Expert Blog

The many climate and energy pieces of China’s 12th Five Year Plan appear to be moving into place. Most recently, Chinese Climate Change Minister Xie Zhenhua announced that China was about to come out with a full plan for the 17% carbon emissions reduction target in the Plan (2011-2015). In March, China announced an initial set of initiatives to control the growth in carbon emissions, and the 17% figure is part of the larger goal or reducing emissions by 40-45% by 2020.

Environmental news in China has seen some real highs and lows of late, ranging from the opening of the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed rail to a severe oil spill.

Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Rail a Sell-Out

Trains began running on the new high-speed line between Beijing and Shanghai on June 30. Formerly a trip that could take over 12 hours, the new trains can make the 820 mile journey in less than 5. In contrast, a trip of equivalent distance from Washington, DC to Orlando by train takes over 16 hours.

As it has for over a decade, previously as the State Environmental Protection Administration and since 2008 as the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP), China’s MEP issued its annual “State of the Environment Report” last week. In presenting the 2010 report at a press conference on Friday, June 3, Vice Minister Li Ganjie frankly stated that while some environmental indicators “kept on turning better” – mainly sulfur dioxide emissions – “the overall environmental situation is still very grave and is facing many difficulties and challenges.”

Recent weeks have seen a spate of announcements concerning environmental harms ranging from those stemming from the Three Gorges Dam, the world’s largest hydropower project, to heavy metal pollution and increasingly vigorous enforcement actions by China’s Environmental Ministry.