No More Cheap Machines: Climate Change and China
DEVELOPMENTS
We are now looking at a future climate that is beyond anything seriously considered in model simulations. Only a couple years ago, experts predicted China would not surpass the United States in carbon dioxide emissions until sometime after 2030. Now that milestone has already been passed. Last year, China became the largest producer of green house gases and, just last month, it became the biggest purchaser of automobiles in the world. To quote the China Daily: “the bike has been downgraded from one of the most significant family purchases some twenty years ago to a cheap machine used mainly by the poor.” Now, China also has the largest number of internet users, not to mention the most pigs, in the world. These changes – which make a meaningful impact on global warming, information disclosure and consumption, across the spectrum from livestock methane to the demise of bicycles, how and what people think about climate change fundamentally alters the conversation of how China’s society should proceed from here.
A recent report by the Asia Society and the Pew Center for Climate Change, co-chaired by new Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu, calls for convening a joint China-U.S. summit on climate change, but it is essential that these efforts focus on efficiency–the cheapest and cleanest source of new capacity with no negative impacts. But, making “green” work in China will require overcoming local resistance to environmental policies, and the development of a strong legal protection system; transparency is critical to these efforts. According to China’s Vice Minister for Environmental Protection: “To reverse this kind of situation we can’t just make speeches. It will only come from a shift of attitudes from the very top to the very bottom.”
BACKGROUND
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao claims that meeting the challenge of climate change is a top priority for China. But, in the last five years, China’s total power capacity has doubled, and China now uses more coal than the United States, the European Union, and Japan combined. However, the country’s greatest resource is its potential for efficiency. China wastes eleven times more energy per unit of GDP output than Japan and three times more than the world average. The waste is encouraged by government policies that set energy prices low, providing consumers a disincentive for increasing efficiency. China has made some progress in shutting down inefficient power plants. Just this month plans were announced to take 31 gigawatts of inefficient plants offline in the next three years (equivalent to approximately 10% of the new capacity installed in the last 3 years). Nevertheless, from industrial processes to motors, heating systems and automobiles, China is ripe with untapped sources of energy.
At the cost of a half to one-fifth of traditional power source construction, efficiency programs can “generate” power with negative marginal costs. One strategy is to build Efficiency Power Plants (EPPs) – virtual power plants that identify and implement energy saving projects – that can effectively sell power to utilities at a fraction of the cost needed to create new power plants. Efficiency programs save consumers money and create jobs. California’s effective energy efficiency program is an example of the potential of efficiency. Since 1990, California’s green house gas emissions have decreased by 10% per person, while the GDP has grown by over 30%. If all states had the same per capita energy consumption as California, U.S. global warming pollution would decrease by more than a quarter. And this is possible without raising electric bills.
The potential for China is far greater, and exciting energy efficiency cooperation has begun between California and China. However, it is important to remember that China’s per capita green house gas emissions are still only about one-quarter of those in the United States, and a significant percentage of emissions are due to export related activity. In 2007, China reached a per capita level of 5.1 metric tons of carbon dioxide compared to the European Union’s 8.6 metric tons and the U.S. level of 19.4 metric tons.
The Chinese government deserves credit for its investments in renewable power, but these projects tend to be more expensive than investing in efficiency and, unfortunately, can also have significant environmental impact. China is the world’s leader in renewable power. However, studies have suggested that stresses behind the Zipingpu Dam–which includes 760 megawatts of generating capacity–may have triggered the May 2008 earthquake that killed 80,000 people. Besides hydropower, China has set as its highest priority the development of nuclear power - another low carbon power source but with potentially catastrophic consequences. China is also the largest producer of solar photo-voltaic panels, which can be environmentally friendly, unless the toxic byproducts are disposed of improperly. There are low-hanging renewable projects with high returns and low environmental impact–including solar hot water–and, in this area, China is also the global leader. China has approximately two-thirds of the total global capacity in solar hot water heaters.
However, inadequate or inaccurate public disclosure can result in misinformation about the true state of the environment. In 2007, China’s groundbreaking Green GDP project was shelved out of concern that the economies of many provinces are not as robust as publicized due to serious environmental pollution. The Green GDP was developed to capture the true value of the GDP after taking into consideration serious environmental damage caused by economic growth. Last year, Open Government Information Regulations took effect, giving government agencies an affirmative obligation to disclose information, including that about the environment. Increased public awareness of the potential of efficiency programs can help China continue its economic growth while decreasing green house gas emissions.
ANALYSIS
Understanding the costs of pollution and greenhouse gases requires public understanding of what is at stake. Reviving China’s Green GDP project and providing public access to the economic and health impacts of pollution will help both China and the world. Even projects that avoid burning fossil fuels, such as large hydro-electric dams and nuclear power, can have significant negative environmental impacts—the extent of which is yet unknown. Given the uncertainty of these projects, efficiency should be the primary focus to reduce green house gas emissions.
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Steven Q. Andrews has published widely on the monitoring and reporting of air quality in China, including a major study in Environmental Research Letters, and commentary in the Wall Street Journal Asia and Far Eastern Economic Review. He is currently pursuing a J.D. from the UCLA School of Law.