GS Paper - III

China has been the world’s biggest emitter for more than 15 years, and now accounts for well over 30% of annual global emissions. If China does not reduce its emissions, the world is unlikely to meet its emission reduction targets. As things stand, the world is nowhere close to the minimum emission cuts required for 2030 – at least 43% over 2019 levels. Estimates suggest that annual global emissions in 2030 would be barely 2% below 2019 levels.

Why China is crucial

• The need for Chinese emission cuts is almost never discussed. Now, a first-of-its-kind analysis has suggested that China needs to reduce its emissions by 66% from current levels by 2030, and by 78% by 2035 to become 1.5-degree compliant.
• The modelling has been done by Climate Action Tracker (CAT), an independent scientific project that measures progress towards the 1.5-degree and 2-degree Celsius temperature targets mentioned in the Paris Agreement adopted in 2015.
• The overarching goal of the agreement, which came into force in 2016, is to hold “the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels”, and pursue efforts “to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels”. In 6 years, China must reduce carbon emissions by at least 66%: Study
• The international climate framework applies a differentiated approach, demanding higher climate actions, including emission cuts, from the rich and developed world, while allowing developing countries greater flexibility to plan their energy transitions.
• So, China is not expected to make the required deep emission cuts in the 2030 or 2035 timeframes.
• In fact, China’s emissions are still increasing, and are expected to be about 0.2% higher this year than in 2023, according to the latest estimate of the Global Carbon Project, which seeks to quantify GHG emissions and their causes.

Double-edged weapon

• But paradoxically, the hypothetical situation in which China does manage to make these very deep emission cuts in the short term may not be in the best interests of the world.
• This is because, ironically enough, it can have the effect of slowing down the deployment of renewable energy — not just within China, but in the rest of the world as well.
• Despite very rapid deployment of renewable energy like wind or solar — it added more than 300 GW of renewables just last year — China remains heavily dependent on fossil fuels.
• The share of renewable energy in its primary energy supply is still in single digits, and coal continues to generate more than half the country’s electricity.
• As of now, renewables are only adding new capacities in the country — they are not replacing fossil fuels. Emissions reductions would require the rapid phasing out of coal and other fossil fuels. This can have a negative impact on industrial production.
• Importantly, the manufacture of solar panels and wind turbines that are used to harness renewables like solar or wind, involves the liberal use of fossil fuels.
• And the global production of solar panels and wind turbines, as well as their supply chains, are heavily concentrated in China.
• China controls more than 80% of the global manufacturing of solar panels, dominating every step of the process, and about 60% of the global wind turbine production.
• Supplies of other clean energy technologies such as batteries, hydrogen electrolysers, and critical minerals — all of which are crucial to effect the global energy transition — are also concentrated in China.
• Deep emission cuts in the short term could thus constrain the global supplies of renewable energy equipment, and slow down energy transitions everywhere. It would surely jeopardise the global renewable energy tripling target for 2030.