The Unforgiving Math of Accumulating Emissions

"We hope you don't make the same mistakes we made," U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Saturday during a visit to the Taiyanggong Thermal Power Plant – a natural gas-fired plant that, with aid of high-efficiency turbines from General Electric, emits just half the greenhouse gas emissions as China's ubiquitous coal plants.

"When we were industrializing and growing, we didn't know any better; neither did Europe. Now we're smart enough to figure out how to have the right kind of growth," she said.

At the Taiyanggong plant, Clinton introduced her Special Envoy for Climate Change, Todd Stern, who accompanied her on the Asia trip, her first foreign trip as secretary. After noting that between them China and the United States are responsible for more than 40% of global greenhouse gas emissions, Stern reminded the audience that today's emissions add to the legacy of carbon emitted since the dawn of industrial age. "This is not a matter or politics or morality or right or wrong," he said. "It is simply the unforgiving math of accumulating emissions."

On the eve of Clinton's China visit, Monday Morning's climate change correspondent, Bjarke Wiegand, set the scene and analyzed what Clinton might expect to accomplish during her two days in Beijing. Wiegand's analysis was framed by two recent reports, one a joint effort of the Asia Society and the PEW Center for Global Climate Change, the other from the Brookings Institution, that assess the U.S.-China relationship in the context of the global fight against climate change. To read more about and download these reports, I encourage you to read Wiegand's very fine feature article at the link above.

Another non-profit with long experience in China, the Natural Resources Defense Council recently released its own set of recommendations for Chinese and American policymakers called Strengthening U.S.-China Climate Change and Energy Engagement. Click here to download the report.

It is rare that any story written today about climate change and China fails to mention that China has overtaken the United States as the world's biggest GHG emitter. While it's true, as Stern notes, that the planet doesn't much care where emissions come from – what truly matters is that atmospheric CO₂ concentrations keep rising – it seems legitimate, to me, to trace emissions to the demand that begat them. A new study by researchers at the Oslo-based Center for International Climate and Environmental Research, to be published soon in Geophysical Research Letters, does just that by looking into "offshored emissions."

The researchers found that half of the recent rise in China's CO₂ emissions, and nearly one-third of its total carbon emissions, are caused by manufacturing goods for export, especially to developed nations such as the United Kingdom and the United States. Indeed, 6% of China's emissions were tracked to the production of goods bound for Europe, and nearly 10% for goods exported to the United States.

Cognizance of the sources of China's emissions is all the more important in light of sobering findings in a new report, "China's Green Revolution," released on Thursday by two researchers based in McKinsey's Beijing and Shanghai offices. Even if China took advantage of every policy and technology available to improve energy efficiency and cut emissions over the next two decades, it would only halve likely emissions because of a growing economy, the authors found. The planet can ill afford us not trying our best, though. China's current efforts are set to halve energy intensity by 2030, but, even so, its GHG emissions would more than double.

What's really needed is maximum effort from every country – and owing to its disproportionately large historic contribution to the buildup of CO₂ in the atmosphere, as well as the stonewalling of its last president, none more so than the United States. This week, President Barack Obama showed again he seems determined to lead the fight. In a nationally televised address to a joint session of Congress, Obama, after citing energy as the most important area in the U.S.' economic future, said: "We will soon lay down thousands of miles of power lines that can carry new energy to cities and towns across this country. And we will put Americans to work making our homes and buildings more efficient so that we can save billions of dollars on our energy bills."

"But to truly transform our economy, protect our security, and save our planet from the ravages of climate change," he continued, "we need to ultimately make clean, renewable energy the profitable kind of energy. So I ask this Congress to send me legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution and drives the production of more renewable energy in America. And to support that innovation, we will invest fifteen billion dollars a year to develop technologies like wind power and solar power; advanced biofuels, clean coal, and more fuel-efficient cars and trucks built right here in America."

After calling on members of Congress to pass a cap-and-trade bill on Tuesday, Obama's proposed budget, released on Thursday, laid out that he expects them to do so. Beginning in 2012, the budget outline forecasts $79 billion in revenue from a 100% auctioning of carbon credits. Overall, the budget predicts $646 billion in revenue from the cap-and-trade program through 2020. Fifteen billion dollars of the proceeds are to be allocated each year for Obama's green energy initiatives – renewable energy, improving the grid, and deploying fuel-efficient vehicles – while the balance is to be returned to taxpayers as credits that offset the payroll tax. The cap-and-trade system aims to cut U.S. GHG emissions 14% below 2005 levels by 2020 and 83% below 2005 levels by 2050.

The proposed budget also dedicates $19 million for a greenhouse gas inventory; increases the budget of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by over $3 billion; boosts the climate research budgets of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA by a combined $3 billion; and doubles the research budget of the National Science Foundation.

As Obama works to boost funding for domestic efforts to combat climate change, an analysis published on February 20 by The Guardian found that the United States and other developed nations have disbursed only $1 billion of the $18 billion pledged to help poor nations adapt to climate change. "It's a scandal. The amount the developed countries have provided is peanuts. It is poisoning the UN negotiations. What [the rich countries] offer to the poorest is derisory, the equivalent of one banker's bonus. It's an insult to people who are already experiencing increasing extreme events," Bernarditas Muller of the Philippines, the chief negotiator for the G77 and China group of developing countries, told The Guardian's John Vidal.

A new proposal that would create a €100 billion fund to help developing countries cut emissions as well as brace for climate changes was unveiled (subscription required) by Brazilian Environment Minister Carlos Minc last week. Dubbed the "descending carbon spiral," the initiative would be funded by a 10% levy on clean development mechanism (CDM) transactions and 10% tax on the profits from production and trading of oil and coal.

On Wednesday, India launched (subscription required) what is thought to be the largest-ever GHG-reduction program to be funded under the CDM. India wants to use the sales of carbon credits to replace 400 million incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent ones that consume 75% less electricity. Indian officials say the program would reduce demand by 10,000 megawatts (MW) and eventually cut CO₂ emissions by 55 million tons annually.

India's country-wide energy efficiency program was matched this week by equally ambitious solar deals announced in the United States. On Thursday, Florida Power & Light Company (FPL) announced the groundbreaking for a 25-MW solar photovoltaic facility that will be the largest in the United States when it comes online at the end of this year.

In California, San Francisco-based Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) announced on Tuesday that over the next five years it will develop 500 MW of photovoltaic solar power. The plan, which includes a $1.4 billion investment in 250 MW of photovoltaic panels PG&E will own outright, is expected to meet 1.3% of the utility's demand. The day before PG&E's news, NRG Energy, one of the U.S.' most coal-dependent utilities, announced a partnership with eSolar to develop 500 MW of solar thermal electricity. NRG Energy will invest $10 million in eSolar for the right to use its technology, which consists of sun-tracking mirrors called heliostats that heat water to create steam to feed electricity-generating turbines.

Last, a reminder about why all these ambitious carbon-cutting efforts are necessary. At Climate Progress, Joe Romm reported Monday on a little-noticed Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) report published in January. Researchers with MIT's Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Climate Change re-analyzed their 2003 models and determined that a business-as-usual emissions path now means a median projection for atmospheric concentration of CO₂ in 2095 of an astonishing 866 ppm.

The take-home message? "If we do little or nothing about lowering greenhouse gas emissions, the dangers are much greater than we thought three or four years ago. It is making the impetus for serious policy much more urgent than we previously thought," says atmospheric chemistry professor Ronald G. Prinn.

Justin Gerdes,

Web Editor