By Bloomberg News Nov. 26 (Bloomberg) — 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. China’s announcement comes a day after the United States offered to cut emissions by about 17 percent in the coming decade. China will cut output of carbon per unit of gross domestic product by between 40 percent and 45 percent 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 industrialized world,” she said. The target gives the world’s fastest-growing major economy new negotiating points heading into the Copenhagen conference starting Dec. 7. Premier Wen Jiabao and U.S. President Barack Obama are among at least 66 global leaders who will seek to reach agreement on a framework for a final accord to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. Negotiations leading up to the summit have been stymied as industrialized 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. Legislation Stalled China and India have said industrialized countries must be willing to cut their carbon output 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2020 if they expect poorer nations to agree to long-term reduction goals. The U.S. will be offering cuts “in the range of 17 percent” from 2005 levels by 2020, Carol Browner , Obama’s top adviser on energy and the environment, told reporters yesterday. That also marked the first time the U.S. has offered such a target. U.S. 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. Unfair Targets President Hu Jintao in September first 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 has resisted calls for it to cut its carbon output, saying such measures are unfair for a developing country to undertake. Yu Qingtai, a climate-change negotiator with China’s Foreign Ministry, told reporters yesterday that rich countries such as the U.S., Japan and Germany are responsible for 80 percent of the carbon-dioxide pollution now in the atmosphere. Instead, China is pushing the development of alternative energy such as solar and wind, with a goal of generating 15 percent of all electricity from such sources by 2020. The world’s biggest photovoltaic solar plant, to be built by Tempe, Arizona-based First Solar Inc ., is set to break ground next year in Inner Mongolia. China is also working to increase energy efficiency. China 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 Nov. 25. To contact the reporter on this story: Ying Wang in Beijing at ywang30@bloomberg.net ; Baizhen Chua in Beijing at bchua14@bloomberg.net ; Michael Forsythe in Beijing at mforsythe@bloomberg.net .
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China Sets First Target to Slow CO2 Emissions as U.S. Offers 17% Reduction
