Chinese emissions could peak in 20 years

A THINK tank with links to the Chinese government has predicted that the nation's carbon emissions could peak in 2030. This conclusion, in the 2050 China Energy and CO2 Emissions Report released by the Energy Research Institute, is at odds with the government's insistence that the country's rapid economic growth will mean that emissions cannot decline before 2050.
If China adopts an "enhanced low carbon scenario" with very stringent policies, emissions could peak in 2030 and fall to 1.4 billion tonnes in 2050, equivalent to their 2005 level, the report says. This would be "difficult but doable", says lead author Jiang Kejun.
Pan Jiahua, director of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' Research Centre for Sustainable Development and the nation's leading climate economist, says that rapid progress in developing clean technologies means China could reduce emissions earlier than 2050. "But I would think it would be safer to set the peak time at 2035," he says.
Pan says the report could put pressure on the government to compromise on its refusal to adopt emissions cuts in the run-up to the UN climate negotiations in December.