Carbon emissions from China could peak as soon as 2021, which is nine years before the voluntary deadline in their Paris agreement pledge, a new peer-reviewed study finds.
Why it matters: China is by far the world's largest carbon emitter. The trajectory of its emissions affect whether the world has any chance of meeting the Paris temperature goals — or, more likely, how much they're overshot.
- It adds to separate analyses suggesting China could see a peak well before 2030 if things break right.
What they did: The paper in Nature Sustainability looks at China's urbanization trends and the emissions increases that come with it.
- They explore China's massive existing and developing cities and growing wealth through the lens of an environmental "Kuznets curve."
- It's the idea that per-capita emissions initially rise alongside per-capita GDP, but it's a bell-shaped curve in which higher incomes are eventually correlated with emissions decline.
What they found: China's cities and urban centers defy blanket characterization — they note a "great diversity in CO2 emissions and trends among individual cities." But in the aggregate...
The intrigue: The paper says that policymakers will need to tailor policies to the characteristics of different cities and regions and their stage of development.
- For cities in economically advanced regions where industrial emissions may have already peaked or are close, that means more attention to lower-carbon lifestyles, efficient buildings, transport and renewables deployment.
- But for other areas seeing fast industrialization and urbanization, "efforts to constrain emissions should focus more on industrial sectors."
- In addition, it emphasizes the need to prevent "carbon leakage," whereby energy-intensive industries are just moved out the most developed cities.
Go deeper, via Carbon Brief: China’s emissions ‘could peak 10 years earlier than Paris climate pledge’
