China should aim for peak coal use by 2020 : NCSC
Source: www.chinamining.org Citation: Reuters Date: June 11, 2015
China needs to bring its coal use to a peak by 2020 and reduce it by 500 million tonnes over the 2020-30 period in order to meet greenhouse gas emission targets and keep climate change under control, researchers said on Wednesday.
China is expected to submit post-2020 national pledges to cut carbon emissions to the United Nations later this month ahead of crucial talks on a new global climate change accord in Paris at the end of the year. It has already promised to bring emissions to a peak by "around 2030".
The National Centre for Climate Change Strategy and International Cooperation (NCSC) said China`s current CO2 trajectory might not allow it to achieve an international goal of limiting global warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius over the pre-industrial average, and more effort to cut coal use was required.
Coal burning is responsible for around three-quarters of China`s greenhouse emissions, and with carbon capture technologies still far from mature, the country`s only option is to curb coal consumption, the researchers said.
"We know there is a very close connection between restricting coal use and restricting carbon emissions," Liu Qiang, one of the report`s authors, told a briefing on Wednesday.
The report recommended that China, the world`s biggest carbon-emitting nation, should cap consumption at 4 billion tonnes by 2020 but said it would need to cut it to 3.5 billion by 2030.
Chinese production hit 3.87 billion tonnes in 2014, half the global total. That was down 2.5 percent from 2013, raising hopes the country was already close to "peak coal".
A British study this week said China could bring emissions to a peak by 2025.
But the NCSC researchers said that should be brought forward. A 2020 emissions peak represented the best chance of keeping within the 2 degree target, but the goal would be very difficult to achieve, they said.
Tougher emission caps should be imposed on China`s richer coastal regions from next year, they said.
Regions with per capita GDP of more than 80,000 yuan ($12,890) a year should be ordered to bring emissions to a peak by 2025. Poorer western regions with per capita GDP of 40,000 yuan should be given until 2040.
Companies that exceeded a specific regional threshold should be given compulsory emissions targets and aim to cut the volume by 10 percent every five years, the report said.
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