Facing rising energy needs from a wave of unprecedented urbanization, China will have to spend up to $86 billion a year to reach ambitious greenhouse gas-reduction targets, a United Nations report says, one of the first estimates of how much China's global warming targets will cost.
Facing rising energy needs from a wave of unprecedented urbanization,
China will have to spend up to $86 billion a year to reach ambitious greenhouse
gas-reduction targets, a United Nations report says, one of the first estimates
of how much China's global warming targets will cost.
China
's
leaders have pledged to cut carbon intensity--a measure of how much carbon is
emitted relative to how much the economy produces--by 40% to 45% by the year
2020. Reaching the lower end of that range could actually save the country $30
billion a year from things like improvements to power plants that would
increase energy efficiency and mean buying less coal, natural gas or oil.
(This story and related background material will be available on The Wall
Street Journal Web site, WSJ.com.)
It is "proper and feasible for
China
to
set its abatement target at 40% to 45%, even without technological and
financial assistance from the international community," the China Human
Development Report said.
The report's authors say
China
's
leaders will have to think twice about more ambitious goals because the costs
quickly spiral up after the easiest improvements are made.
Even trying to reach a target of 51% could cost $86 billion a year, or 1.2% of
projected gross domestic product, according to the report released Thursday by
the U.N. Development Program in collaboration with Renmin University of China.
Some critics say even that's not enough to head off dramatic increases in the
absolute amount of greenhouse gases that
China
emits
because the intensity targets don't put absolute limits on
China
's
carbon output.
That posses a tough challenge for
China
.
According to the U.N. study, an aggressive program to cut carbon intensity from
2005 levels 91% by 2050 would cost $1.6 trillion a year--6% of
China
's
projected economic output.
Who's going to pay that huge bill is a key question in global climate-change
talks.
China
says
that developed countries such as the
U.S.
have
a responsibility to pay for the cleanup since they produced most of the carbon
already in the atmosphere.
But since 2007
China
has
surpassed the
U.S.
to be
the world's top greenhouse gas polluter, and Western countries counter that any
improvements could be wiped out unless
China
and
other fast-developing countries accept absolute caps on their carbon emissions.
The report's authors warn
China
has
to take action or the economic gains of the past 30 years could be wiped out by
the impacts of climate change, such as flooding and drought.
"No matter what, we can't continue development the same way," said
lead writer Zou Ji, a professor at
Renmin
University
.
Adding to the stresses is a huge new wave of urbanization, the report said. Over
the next two decades, the authors project 350 million rural dwellers, more than
the population of the U.S., will leave the countryside and move to cities,
requiring the construction of 50,000 high rises and 170 new mass transport
systems--double what Europe has.
That will push up
China
's
quickly rising energy needs. With cities already accounting for 85% of
China
's
greenhouse gases and energy use, the government has to find ways to cut down
emissions, for example by better heating, which alone accounts for about
one-third of
China
's
carbon, the report said.
The report, which comes just as parts of southwestern China slowly pull out of
the worst drought in decades, lays out a series of policy suggestions for China
to enrich its people without dangerously polluting by such measures as
utilizing more energy-efficient building technology to leapfrog over older
technologies.
Rolling out a domestic carbon tax and setting up a nationwide cap-and-trade
scheme where companies could trade carbon quotas are among the suggestions.
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