Comments on China’s new emission cutting targets

F.China will provide demonstration and reference for future developing countries, and will transfer experience and provide support for developing countries through means such as south-south cooperation

As the largest developing country in the world, China is taken as an example for many other developing countries seeking growth. Through its innovative development pathway, China will become a demonstration model which other developing countries can follow in pursuing sustainable development. Learning from China’s experience, other developing countries can avoid reliance on the traditional high-carbon development pathway and the lock-in effect, enabling them to take on a new development pathway that is efficient and innovative with low pollution and emissions. At the same time, China will promote global transformation by fulfilling its commitment, contributing to the reshaping of the global development pathway.

3.Difficulties and challenges facing China in achieving INDC targets

Although it is clear that low-carbon growth is inevitable for China’s future development, China will face a number of challenges in achieving its INDC targets, including limitations brought by China’s stage of economic and social development, economic structure, natural reserves of energy resources, energy efficiency, technological capacity, institutional policy basis, the international political and economic structure it faces, etc.

1.Accessibility to natural resources will increase the risk of failing the INDC targets. For example, clean energy such as natural gas is needed to replace coal consumption to meet the targets. A huge challenge in this process is how to ensure a sufficient and reliable supply of resources and guarantee national energy security while controlling costs.

2.As China is still in the process of industrialization and urbanization, heavy industry sectors such as machinery manufacturing, iron and steel, construction materials and chemical industry still form a large share of the economy. Together with rapid urbanization, which comes with large scale infrastructure construction, this implies a constant increase of energy consumption and carbon emissions. Even though the Chinese government has committed to adjustment of economic structure and transformation of economic growth, it is no overnight process. Furthermore, potential downward economic pressure would present a great challenge.

3.With the ratio of middle class population rising every year, the emissions from transportation and buildings will increase accordingly, surpassing that of the manufacturing industry in mid-long term. To realize the targets set in the INDC, it will be vital to cultivate the young generation to adopt a low-carbon consumption model and lifestyle.

4.Reliability and uncertainty of technology is another major challenge facing China in achieving its INDC objectives. For instance, China needs to address issues such as how to ensure renewable energy generation and reliability of the power grid, how to manage environmental impacts of hydropower and safety of nuclear power, and how to reduce the uncertainty of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. 

5.As a developing country, China’s overall technological level lags behind, with limited R&D capacity of key technologies, especially in low-carbon and adaptation technology. How to ensure access to technologies through effective international cooperation is one of the key issues in implementing the INDC targets.

6.To achieve mitigation and adaptation targets requires huge investment and construction costs. Some of the incremental investments bring about economic returns, while a majority of them are just huge economic costs, for example, the application of technologies like CCS. Besides economic costs, China may face social costs in the process such as structural unemployment caused by the closure of outdated production facilities, requiring measures to mitigate these social impacts.

7.Competencies and capacities of key stakeholders in climate change are generally still limited, bringing about the heavy task of raising social awareness, and improving institutional and social mechanisms. China lacks macro management capacities to address climate change and its legislative and policy system in this area is incomplete. At present, China still lacks a sound statistical and accounting system for GHG emissions and is comparatively weak in monitoring, regulation, and calculation of GHG emissions, as well as in law enforcement capacity. All of these shortcomings present challenges for China to realize its INDC targets.