A faster transition to clean energy could see China’s carbon emissions peak five years earlier than targeted by the government, the International Energy Agency has revealed, and significantly boost the chances of keeping global warming in check.
The IEA announced the “really uplifting news” in a report published late last week, titled An Energy Sector Roadmap to Carbon Neutrality in China, which details the massive role the world’s largest energy consumer and carbon emitter could play in limiting the rise in global temperatures to 1.5 °C.
China’s commitment to the Paris climate treaty currently contains a promise to reach peak emissions before 2030. Doing so by 2025 would be a significant improvement.
“China is a clean energy powerhouse and has played a leading role in many of the world’s success stories to date, from solar power to electric vehicles,” said Fatih Birol, the IEA Executive Director.
“China’s efforts to achieve its ambition of carbon neutrality will result in even greater flourishing across a wider array of low-carbon technologies and a significant decline in fossil fuel use in the coming decades.”
Birol said the Roadmap showed that China had the means and capabilities to fast-track its clean energy transition, a move that would put its CO2 emissions into marked decline after 2025 and open the door to reaching carbon neutrality well before 2060.
“This would be both good for China and good for the world,” Birol said.
Currently, the leading sources of China’s emissions are the power sector, which account for 48% of CO2 emissions from energy and industrial processes, followed by the country’s industrial sector at 36%, transport at 8%, and buildings at 5%.
China’s latest Five-Year Plan included an 18% reduction in CO2 intensity and a 13.5% reduction in energy intensity between 2021 and 2025. The plan has also set a non-binding proposal to raise the non-fossil fuel share of total energy consumption to 20% by 2025, up from around 16% in 2020.
According to the IEA, if China achieved these short-term policy targets, its CO2 emissions from fuel combustion would be on track to plateau in the mid-2020s and then enter a modest decline to 2030.
This would be bolstered by China’s commitment at the just-held United Nations General Assembly in September to discontinue building coal-fired power projects abroad and to step up its support for clean energy.
But reaching a peak in China’s CO2 emissions before 2030 relies on progress across three areas identified by the IEA – energy efficiency, renewables, and reducing coal use.
The IEA’s scenario laid out in its report – the Announced Pledges Scenario (APS) – sees China’s primary energy demand growing much more slowly through 2030 than the overall economy, due primarily to the result of efficiency gains and a shift away from heavy industry.
Solar would edge into becoming the largest primary energy source by around 2045, and demand for coal would drop by more than 80% by 2060, oil by around 60%, and natural gas by more than 45%.
Further, and tying into another growing global trend, almost one-fifth of China’s electricity would be used to generate hydrogen by 2060.
The level of investment needed to support these efforts are well within China’s financial means, with total annual investment reaching $US650 billion in 2030, and nearly $US900 billion in 2060. Annual energy investment’s share of China’s GDP, which averaged 2.5% between 2016 and 2020, will nevertheless drop to only 1.1% by 2060.
Meanwhile, the acceleration of China’s clean energy transition would bring greater prosperity to regions of China, the report said – particularly those that had not yet fully benefited from the country’s economic development.
“This Roadmap shows what is possible: China has a clear pathway to build a more sustainable, secure and inclusive energy future,” the IEA’s Dr Birol concluded.
“As China makes some important decisions in the coming weeks and months, the IEA is pleased to share our analysis and global expertise with Chinese policy makers so that together we can help build a brighter future. I also welcome President Xi Jinping’s announcement last week that China will stop building coal power plants overseas as a further positive step towards curbing global emissions.”
