With global warming high on the agenda for the world’s industrial powers gathering later 2 years ago in Germany, China staked out its position on Monday by releasing its first national strategy on climate change, a plan that promises to improve energy efficiency but rejects any mandatory caps on greenhouse gas emissions.
The 62-page plan, two years in the making, served at least partly as a rebuff to separate efforts by President Bush and European nations to draw China and other developing countries into a commitment to reduce emissions, which was expected to be a focal point at the expanded summit meeting of the Group of 8 industrialized nations.
China has resisted mandatory reductions in emissions, arguing that it is still a developing country and needs to balance environmental improvements with maintaining economic growth.
Along with India and other large developing countries, China has long maintained that the established industrial powers need to act first because they built their wealth largely by burning fossil fuels and adding to the atmosphere’s blanket of greenhouse gases.
“Our general stance is that China will not commit to any quantified emissions reduction targets, but that does not mean we will not assume responsibilities in responding to climate change,” said Ma Kai, head of China’s powerful economic planning agency, the National Development and Reform Commission.
The report unveiled by Mr. Ma emphasizes trying to control greenhouse gas emissions by improving energy efficiency by 20 percent by 2010. But, in broad terms, the plan merely restates Beijing’s position that mandatory emissions caps are unfair to China and other developing countries still trying to modernize and improve living standards.
China, with the world’s fastest-growing major economy, had been projected to surpass the United States by 2009 or 2010 as the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide, which scientists say cause global warming. But China’s coal-based, high-polluting economy is growing so rapidly that the chief economist for the International Energy Agency is now predicting the country could become the global emissions leader as soon as this year.
Fatih Birol, the agency’s chief economist, warned that China must begin curbing its current rate of emissions. If not, he predicted that within 25 years China’s output of carbon dioxide emissions could amount to twice the combined emissions of the world’s richest nations — including the United States, members of the European Union and Japan.
At his news conference on Monday, Mr. Ma applauded Mr. Bush’s proposal but emphasized that any effort in Washington should complement, not replace, the existing framework, including the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, sponsored by the United Nations. Under the Kyoto Protocol, participating industrialized nations are subjected to caps on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, while developing countries, including China and India, are exempt.
Mr. Ma stressed that as a latecomer to industrialization, China had produced only a small fraction of the world’s greenhouse gases, and that its current per capita emissions equaled a small fraction of the rate in the United States.
Mr. Birol, the I.E.A. economist, agreed that the developed world was responsible for the bulk of emissions and should play a leading role in finding a solution. But he said that no plan could succeed without a major role for China and that making distinctions between “total emissions” and “per capita emissions” obscured the larger point.
“The atmosphere does not make a distinction if it is cumulative or a per capita emission,” Mr. Birol said in a telephone interview. “Either way, it is a problem for all of us.”
The centerpiece of China’s approach to controlling emissions is an existing plan that calls for a 20 percent improvement in energy efficiency between 2006 and 2010. Mr. Ma noted that China had passed new laws on environmental protection and energy efficiency, and that factories across the country were beginning to improve. He said fiscal and tax policies were being revised to reward clean industry and punish high-polluting factories.
But given China’s high economic growth rate, the energy efficiency program would, at best, slow increases in emissions rather than reduce them. And it is far from certain that China will be able to meet the 20 percent goal. Under the plan, China should have netted a 4 percent reduction in 2006 in the amount of energy needed to generate each unit of gross domestic product. Instead, environmental officials announced earlier this year that the country had failed to meet that goal.
China is heavily dependent on coal, which currently accounts for about 68 percent of its energy. Under the climate change program, China is planning a major expansion of nuclear power, as well as renewable energy sources. The plan calls for renewable energy to account for 10 percent of the country’s power supply by 2010. China is also in the midst of a nationwide reforestation program to help absorb greenhouse gases.
Jonathan Lash, president of the World Resources Institute, said that while it was clear that China was aware of looming climate risks, the central government lacked the legal structures and institutions to enforce a mandatory emissions cap.
“The central government can’t control what gets built,” he said, noting the example of illegal factories for making coke used by the steel industry that were closed and repeatedly reopened.
James L. Connaughton, the lead White House official on the environment, said last week that a central goal of the Bush administration’s new plan is to reach out to China, India, Korea and other fast-growing Asian countries to help eliminate barriers to emissions cuts, including the high tariffs China now charges on imported pollution-controlling technology.
In return, he said, wealthy countries could offer developing countries new energy technologies created with government research money at a discount.
Mr. Connaughton said that one vital tool, particularly given China’s exploding use of coal, would be the development of systems for capturing carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas from burning fuel, and pumping it underground.
“China will use four times more coal than the United States by the end of 2020,” he said. “We have to accelerate producing power from coal without emissions.”
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