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Assessing China’s carbon intensity pledge for 2020: stringency and credibility issues and their implications

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  • ZhongXiang Zhang

Abstract

Just prior to the Copenhagen climate summit, China pledged to cut its carbon intensity by 40-45% by 2020 relative to its 2005 levels to help to reach an international climate change agreement at Copenhagen or beyond. This raises the issue of whether such a pledge is ambitious or just represents business as usual. To put China’s climate pledge into perspective, this paper examines whether this proposed carbon intensity goal for 2020 is as challenging as the energy-saving goals set in the current 11th five-year economic blueprint, to what extent it drives China’s emissions below its projected baseline levels, and whether China will fulfill its part of a coordinated global commitment to stabilize the concentration of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere at the desirable level. Given that China’s pledge is in the form of carbon intensity, the paper shows that GDP figures are even more crucial to the impacts on the energy or carbon intensity than are energy consumption and emissions data by examining the revisions of China’s GDP figures and energy consumption in recent years. Moreover, the paper emphasizes that China’s proposed carbon intensity target not only needs to be seen as ambitious, but more importantly it needs to be credible. Finally, it is concluded with a suggestion that international climate change negotiations need to focus on 2030 as the targeted date to cap the greenhouse gas emissions of the world’s two largest emitters in a legally binding global agreement.
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  • ZhongXiang Zhang, 2011. "Assessing China’s carbon intensity pledge for 2020: stringency and credibility issues and their implications," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 13(3), pages 219-235, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:envpol:v:13:y:2011:i:3:p:219-235
    DOI: 10.1007/s10018-011-0012-4
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    1. ZhongXiang Zhang, 2010. "The U.S. proposed carbon tariffs, WTO scrutiny and China’s responses," International Economics and Economic Policy, Springer, vol. 7(2), pages 203-225, August.
    2. ZhongXiang Zhang, 2012. "Effective environmental protection in the context of government decentralization," International Economics and Economic Policy, Springer, vol. 9(1), pages 53-82, March.
    3. Zhang, ZhongXiang, 2010. "China in the transition to a low-carbon economy," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(11), pages 6638-6653, November.
    4. Warwick J. Mckibbin & Adele C. Morris & Peter J. Wilcoxen, 2011. "Comparing Climate Commitments: A Model-Based Analysis Of The Copenhagen Accord," Climate Change Economics (CCE), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 2(02), pages 79-103.
    5. Zhang, ZhongXiang, 2003. "Why did the energy intensity fall in China's industrial sector in the 1990s? The relative importance of structural change and intensity change," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(6), pages 625-638, November.
    6. Zhang, ZhongXiang, 2000. "Can China afford to commit itself an emissions cap? An economic and political analysis," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(6), pages 587-614, December.
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Carbon intensity; Post-Copenhagen climate change negotiations; Climate commitments; China; Q42; Q43; Q48; Q52; Q53; Q54; Q58;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Q42 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Alternative Energy Sources
    • Q43 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Energy and the Macroeconomy
    • Q48 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Government Policy
    • Q52 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Pollution Control Adoption and Costs; Distributional Effects; Employment Effects
    • Q53 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Air Pollution; Water Pollution; Noise; Hazardous Waste; Solid Waste; Recycling
    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming
    • Q58 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Environmental Economics: Government Policy

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