Will China save the planet or destroy it?
industrial powerhouse, home to over a quarter of the world’s manufacturing—more than America and Germany combined. But its progress has come at a cost in terms of emissions. Over the past three decades China has pumped more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, in total, than any other country (see chart 1).
It now emits over a quarter of the world’s greenhouse gases each year, according to Rhodium Group, a research firm. That is about twice as much as America, which comes second (though on a per-person basis America is still worse). Much, then, depends on China if the world is to keep global warming since the Industrial Revolution well below 2°C, as governments pledged at the UN’s annual climate summit in 2015.
When those governments gather in Dubai for this year’s summit, which opens on November 30th, China will have both good and bad news for them. On the positive side, China’s emissions will soon stop rising. Some analysts think they will top out this year.
There is little doubt that the peak will come before 2030, which is the goal China has set for itself. It is building nuclear power stations faster than any other country. It has also invested heavily in renewable energy (see chart 2), such that it now has around 750 gigawatts of wind and solar generating capacity, about a third of the world’s total.
By the end of the decade the government aims to have 1,200 gigawatts of such capacity, more than the total power capacity of the European Union at the moment. China will probably well exceed that target. But it is not just China’s embrace of renewable energy that is helping it curb emissions.
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