- The Writer holds an MSc in Eurasian Political Economy & Energy from King’s College London and also an MA in European Studies from Sabancı University.

Human-induced climate change was not a priority on the international agenda up until the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), also known as the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit in 1992. Until this point, China’s contribution to the share of global CO2 levels was much less than any other developed country and the carbon footprint per capita in China was less than the world average. However, China’s emergence as a great economic power for the last three decades has come with the cost of the acceleration of coal consumption and the construction of a great number of coal-based power plants. This has overwhelmingly increased the level of global greenhouse gas emissions.

As detailed in BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy 2017, China accounted for 27.3 percent of the global carbon emissions, making China the largest CO2 emitter of the world in 2016, followed by the U.S. in second place with a share of 16 percent. A joint study of the European Commission and the Environmental Assessment Agency of Netherlands’s report published back in 2011 revealed that per capita carbon emissions in China increased to 7.2 tonnes, moving closer to that of the European Union’s average of 7.5 tonnes per person.  

Over the last three decades, China has achieved great economic growth, has taken 400 million people out of poverty and provided better living standards for one billion of its people. While success in economic growth brought increased living standards for the ordinary Chinese citizen, this unprecedentedly high profit, and high investment model, with lower expenditure on services and consumption, has put great pressure on environmental sustainability. The subsequent effect of carbon pollution on health and sustainability has increasingly become a subject of public discussion and forced authorities to reassess the model of carbon-based economic growth.

Due to heavy industrialization and ever-increasing urbanization, energy demand rocketed in China since the 1980s with the ensuing increase in energy intensity. And because of the rapid, sustained and coal-intensive growth model, China has caused the majority of the growth in global coal consumption and the incremental rise in greenhouse gas emissions. In 2006, with China’s ranking as one of the highest carbon emitters worldwide, without its commitment to climate change mitigation, this goal would be rendered ineffective.

To move away from an energy-intensive development path, the industrial structure in China has started to move to a more balanced service economy, since 2011 with the aim of decoupling carbon emissions growth from economic development. This choice was particularly evident both in the United Nations climate conferences held both in Copenhagen in 2009 and Cancun in 2010. China, in these conferences, made a strong commitment by targeting a reduction of its energy intensity over its economic activity by 40 to 45 percent between 2005 and 2020.

China is currently responsible for 30 percent of global carbon emissions; a volume that is more than the U.S’ and Europe’s combined. China is, therefore, a pivotal state to achieve the global target of keeping the temperature below two degrees Celsius.

For carbon emissions level to drop, it needs to reach its peak level at first so that any climate change mitigation policy measures results can be effectively put into practice. Currently, China has not yet reached its peak carbon emissions level. Although it is not easy to estimate when exactly this will happen, various institutions have made projections.

In 2000, the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimated that CO2 levels in China would be 18 percent before 2020, a level that has already been surpassed in 2015, equal to 29 percent. In 2002, the IEA projected that by 2030 China’s carbon emissions would be less than that of the U.S. However, only in 2007, was it acknowledged that China had already exceeded U.S. predictions. With these statistics, it transpires that forecasting future trends in China is not an easy job to undertake.

Electricity generation accounts for more CO2 than any other activity around the world, as it is also the case for China. Decarbonization of electricity generation, therefore, is of the utmost importance for the radical reduction of China’s carbon emissions. Due to reduced demand for energy along with structural changes, especially after 2011, China’s prominent position in carbon-intensive industrial production has started to diminish, and consequently, energy used per unit of industrial production has begun to wane.

China’s success in fighting against global warming is invariably linked to the new model of economic growth. Increasing energy efficiency in major cities, substituting renewable energy over fossil fuels, and investing in storage technology as well as moving away from energy-intensive development paths are some of the major steps that China has employed to decouple carbon emissions from economic development.

The marked slowdown in coal consumption, greater investment in manufacturing and commercialization of low carbon emission technologies, and gradual decrease in manufacturing costs have all contributed to China’s goal in meeting its mitigation target agreed in the Paris 2015 meeting on time. The decisive fall in the trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions in industrial production, together with the widening deployment of low carbon technologies, shows China’s ambition to strengthen its global standing in decoupling its economic activity from carbon release.

China’s compliance with its Paris commitments would not only help meet its national pledge to provide better air quality for its citizens, but also its ambitious fight against global warming would encourage other developing countries to also respond quickly and effectively to meet the Paris agreement requirements. Without China’s distinctive contribution in meeting climate change and applying adaptation measures, any efforts in fighting against global warming would be insignificant.   

- Opinions expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Anadolu Agency's editorial policy.