As Biden hosted the world climate summit this time, the healthy competition against carbon emission suddenly becomes more heated than ever. Biden did the absolutely right thing, and this climate conference, to be completely honest, is more constructive than a world democracy summit.
I was reading this blog (in Chinese) that discussed climate change, in relation to a comparison between the US and China. I have learned much from this guy and it allows me to click on other references and read further from there. The author had his reservations toward the Biden proposal about cutting US carbon emission by 50% by 2030 from its 2005 level. Several other reports also have doubts and questions, including NYT and Bloomberg. NYT has these words to say about the US goal: “That’s one of the more aggressive near-term targets among wealthy industrialized nations, although the cuts are arguably not quite as large as what the European Union and Britain have already promised.” Bloomberg points out that the US move “it’s unlikely to prove sufficient to keep average global temperature rise below 1.5°C.”
I would still call it a giant step toward the right direction, especially compared with what the Trump administration had done in the past. As this Bloomberg piece stated the Biden statement is “the most ambitious climate goal yet by an American leader.”
China’s Bold Goal
Many reports and comments pointed out how the EU countries have one or several steps ahead of the US, but few mentioned China. In fact, the country was criticized for not committing concrete goal on the global climate summit. But that criticism is not fair and not well informed, as China’s Xi Jinping already declared the goals of first reaching a peak in its emissions around 2030 and then “to reach ‘carbon neutrality’ — meaning China’s net carbon emissions will reach zero — by 2060.”
Now, to put that into perspective, “More than 60 other countries have pledged carbon neutrality by 2050, a consensus deadline that scientists believe must be met to have a reasonable chance of averting the worst climate catastrophe.” So a goal of carbon neutrality in 2060 makes the country one decade later than others like the US. However, China faces a much bigger challenge as it “now produces 28 percent of the world’s emissions,”
This NYT report also admits that China’s goal has surprised many expert. “Environmentalists have welcomed the pledge by China’s leader, Xi Jinping, to speed up reductions in emissions in the world’s top-polluting nation and reach carbon neutrality by 2060.” Some reservation and doubts remain, as “by May, carbon dioxide emissions from energy production, cement making and other industrial uses were 4 percent higher than the year before. China also granted more construction permits for coal-fired power plants in the first six months of 2020 than it had each year in 2018 and 2019.”
China gives little detail of its plan. But as Krugman and this opinion piece both points out, cutting carbon emissions require concerted, fundamental and structural changes everywhere, just as much for the US as for anyone else.
“One indicator of the actual success of the summit may be China,” as these authors have pointed out. As the NYT report pointed out, “While China clings to industries that are consumers of coal, it has also emerged as a leader in clean energy technologies, including solar panels and wind turbines. It is the world’s largest manufacturer of electric cars and buses.”
External Pressures
“China’s commitments were raised last week when Xi Jinping met with leaders of the European Union, which had threatened to impose carbon tariffs if China did not reduce its emissions.” Frankly, I think it is unfair to China that “The Europeans pressed China to reach peak emissions by 2025, as most European nations have vowed to do.” It makes sense for China to argue that “as a developing economy it should not have to share the same burden of curbing emissions as developed nations whose pollution went unchecked for decades.”
This report was right to quote Xi Jinping as saying that “it requires ‘extraordinarily hard efforts’ for China to realize its goals to moving from carbon peak to carbon neutrality, which is in a much shorter time span than what might take many developed countries.”
From a historical perspective, the US has by far contributed the most carbon emission than anyone else in the world. According to this website, from 1750 to 2018, the US has a cumulative CO2 emission of 397 billion metric tons, while China has 214 billion metric tons, roughly one half of the US amount.
Unlike the US goal, which is not enough for reaching the global warming limit to 1.5C degree (that is, above pre-industrial levels), this report says “China’s pledge to achieve ‘carbon neutrality’ before 2060 is ‘largely consistent’ with the Paris Agreement’s aim of limiting global warming to 1.5C.” The study published in Science says “to hit the 1.5C goal, the world’s largest emitter would need to cut its total carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and energy consumption by more than 90% and 39%, respectively, by 2050 – compared to a “no-policy” scenario where the government has not and will not impose climate policies.”
Can China Actually Do It?
I know some are suspicious about whether China can reach its goals, I myself had my doubts as well — until I read this piece in Chinese. China is such a country where internal communications (in Chinese) always offer more valuable information than external ones, because we have far more Chinese feeling comfortable with writing Chinese than English — in a country where English education has cost billions of USD (according to this report published in 2019, “Morgan Stanley analysts predict in a report this summer that the online tutoring market for kindergarten to 12th grade will grow 23 times in the next 12 years, to $160 billion.”)
Anyway, the former vice president Al Gore has faith in China and believed the country will overachieve. In his own words, “They have a history of planning their work and then working their plan. They put out goals only when they are absolutely certain they can reach them, and they often overachieve.” Gore and John Kerry have both been very vocal on climate change and we should pay attention to them.
