The Wonk Room

China’s Coal Power Sector: Larger, But Also More Efficient

Our guest blogger is Julian L. Wong, Senior Policy Analyst with the Energy Opportunity team.

China’s energy sector gets a bad reputation because of its heavy reliance on coal, which accounts for 80 percent of its electricity supply, and its continued appetite to expand coal power capacity at a rate of two coal power plants a week. While all of this is true, it’s not the full story.

The plants that China is currently building are some of the most efficient in the industry. And as the Wall Street Journal reported today, China has a concurrent program of shutting down small, inefficient coal plants:

The National Energy Administration said Thursday that since 2007 it had closed 54 gigawatts of coal- and oil-fired power plants as part of the cleanup plan. That would amount to about 7% of China’s current electricity-generating capacity.

According to the Associated Press, this capacity translates to a closure of “7,467 generating units, meeting a previously announced goal 18 months ahead of schedule.”

These reports come a few days after Greenpeace China released a report entitled “Polluting Power: Ranking of China’s Power Companies,” which analyzes China’s ten biggest power companies across various metrics such as coal consumption, carbon dioxide emissions, and share of renewable power. In sensationalistic fashion, Reuters tried to put an unhelpful gloss to Greenpeace’s report by proclaiming in a headline “Emissions of 3 big China power firms exceed UK,” conjuring images of ecological apocalypse. The Guardian has a similar headline.

No doubt, China’s reliance on coal makes it a leading carbon emitter, but this is hardly news. To say that “greenhouse gas emissions from the three biggest Chinese power firms in 2008 were higher than those of the entire United Kingdom” is rather meaningless without context.

We need to ask — how big are these firms? It is certainly not the case that China’s biggest three power plants are matching the entire UK in carbon emissions. China’s three biggest utility companies, with fleets of hundreds and hundreds of power plants accountable for 30 percent of the entire power supply for China and its 1.3 billion people (30 percent x 1.3 billion = 390 million), match the carbon emissions output of the entire economy of the UK and its 61 million citizens. Viewed in that light, China isn’t doing that badly.

The Greenpeace report is actually much more balanced and hopeful than the Reuters and Guardian headlines indicate. It rightfully points out the challenges that China’s biggest power firms face in terms of carbon emissions and environmental costs, but it also recognizes China’s achievements in increasing coal combustion efficiency and increasing renewable energy share in certain circumstances, in addition to its active program of shutting down plants.

Sensational headlines conveying half-truths can do much more harm than good. If we are to actively engage China in international energy and climate cooperation, we need to have an accurate understanding of what’s really happening there on the ground.

Stern On China: Transparency Is ‘Highly Important’

Our guest blogger is Julian Wong, Senior Policy Analyst with the Energy Opportunity team.

In an exclusive interview with Todd Stern, the U.S. special envoy for climate change, I discussed the challenge of ensuring a successful climate partnership with China, now the world’s greatest annual emitter of global warming pollution. Ahead of his visit to Beijing next week to meet with his Chinese counterpart, Stern was asked if he will discuss the problem of accurately accounting for carbon emissions — known among climate negotiators as “measuring, reporting, and verifying” (MRV). Stern replied that the way China’s actions “might be quantified” will “absolutely be part of the discussion,” but explained that he considered specific accountability mechanisms a lower-level concern:

I don’t think we’re going to be having a kind of textual discussion at this point with the senior people that I’m going to be dealing to actually try to be drafting what the text of an MRV provision would look like in an overall agreement. But implicitly that will be an important part of the discussion, because transparency and what the numbers add up to, whether it’s China, the US, Europe, Japan, or Brazil, it’s highly important, because it’s the thing that tells us if we’re going to be on track to do what we need to do over the next several decades.

