Policy and Governance

Once again, China’s ability to handle a changing climate is being tested.

In 2013, rainfall in south China’s Yunnan province dropped 70 percent below average levels. This, combined with similar rainfall decline over the past three years, has turned the once water-abundant region into a much drier place.

China is among the countries most vulnerable to climate change. An extreme weather event like Yunnan’s years-long drought is just one of many problems it faces.

The United States and China are the world’s two largest economies. They are also the two largest producers and consumers of coal and the largest emitters of carbon dioxide. In recent years, however, their paths on coal have started to diverge.

Over the last few years, coal consumption has dropped dramatically in the United States, mainly due to low natural gas prices. In response to weak domestic demand, the U.S. coal industry has been rushing to find its way out to the international market. Last year, U.S.

Shenzhen, a city of 11 million people just north of Hong Kong, has announced that it will begin emission trading on June 17. Shenzhen is one of the seven Chinese cities and provinces that have been developing pilot programs for carbon emissions trading.

China’s State Council in late January approved an “energy consumption control target” to keep the country’s total energy consumption below the equivalent of 4 billion tonnes of coal per year by 2015.

With the calendar turning to 2013, the long-awaited next phase in a campaign to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will soon take place in China.

Five Chinese cities and two provinces will begin pilot programs to cap the amount of carbon dioxide key polluters can emit with a system of tradable allowances. Polluters that emit beyond the cap are required to buy more carbon allowances; those that become more efficient can sell allowances they no longer need.

The recent spate of severe air pollution in China has shone a spotlight on the need for strong environmental regulation in China and prompted the government to move forward with a number of new environmental policies and laws – some of which have been languishing in the proposal stage for years. 

Leading China experts and top media representatives participated in a ChinaFAQs press call today on how the country will address pressing environmental, climate and energy challenges at home and globally in the coming years. At the National People’s Congress beginning March 5, Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang are expected to formally become China’s president and premier, respectively. Other top spots in China’s ministries will also be assigned, with implications for China’s future of low-carbon development and for the U.S. The briefing was one of ChinaFAQs’ events highlighting the reasons for China’s action on low-carbon energy, including: energy security, economic competitiveness through technological innovation, and climate and environmental impacts.

As China continues its leadership transition next week at the National People’s Congress, many are wondering how the country will confront its pressing environmental, climate, and energy challenges. On Friday, March 1 at 9 a.m. EST, WRI’s ChinaFAQs network will bring together leading experts for a press teleconference to discuss these issues.

ChinaFAQs Expert Alex Wang, Visiting Professor at UC Berkeley School of Law, has started a conversation about China’s air quality situation at the Asia Society’s ChinaFile blog. In “Airpocalypse Now: China’s Tipping Point?”, Wang, ChinaFAQs Expert Deborah Seligsohn, and other leading China experts discuss what Chinese leaders are doing and what more could be done to clean up China’s air. Read the full conversation at ChinaFile…

As the biggest coal-consuming and coal-producing nation in the world, China is perhaps an unlikely place to find a burgeoning wind power industry. Yet today China is the biggest wind power market in the world and builds almost all its wind turbines at home. China’s wind power capacity has increased over a hundredfold in the past decade (from 344 MW in 2000 to 44,733 MW in 2010) and estimates for 2012 put installed wind capacity at about 80 GW (see Figure 1). Just a decade ago the country had only a handful of wind turbines in operation—all imported from Europe and the United States.