.
It also said that a 2°C increase would necessitate the cutting of coal share in energy consumption down to 15% by 2050. By comparison, in 2019, coal accounted for 57.7% of the energy consumed in China.
The report also made calls for China top reduce its carbon intensity - the amount of CO2 emission per GDP unit - by 65% by 2030 from 2015 levels, and raise non-fossil fuel consumption to 25% by 2030.
If the ruling Communist Party were to adopt the suggestions, the targets would be higher than the pledges China has already made as part of the Paris Accord, which called for a 60-65% reduction in carbon intensity and for non-fossil fuels to make up 20% of energy consumption.
The report's calls for lower emissions come as Chinese energy demands continue to rise.
China's total energy consumption could reach 5.5 billion tonnes of coal in 2025, a raise of 13.2% from 2019 levels, the report said, assuming that annual GDP growth is higher than 5% during the 14th Five-Year Plan period.
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