China, United States: Two Players, One Game

Collectively, China and the United States currently emit nearly half of the world’s carbon dioxide (CO2), said Dr. Orville Schell, director of the Asia Society Center on U.S.-China relations, during a March program of the Asia Society Texas Center’s 2007-2008 BP Lecture Series in Houston.

Of the more than 560 coal-fired units built in 26 nations between 2002 and 2006, China accounted for more than two-thirds, according to the Christian Science Monitor. This increased annual global CO2 by 740 million tons, but industry estimates show the country is slated, during the next five years, to decrease building by about half, adding 330 million tons of new CO2 emissions annually, according to the report.

Electricity generation accounts for a significant portion of China’s air pollution because of the reliance on old coal-fired plants, which is a primary reason to increase nuclear power, according to the World Nuclear Association, which ranks China the second-largest contributor to energy-related CO2 emissions after the top spot holder, the United States. Varying reports rank the United States and China above one another for the No. 1 and No. 2 global carbon emitters.

During the past five years, the United States has built 2.7 GW of new coal-fired generating capacity. The country is on track to add 37.7 GW of capacity, which McGraw-Hill’s Platts energy information company reports is enough to produce 247.8 million tons of CO2 annually, according to the Christian Science Monitor.

“What we are doing in this country, what China is doing, is we are taking coal and taking petroleum out of the ground where carbon has been locked for billions of years and we’re burning it and we are putting the CO2 into the atmosphere. We’re bringing methane gas to coal mines, which is 20 times more harmful in terms of climate change than CO2 is. And so you have these two dilemmas both growing out of use of coal. The U.S. and China both produce 20% of the world’s carbon emissions,” Schell said. “That’s 40%. And that is to say one simple fact, and if I leave you with no other thought today than this, here is the fact: if the United States and China cannot get into the game of regulating their carbon emissions, there is no game of regulating their carbon emissions; there is no game, and the world will not come to terms with this very perilous question.”

According to an April 2008 report from the Earth Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., the United States and China account for more than a third of fossil-fuel-related CO2 emissions. The United States has been the largest emitter for more than 100 years, releasing 19.8% of global emissions in 2006. In China, where growth in emissions has been driven by an increase in coal consumption, an average of two coal-fired power plants is opened each week, according to the report. Emissions in China have more than doubled since 1990. In 2006, the country was responsible for 17.7% of the world’s CO2 emissions. Analysts expect China will overtake the United States to become the world’s largest emitter before 2009, according to the institute.

During his presentation, Schell noted the seriousness of increased global climate change and the effect CO2 in China has on the United States. The emissions released in China mix with other particulate matter in the atmosphere and travel across the Pacific Ocean to Los Angeles, California, for example, where it settles or mixes with additional particulate from that state’s emissions.

“The pollution that China is generating now … goes to Japan, goes to Korea, which are now suffering from acid rain from coal fire plants in China, and indeed here, in this country,” Schell said. “I saw some statistics the other day that 25% of the particulate matter over Los Angeles comes from China. And it’s a very complicated process of jet stream and also traditional dust storms that come over the deserts. As they come north over the industrial regions of China and Manchuria, they pick up sulfur dioxide, mercury and other contaminants and bring them across the Pacific Ocean. So there’s a new kind of aerosol chemistry – science chemistry – working in the way which pollution now migrates country to country. This is simply to say that we are all in this together. We may think China’s a competitor … but the heart of the matter is we’re in this together.”

More than two-thirds of the planet’s average temperature increase of 0.8°C has occurred since 1980, according to the Earth Policy Institute. Affecting natural systems worldwide, climate scientists have noted trends of increased heat waves, longer and more intense droughts, increased sea level, rain patterns occurring at a more intense and increased rate, and stronger hurricanes, according to the Earth Policy Institute.

“Now, coal does two things, well, it does many things, but in terms of its environmental consequences, it does two things: it produces such deleterious by-products as particulate matter, when in the air is very bad for your lungs; it produces sulfur dioxide, which produces acid rain; it produces mercury, which when it gets in the food chain is very bad,” Schell said. “And if you think of those things in one column, those are the things we can see. Those are the things we think about, we know about and we actually do something about. We’ve done a lot with air pollution in this country. Look at Los Angeles. …. that’s to a significant measure improved. China, however, I think, is on the cusp I think of wrestling with conventional forms; however, in the other column, I want you to visualize there is a whole other dynamic going on, which in my view is much more serious and much more difficult for any country because we don’t yet have cost-effective technology to deal with it, and that is the production of carbon, the main cause of climate change.”