Watch it:

In fact, MRV has to be the foundation of a new global accord to solve the climate change problem — if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. But one has to really wonder if China is up to the task. Much has been written about the lack of accountability, transparency and enforceability in China’s governance system. Moving towards a system of open information and transparent reporting, let alone accountability, will require a real cultural shift. Building the capacity to accurately collect and report emissions data — potentially politically sensitive for Chinese institutions — will be a long and gradual process that must reach into the provincial and municipal and local levels.

The challenge is especially daunting, considering that 55 percent of the population remains in underdeveloped rural areas where local governments have scarce budgetary and technical resources. Cooperative efforts like the pilot carbon registry in southern China are fantastic starting points because they demonstrate success at a smaller local level. As the Chinese become more comfortable with the concept of an accountable carbon registry, such efforts should be extended, accelerated, and replicated in other parts or sectors of China.

In the interview, Stern also recognized China’s impressive efforts on clean energy but also cautioned that China must do more. The International Energy Agency projects that China is on course for a 70 percent increase in emissions to 12 gigatons of carbon dioxide emissions in 2030. If China commits in some kind of international agreement to efforts that change that outlook, “that could be highly important”:

What we’ve said with respect to China and other major developing countries is that they need to take a set of real actions, that they should be able to quantify them, that they need to commit to them in an international context, and that they need to add up to something that puts us on track to be in the general vicinity of what science tells us we need to do. So, the IEA projection is just a business-as-usual projection, not taking into account policy changes and policy measures that we hope the Chinese will do. They’ve already, as I’ve said, they’ve done a lot, but they need to do a lot more. So, if they do a bunch of things and if that turns out to be a substantial move off their business-as-usual curve, that could be highly important.

If China is going to play constructive role a new global consensus in Copenhagen, it is apparent that China is going to have to commit to a course that takes it down from this trajectory.

Todd Stern: ‘We Can’t Rewrite The Last Eight Years’

In an interview with the Wonk Room, Todd Stern, the U.S. special envoy for climate change, explained that he believes the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454) is both necessary and sufficient to achieving an international agreement to tackle global warming. Following a speech yesterday at the Center for American Progress on his trip to engage China in a bilateral climate partnership, Stern explained that Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) is doing “what can be done.” Stern recognized, however, that the United States has to catch up to the rest of the world because of the Bush administration’s refusal to act:

We’re starting later! It’s unfortunate, but it’s just the reality. We can’t rewrite the last eight years, so we’re starting later.

Watch it:

Recent scientific papers have defined the global warming challenge as keeping cumulative global greenhouse emissions between 2000 and 2050 below a trillion tons. Only by staying below that threshold is the world likely to avoid catastrophic increases in global temperatures. When asked, Stern dismissed the differences between the Waxman-Markey targets and what the Europeans want as resulting in “only one or two parts per million” of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. He argued that the key question is what the “major developing countries” like China, India, and Brazil achieve:

There’s a very big difference between whether the major developing countries do a lot and don’t. There you have not one or two parts per million but a big difference. Eighty percent of the growth in emissions going forward for the next several decades is going to come from the developing world.

We are the first to admit, recognize, and talk about our own historic responsibility. The U.S. is the biggest historic emitter of greenhouse emissions. We have a huge responsbility to take leadership, to take action, and to move forward. But, having said that, if you look at the trajectory from now on — hugely weighted toward the developing countries.

The short answer to your question is that I think we can be quite consistent with those sort of scientific goals provided everybody gets in the act.

When asked about the concerns of legislators like Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN) about the potential for job loss due to a cap on global warming pollution, Stern also said that climate policy offers “a lot of gain” by driving the “transformation to a clean energy economy,” and noted the free allowances given to exporting industries in the Waxman-Markey legislation. He concluded:

It’s a fair question. We don’t want to be at a competitive disadvantage. But the real, most important way in the long run — whether or not it’s immediate or not, but in the slightly longer run — to address these questions is to have an international agreement that has all the parties involved and all the parties taking real action.

