China takes carbon vow before Copenhagen

Announces target a day after US offered 17% cut in emissions.

China, the world’s biggest polluter, set its first target aimed at slowing the growth of carbon dioxide emissions, less than two weeks before global leaders meet to negotiate a new climate change treaty.

The nation’s announcement comes a day after the United States offered to cut emissions by about 17 per cent in the coming decade. China will cut output of carbon per unit of gross domestic product by between 40 per cent and 45 per cent by 2020 compared with 2005 levels, according to a statement from the State Council (or cabinet) issued in Beijing today.

Given the “magnitude of the climate change crisis, China needs stronger measures,” said Ailun Yang, a Beijing-based campaigner for Greenpeace China. Still, “this is a significant announcement at a very important point in time” and “another challenge to the industrialised world,” she said.

The target gives the world’s fastest-growing major economy new negotiating points heading into the Copenhagen conference starting December 7. Premier Wen Jiabao and US President Barack Obama are among about 66 global leaders who will seek to reach an agreement on a framework for a final accord to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The Protocol expires in 2012.

Negotiations leading up to the summit have been stymied as industrialised nations and developing countries disagreed on issues such as emissions-reduction targets and how much financial help rich nations should provide to poor ones.

“The United States is the biggest developed country in the world, so it should shoulder its historic responsibilities and obligations suitable to its national development level,” Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Qin Gang told reporters in Beijing today.

China and India have maintained a stand on how industrialised countries must be willing to cut their carbon output by 40 per cent by 2020, from 1990 levels, if they expect poorer nations to agree to long-term reduction goals.

The US will be offering cuts “in the range of 17 per cent” from 2005 levels, by 2020, Carol Browner, Obama’s top adviser on energy and the environment, told reporters yesterday. It also marked the first time the US offered such a target.

A legislation, backed by Obama, to cut greenhouse gases and establish a market for the trading of pollution allowances passed the House in June and then stalled in the Senate.

China’s targets do not mean emissions will fall, only that their growth may slow. China’s economy has more than quadrupled since 2000 to $4.3 trillion and if growth continues at that pace the country’s carbon pollution will also continue to grow.

President Hu Jintao had in September pledged to cut China’s so-called carbon intensity, or the amount of the pollutant emitted per unit of economic growth, by a “notable margin.” At the time, Hu didn’t announce specific targets.

China had so far resisted calls for cutting its carbon output, saying such measures are unfair for a developing country to undertake. Yu Qingtai,  climate-change negotiator with China’s Foreign Ministry, told reporters yesterday that rich countries like US, Japan and Germany are responsible for 80 per cent of the carbon-dioxide pollution in the atmosphere.

Instead, China is pushing the development of alternative energy such as solar and wind, with a goal of generating 15 per cent of all electricity from such sources by 2020. The world’s biggest photovoltaic solar plant, to be built by Arizona-based First Solar Inc, is set to break ground next year in Inner Mongolia. China is also working to increase energy efficiency.

The country also plans to increase its forest cover by 40 million hectares by 2020, which amounts to planting 60 billion trees, Yu Qingtai, a Chinese Foreign Ministry climate-change negotiator, told reporters on November 25.