After reading this report and analysis (in Chinese, of course) I am feeling more confident about China’s goals. In fact, if everything done right it is possible for China to reach carbon neutral ahead of 2060! Here are the highlights of the points from the above report. Unfortunately, this document did not have a single name of the author(s). China is still far away from following the standard or norm of doing things in other developed countries.
To get the numbers right for carbon neutrality in China, we first need a capacity figure of how much carbon can be absorbed by forestry. Once we know that, we then do the math to let the maximum carbon emission be the same as the capacity of carbon absorption, which defines carbon neutral.
According to an article published in Nature in 2020 by a Chinese scholar (again, no reference was given in this report), between 2010 and 2016, the forestry in China can absorb 1.11 billion tons of carbon, which roughly accounted for 45% of Chinese total carbon emission. The total forestry area in China was 22.96% of total land area, while the global average is 30%. Assuming in 2060 China forestry reaches global average, then 1.6 billions of carbon will be absorbed by forestry. To reach carbon neutrality, we must cut carbon emission from its peak amount in 2030 at 3.74 billion tons to 1.6 billion tons in 2060, which is roughly (3.74-1.6) /3.74*100=57% of reduced carbon emission.
Now, we need to look at the major sources of carbon emission. Unlike the US where transportation (i.e., driving vehicles) is the #1 source of carbon emission, in China burning fossil fuel — mainly for generating electricity — is the biggest problem. Coal burning makes up 43% of total energy, the largest share, followed by petroleum 15% and natural gas 5%. Adding them up we have 63%. In other words, if China can manage to replace coal, petroleum and natural gas, the job will be done.
Of course, the problem is everywhere the same: how to find and use the sustainable sources of energy — wind, solar and water. China is rich on sunlight but in 2019, coal burning electricity accounted for about 70% of total electricity produced. Hydropower was 17.4%, wind 5.4%, solar 3% and nuclear 4.6%. Solar power has only used up a tiny portion of the country’s solar resources. The cost of solar power is now already lower than coal generated power. The problem is transportation and storage, which China is actively working on, such as smart grids and producing hydrogen using green energy. The other advantage of hydrogen is that current coal burning electricity mills can be easily transformed to hydrogen burning mills.
The Non-Technical Secret Weapon for China
The above analysis focuses on technological details of carbon emission, which are important but not the complete picture. China has something else that the US does not have: the shared responsibilities between Beijing and provinces. Biden cannot order governors to do things he sees fit, but Xi Jinping can. In fact, Beijing’s secrete weapon is to ask provincial and municipal leaders to share the responsibility of cutting down local emissions in line with the national goals. The governor of each province will have to cut down its local emission by 50% in the next ten years, for example, otherwise Beijing will consider demotion or even penalties.
The non-secret way is a carbon exchange system similar to Chicago Climate Exchange in the US.
Dealing With Local Climate Shock in the US
Paul Krugman raised an interesting point not to move too fast in dumping the coal Industry, which he calls climate shock — similar to the “China shock” from globalization. Citing a paper by Autor, Dorn and Hanson, the unemployment in concentrated communities has more impact than shocks evenly distributed to the entire country. I used to call that “the angry community” effect, when entire geographic areas are full of unemployed workers, as discussed in Ozawa in 2018.
I was even a bit surprised to find that the United Mine Workers, a labor union, “is ready to support the Biden infrastructure plan — if that plan helps miners and mining communities transition out of coal.” But as Krugman points out, “preserving coal country will be hard. The historical record of place-based policies is, let’s face it, pretty dismal.” This reminds me of the Xinjiang case, where the natural resources, including water, are too scarce to support the number of people. Beijing has tried to relocate extra labors to inland but look at what international response has been: accusations of genocide and forced labor.
I do want to suggest that perhaps the government can take a more targeted approach to deal with climate shocks in concentrated communities without moving people out of the places they have always lived: Setting up “Community Reservation” funds to support or award any entrepreneurs from anywhere who can come up with feasible ideas of creating jobs to absorb the coal minders. Money incentive alone is not enough, as the entrepreneurs will need to have local and global knowledge of demands. This way, the manufacturing or service jobs created will be filled up quickly but their products or services will have a local or global market to make the projects sustainable.
Praising China When It Does Something Right
What is the right way to compete? We want to beat competitors all the time, right? But sometimes having a humanity touch on the competitor will ease the pressure and make the game more fun. In a soccer field, if our teammates fell or were injured, we help them stand up and give them a quick hug to show that we care. It would be extraordinary if we do that for the competitors as well, perhaps not hugging but patting them on the back. Anyone doing that tells me that the person has a big heart!
The same idea applies to international competition. Beijing’s pledge is such a move that can potentially contribute big time to a better world tomorrow. It is the first time that Beijing promises something to put its own slogan of “A shared human destiny” to work. As a global leader, the US can show some appreciation for that.