Todd Stern: The U.S. And China Need A ‘Genuine, Collaborative Partnership On Climate Change And Clean Energy’ »

This morning, Todd Stern, the U.S. special envoy for climate change, spoke on the special challenges and opportunities for building an international climate change agreement with China, now the world’s top emitter of global warming pollution. In a speech at the Center for American Progress, where he had been a senior fellow before his appointment to the State Department, Stern explained that “the status quo is unsustainable” and that developing countries like China need to commit to measurable change:

China, and other developing countries, do not need to take the same actions that developed countries are taking, but they do need to take significant national actions that they commit to – internationally – that they quantify, and that are ambitious enough to be broadly consistent with the lessons of science. While this choice may be the more difficult one in the immediate term, it is in fact the road to prosperity and success.

In a new memo, CAP’s Andrew Light and Julian Wong explain the impressive gains China has made in building a clean-energy economy, though like Stern they note China is “not there yet.” Stern heads to China on Saturday with “John Holdren, the President’s Science Advisor, David Sandalow, DOE’s lead international official, and others from Treasury and EPA” for a four-day mission.

Todd Stern’s remarks, as prepared for delivery:

Thanks John. It’s a great pleasure to be back at CAP. I’m one of only, say, 3 or 400 people in this town who owe more than they can say to John Podesta – although I probably have a longer and richer pedigree in that department than most. In a nutshell, when it comes to commitment, integrity, toughness and smarts, John writes the book and the rest of us just do our best to keep up. I am honored to be here.

John and the CAP team have been at the forefront of the climate and clean energy debate for years, taking the fight to those who say we can’t, we shouldn’t, we don’t need to, it will cost too much, we should go slow; and promoting a comprehensive vision of a low-carbon future that strengthens the U.S. economy and protects our security and environment. It might seem second nature now to many of us to think of climate change as the spur to a low-carbon transformation of the global economy – a transformation rich with economic opportunity. But it wasn’t always so, and it was CAP that led the way toward this new understanding.

Of course, the need for action could hardly be more evident. With every passing month, the news from the natural front seems to get worse. Broadly speaking, we are seeing a convergence of two problematic sets of numbers – those showing global CO2 concentrations rising substantially faster than even the worst case scenarios of recent models and those indicating that dangerous climate impacts are likely to happen sooner than scientists used to think.

And we are all too familiar with the accumulating evidence of change: Among many other things, Arctic sea ice is disappearing faster than expected. The melting of permafrost in the tundra raises the risk of a huge methane release, with dangerous feedback potential. The Greenland Ice Sheet is steadily shrinking. Sea level now threatens to rise much more than previously anticipated, and water supplies are increasingly at risk with the melting of glaciers in Asia and the Western Hemisphere.

These facts on the ground send a simple and stark message: the status quo is unsustainable. That may seem obvious, but you’d be surprised how often the obvious is resolutely overlooked. It seems to me that anyone who wants to argue about how policy measures — such as the Waxman-Markey bill for example — are in some way too onerous should be required to explain what they would propose instead. Because the unspoken assumption of these critics — that we can carry on as we are — is just not so.

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Waxman-Markey Makes It Easier To Engage China On Climate Negotiations, Not Harder

Our guest blogger is Andrew Light, a Senior Fellow at American Progress specializing in climate, energy, and science policy.

I and two colleagues at the Center for American Progress put up a column yesterday about how the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act “would achieve more carbon reduction than first meets the eye,” strengthening the chances of a rapprochement with China and Europe in international climate negotiations. Our column was cited the same day in a story in the New York Times by Mike Wines — who never contacted us — on Pelosi’s visit to China:

American officials have already rejected the Chinese proposal as unattainable. The Center for American Progress, a Democratic-leaning research organization, said in a report published Wednesday that the House legislation was unlikely to win enough Chinese support for the two nations to present a united front at the Copenhagen talks in December.

The point of our column is in fact the opposite. Wines’ article at best takes out of context one of the premises of our arguments and at worst seriously distorts the thesis of our piece. What we argue is that there is a way the US and China can come together at Copenhagen, even with the differing expectations on midterm targets, and that the current House legislation could be sufficient to get us there.

