CASE STUDY - Contribution of China to anthropogenic GHG emissions

Question 1

How much have carbon emissions increased from 1900 - 2013?

Answer 1

26,000 tonnes - 2,490,000 thousand tonnes

Question 2

Pattern’s in China’s GHG emissions

Answer 2

• Despite huge population, until the 1970s, the country’s economy was overwhelmingly rural, with an economy largely dependant on biofuels (timber, animal waste, etc), total emissions of carbon from burning fossil fuels were modest
• After 1978, situation changed drastically due to an abrupt U turn of politics by China’s leaders which moved the country away from a strict command economy and embraced the free market, which stimulated international trade and direct foreign investment
• China emerged as a major player in the global economy, with economic growth based on export-led manufacturing, today China controls 15% of the world’s exports, compared with 1% in 1970
• Industrialisation was accompanied by massive urbanisation, the migration from rural to urban areas in China in the past 40 years was the largest population movement in history
• China’s economic development and industrialisation were made possible by massive energy consumption, with most of this coming from the country’s huge indigenous reserves of coal, inevitably producing large increases in carbon emissions
• Unhampered by international protocols like Kyoto, carbon emissions rose 2.5 times between 2000-2014
• Today, China consumes almost as much coal (1845 million tonnes in 2014), as the rest of the world together and in 2006 overtook the USA as the world’s largest emitter of carbon
• Although emission rates have slowed recently, coal still provides nearly 2/3 of China’s energy
• China’s aim to reduce CO3 emissions by 40% between 205-2020 appears to have little chance of success

Question 3

How much of China’s 2014 energy mix was made up of coal?

Answer 3

65%
(90% fossil fuels)