In 2007, according to the Earth Policy Institute, there were 384 ppm of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere, up from 280 ppm at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the late 18th early 19th century. During the past seven years, CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has grown at an average of 2 ppm annually, the fastest increase for the timeframe since continuous monitoring began in 1959, according to the institute.

“Scientists believe we have to hold [emission particulates] somewhere between 400 and 450 ppm. I’m not a scientist so please pardon, I’m a bit of a neophyte here, I come to this through an interest in China, but I’m learning, you need to learn, we all need to learn,” Schell said. “If we want to hold climate change down to 3°F or 4°F, we can’t let ppm go over 450, that’s the challenge. I won’t get into the numbers, but this means we have to reduce carbon emissions by 2050 by something like between 50% and 85% of their level in 2000, in other words, we may already have passed the tipping point – a very grave challenge.”

Coal is a less expensive form of energy, and with its abundance in China and the United States, is an attractive alternative to the pricier natural gas (New York Mercantile Exchange – Nymex - US$10.10/ million Btu) and crude oil (Nymex, US$114.80/bbl), which were at record levels in mid-April 2008.

According to the World Nuclear Association, about 80% of Mainland China’s electricity is produced from fossil fuels, mainly coal.

“At the heart of this incredible economic boom, this ascendancy of China’s global trade around the world, is one very important natural resource: coal,” Schell said. “Coal one could say, drives China’s future. It allows it to develop; it allows it to do what it’s done. Seventy percent of China’s primary energy comes from coal. The U.S., interestingly enough, and China have the two largest coal reserves in the world. They are both very coal reliant. The United States has roughly 50% of its energy derived from coal, but in this we share both the common benefits and a common dilemma.”

The People’s Republic of China Consul General Qiao Hong, who said she was attending the meeting “to learn from an American scholar’s perspective how important the bilateral relationship is between the United States and China,” was upbeat about China’s recognition of this growing challenge and the steps the country is taking to combat this issue as well as others.

“I know many of you are very concerned about how China is going to cope with the global climate change,” she said. “I would like to tell you that China has been a responsible member of the international community. Ecological civilization was mentioned in the report at the 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. China is determined to strengthen its ability to deal with climate change. And China has made tangible progress. China raised two goals in the 11th Five-Year-Plan, which is, in the next five years, energy consumption must be reduced by 20% and pollutant discharge be reduced by 10% in unit GDP [gross domestic product] growth.”

The World Nuclear Association attributes a 2% to 3% GDP loss to pollution.

When asked by an audience member what steps individuals and companies can take to effect change on some of the industrial, economic and sustainability challenges China is facing, Schell had this to say: “With the leadership of this great nation in which we live, if a president were to step up and say ‘I want to go and meet President Hu Jintao, I’m going to fill the 747 up with scientists, venture capitalists, businessmen, policy experts, and we’re going to go over there [China], and we’re not going to come home until we figure out some rough draft plan of how to collaborate on this problem,’ by God, I think you’d have some solutions. I think you’d have some nice ideas come out of it.”

And since nuclear power is on China’s radar screen as an alternative energy source, one audience member asked about turning more toward that outlet to help reduce the use of and dependency on coal.

In March 2008, the newly formed State Energy Bureau in China said the target for 2020 should be at least 5% of electricity from nuclear power, requiring at least 50 GW to be in operation by that time, according to the World Nuclear Organization.

Mainland China currently has 11 nuclear power reactors in commercial operation with six under construction, but Schell was not as optimistic about the transformation to increased nuclear power use as the World Nuclear Organization.

“Well, there’s sort of a revisionist attitude toward it even amongst green people because it doesn’t produce carbon, it produces nuclear waste, but at least it’s not carbon. China is pro nuclear power – but a very small percentage (2% to 3% of the total power) comes from nuclear. And they have a number of – I forget the number, 10, 12 – of nuclear power stations on the drawing boards. However, these will take 10 years to come online. So I think nuclear power is not China’s answer at this point,” Schell responded. “There’s only one answer: coal. There’s no way around it. There’s no way to get off it. Anyone who goes to China telling the manufactures they’ve got to stop burning coal is just as foolish as some Chinese coming to this country and saying we have to stop burning coal. It’s not going to happen. So, we’ve got to figure out how to burn coal cleanly.”