What we call for is, first, counting the complementary efficiency, intensity, and other allied programs, in addition to the actual midterm cap goals in Waxman-Markey, to show the legislation could potentially get us closer to what China and Europe wants from us than at first it may appear.

We use, among other things, recent World Resources Institute data on the bill to demonstrate this. Next we argue that one could use a similar approach (which we call “carbon cap equivalents”) to demonstrate that China is making progress on emissions cuts and further counter the argument that Waxman-Markey should not be adopted because “China won’t do anything.”

Of course, at present there is a gap between China and the US on midterm expectations — they want 40 percent cuts below 1990 levels from us by 2020 as opposed to Waxman-Markey’s 17 percent cuts below 2005 levels by 2020 — but use this only as a premise to set up our argument about a better accounting of what Waxman-Markey could actually get us. We even state explicitly that the gap between Chinese expectations and the Waxman-Markey bill is no reason to believe we are at an impasse for an agreement at Copenhagen.

In short one would be hard pressed to give a more distorted representation of our piece. If the paragraph is supposed to suggest that there is a rift between us and Pelosi on this issue it simply isn’t the case. No one would deny that the numbers are different between Waxman-Markey and what the Chinese now claim that they want. The point is that we’re with the supporters of the bill in seeing a way forward to an agreement with it.

China’s Changing Climate Provides New Energy In Negotiations

Our guest bloggers are Andrew Light and Nina Hachigian, Senior Fellows at the Center for American Progress.

Su Wei, China’s chief climate change negotiator.

This week the Obama administration convened a meeting of 17 of the world’s major economies in a forum on global warming outside of the ongoing U.N. climate change process. Though the history of this Major Economies Forum is somewhat tainted, it may well provide a useful opportunity to engage China on global warming, on its way to surpass the United States as the world’s number one carbon emitter. Recent statements by top Chinese officials evince a new openness to adopting targets to reduce the rate of growth in carbon emissions:

Su Wei, a leading figure in China’s climate change negotiating team, said that officials were considering introducing a national target that would limit emissions relative to economic growth in the country’s next five-year plan from 2011.

While that is a small step, it’s a significant one. China and the five other major emitters among developing nations — India, Indonesia, Brazil, South Africa, and Mexico — were not required to accept mandatory carbon emissions caps under the Kyoto Protocol, as they did not put the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that are causing current increases in global temperatures. The United States alone is responsible for nearly 30 percent of all cumulative global warming pollution. Nonetheless, this exception for developing countries was a key part of the unanimous Senate objection to U.S. ratification of the treaty. The China exception remains at the core of congressional objections to an international agreement on climate change.

Enticing direct negotiation with the major emitting developing nations — especially China — is critical to getting a global climate change agreement inside or outside of the UNFCCC process. There are many indications that China is ready to talk — and even more that China is already taking action.

China is ahead of the United States in terms of its own green stimulus package. It’s a much bemoaned talking point in these discussions that China has far surpassed U.S. capacity in solar cell production since 2005. Chinese leaders are “investing $12.6 million every hour to green their economy.” China is spending twice as much as we are in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act on green jobs and a green recovery despite the relatively larger size of the U.S. economy.

As China’s political climate changes, its physical climate is getting hotter as well. In January 2008, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification was held in Beijing, a megacity that is already severely swept by dust storms from western and northern regions every year. Shrinking glaciers are starting to cause serious water problems and more intensive damage in the country’s mountainous regions — problems that will soon stress the country’s capacity for short-term mitigation. Just as in the United States, the consequences of climate change are increasingly felt immediately and understood through direct observation rather than being confined to climate modeling.

