By 2020, China's burning of fossil fuels could annually emit carbon dioxide equal in mass to 2.5 billion metric tonnes of pure carbon and up to 2.9 billion tonnes, depending on varying scenarios for development and technology, the new report states. By 2030, those annual emissions may reach 3.1 billion tonnes a year and up to 4.0 billion tonnes.
That compares with global carbon emissions of about 8.5 billion tonnes in 2007.
...The U.S. Oak Ridge National Laboratory estimated that the United States emitted about 1.6 billion tonnes of carbon in 2007, compared to China's 1.8 billion tonnes.
I expect Peak Oil will cut into the rate of growth of Chinese CO2 emissions. But most Chinese emissions come from burning coal, not from oil. In fact, the International Atomic Energy Agency estimates that as of 2003 77.1% of China's CO2 emissions came from coal. Almost 9% of China's CO2 emissions come from cement. That puts coal and cement together at 86% of Chinese carbon emissions meaning that little of current emissions comes from oil. But how much of this projected surge in Chinese CO2 emissions is projected to come from oil? If most of it is from oil then I do not expect most of the CO2 emissions surge to happen. World oil production will be way down by 2030.
On the bright side, declining costs of solar photovoltaics and wind farms should cut into the demand for coal to generate electricity. But our problem is that coal power plants last a long time and so solar's price has to fall lower than the fuel cost of a coal plant to shut down existing coal electric plants.
"The problem is that power plants, once built, are meant to last for 40 to 75 years," Carson said. "Our forecast incorporates the fact that much of China is now stuck with power plants that are dirty and inefficient."
If it turns out that increased CO2 concentrations cause a large warming effect then we will likely need to do climate engineering. Though maybe technological advances will make photovoltaics very cheap by the 2020s. Or maybe China's dwindling coal reserves might put a limit on their rate of coal consumption.
The CO2 that dissolves into the ocean continues to worry me more than global warming.
By absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and from the human use of fossil fuels, the world's seas function as a giant buffer for the Earth's life support system. The chemical balance of the sea has long been regarded as immovable. Today, researchers know that the pH of the sea's surface water has gone down by 0.1, or 25 percent, just since the beginning of industrialisation just over a century ago. Jon Havenhand and Michael Thorndyke, researchers at the University of Gothenburg, along with colleagues in Australia, have studied how this acidification process affects marine animal life.
As part of the study, which is one of the world's first on this subject, they have allowed sea urchins of the species Heliocidaris erythrogramma to fertilise themselves in water where the pH has been lowered from its normal 8.1 to a pH value of 7.7. This means an environment three times as acidic, and corresponds to the change expected by the year 2100. The results are alarming.
Like most invertebrates, the sea urchin multiplies by releasing its eggs to be fertilised in the open water. However, in a more acidic marine environment, the sea urchin's ability to multiply goes down by 25 percent, as its sperm swim more slowly and move less effectively. If fertilisation is successful, their larval development is disturbed to the extent where only 75 percent of the eggs develop into healthy larvae.
In a nutshell: We have lots of ways available to cool the planet with cheap affordable climate engineering. So global warming seems reversible if it becomes a problem. But how to deacidify the ocean if high atmospheric CO2 causes lots of CO2 to dissolve into the ocean? I ask again: does anyone have an idea for a cheap way to reverse CO2-caused acidification of oceans?
We might get lucky with cheap photovoltaics that could cause the demand for coal to plummet in 10 years. Addin in the coming decline off the world old production plateau and maybe CO2 emissions will be on the decline in 10-15 years. Then again, maybe high rates of coal burning will extend until nanobots make construction of wind farms and solar concentrator farms really really cheap. But it would be good to have a way to reverse ocean acidification.
China might have become the top carbon dioxide emitter in 2006. But the CO2 emissions in China became so large in 2007 that there's no longer room for debate on which country emits the most CO2.
China has now clearly overtaken the United States as the world's leading emitter of climate-warming gases, a new study has found. The increasing emissions from China - up 8 percent in the past year - accounted for two-thirds of the growth in global greenhouse gas emissions in 2007, the study found.
The report, released Friday by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, is an annual study. Last year, for the first time, the researchers found that China had edged ahead of the United States as the world's leading emitter.
But the results were not so clear-cut as those released Friday, and many experts were skeptical of last year's finding.
Keep in mind that if China's emissions go up 8% again this year that will be a larger increase in absolute terms. Dito next year and the year after that and so on. As China gets bigger its percentage growth rates can stay the same or decline while still experiencing increasing absolute growth rates. I harp on this because China's growth is one of the biggest macro trends of the 21st century.
The Chinese aren't going to cut their carbon dioxide emissions until either they start running out of coal or newer energy sources fall so far in cost that they become cheaper than coal. The chances of running out of coal are higher than the conventional wisdom holds. But the Chinese still have a couple of decades of enormous coal burning in their future.
The growth in China's carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions is far outpacing previous estimates, making the goal of stabilizing atmospheric greenhouse gases much more difficult, according to a new analysis by economists at the University of California, Berkeley, and UC San Diego.
Previous estimates, including those used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, say the region that includes China will see a 2.5 to 5 percent annual increase in CO2 emissions, the largest contributor to atmospheric greenhouse gases, between 2004 and 2010. The new UC analysis puts that annual growth rate for China to at least 11 percent for the same time period.
A constant percentage increase per year turns into an absolute increase per year. If China maintains an 11% CO2 increase per year through the 2010s then by 2020 it will likely emit more CO2 than all the rest of the world put together. Will they do that?
The study is scheduled for print publication in the May issue of the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, but is now online.
Keep in mind that many Kyoto Accord signing countries are falling far short of meeting their pledges anyway.
The researchers' most conservative forecast predicts that by 2010, there will be an increase of 600 million metric tons of carbon emissions in China over the country's levels in 2000. This growth from China alone would dramatically overshadow the 116 million metric tons of carbon emissions reductions pledged by all the developed countries in the Kyoto Protocol. (The protocol was never ratified in the United States, which was the largest single emitter of carbon dioxide until 2006, when China took over that distinction, according to numerous reports.)
Put another way, the projected annual increase in China alone over the next several years is greater than the current emissions produced by either Great Britain or Germany.
Picture China's economy 2 times bigger. Picture it 3 times bigger. Huge demands for raw materials. Huge consumption of fossil fuels. Lots of pollution generated even from the solar photovoltaics industry.
Suppose rising CO2 emissions will cause global warming and that global warming will cause big negative impacts that outweigh the benefits. Well, we are going to have to use climate engineering techniques to stop and reverse the warming. Barring big breakthroughs to lower the costs of solar and nuclear power I do not see a substantial decrease in CO2 emissions until Peak Coal hits.
Most of this increase is coming from burning coal to generate electricity. If only they were building nuclear rather than coal electric power plants the emissions (and not just of CO2, also particulates, mercury, etc) would be far less.
China's installed nuclear power-generating capacity is expected to reach 60 gigawatts by 2020, a senior Chinese energy official said -- much higher than an earlier government estimate of 40 gigawatts. A gigawatt is the equivalent of one billion watts. The new estimate is equal to about two-thirds of Britain's total electricity-generating capacity today, although still equivalent to less than a tenth of China's current total.
Faced with an energy crunch resulting from its fast economic growth, China has decided to develop more nuclear power. By 2020, the nation will have an installed nuclear power capacity of 40 million kw, accounting for 4 percent of its total installed generating capacity.
They still see nuclear power as too costly as compared to coal. Without cheaper ways to generate cleaner power the world is going to become a dirtier place.