Joint technological capacity building may be the best road to a new global energy future and help to stimulate the set of climate change agreements which will move us there. Xie Zhenhua, Vice Chairman of the National Development Reform Commission, reiterated that China’s commitment to accepting nationally appropriate reduction goals depends on receiving technology assistance. In Todd Stern’s testimony earlier this month he made it clear that the first priority for the United States in these meetings will be to push along the conversation on technology transfer as a key component of acceptance of emissions caps by the developing major emitters. Such proposals should be discussed now and followed up at the next Major Economies Forum this July in La Maddalena, Italy following the G-8 meeting.

The official Chinese position on climate change remains — you broke it, you fix it. But a creative nudge on the U.S.’s part and a subtle shift in Beijing’s position could open up some real movement in the diplomatic lead up to global climate-change negotiations in Copenhagen.

Read the extended version of this post, “Rise of the Green Dragon?,” at the Center for American Progress.

STUDY: China Spending $12.6 Million Every Hour Greening Their Economy

Unless we act now, we might lose the race to the clean energy economy of the future.

A new report from the Center for American Progress points out that the United States is slipping behind other nations in the development and deployment of clean energy and efficient infrastructure even as China spends $12.6 million every hour greening their economy.

Read the full study here.

China, as part of their two-year stimulus plan, is poised to spend 3% of their GDP a year on public investments in renewable energy, low-carbon vehicles, high-speed rail, an advanced electric grid, efficiency improvements, and other water-treatment and pollution controls. This is about $12.6 million every hour. In the United States, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act invests about half as much as China on comparable priorities. This represents less than half of one percent of our 2008 gross domestic product.

The paper also shows that, when it comes to preparing our country to compete in the new energy economy of the future and create millions of new jobs, the United States lags behind most of our competitors in the rest of the world in a four key ways.

–We have no national energy portfolio standard that encourages clean, renewable power and shifts away from dirty and dangerous energy.

–We have an outdated electrical grid unsuited for the task of carrying energy from regions rich in wind, solar, and geothermal potential to the people who need the energy.

–We don’t make dirty energy companies pay for the pollution they pump into the air; in fact, we give them billions every year in tax breaks.

–And we don’t invest enough in research, development, and deployment to inspire our entrepreneurs and leverage their discoveries by helping bring their bold new technologies to market.

As venture capitalist John Doerr recently pointed out in his testimony before the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works, “What is at stake is whether America will be the worldwide winner in the next great global industry, green technologies.”

Full Text Of John McCain Climate Change Speech »

UPDATE: The Wonk Room now also has the McCain campaign talking points, question-and-answer and “fact sheet” handouts.

UPDATE II: David Roberts at Gristmill, A Siegel at Energy Smart, and the Sierra Club praise McCain’s recognition of global warming but find his plan inadequate. Joe Romm at Climate Progress responds to McCain’s hypocrisy for delivering the speech at a Danish wind turbine facility. Matthew Yglesias wonders about McCain’s fixation on nuclear and insufficient goals. David Corn wonders why McCain “didn’t blast Bush on global warming when he was courting Republican voters.”

Here is the full text of Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) speech on climate change in Portland, Oregon (changes from prepared remarks are indicated):

Thank you all very much. I appreciate the hospitality of Vestas Wind Technology. Today is a kind of test run for the company. They’ve got wind technicians here, wind studies, and all these wind turbines, but there’s no wind. So now I know why they asked me to come give a speech.

Every day, when there are no reporters and cameras around to draw attention to it, this company and others like it are doing important work. And what we see here is just a glimpse of much bigger things to come. Wind power is one of many alternative energy sources that are changing our economy for the better. And one day they will change our economy forever.

Wind is a clean and predictable source of energy, and about as renewable as anything on earth. Along with solar power, fuel-cell technology, cleaner burning fuels and other new energy sources, wind power will bring America closer to energy independence. Our economy depends upon clean and affordable alternatives to fossil fuels, and so, in many ways, does our security. A large share of the world’s oil reserves is controlled by foreign powers that do not have our interests at heart. And as our reliance on oil passes away, their power will vanish with it.

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