Researchers from the London School of Economics have found that levels of greenhouse gas emissions in China will peak by 2025, five years earlier than the country's stated target. However, just how high this peak will be has not been determined.
The biggest carbon emitter in the world is currently following a trend in which it will be discharging 12.5 to 14 billion tons of gases equivalent to carbon dioxide in 2025. After that, China's emission levels are expected to decline. According to the researchers, this means that chances of successfully preventing global warming from reaching beyond 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, of preindustrial temperature will be high.
Chinese President Xi Jinping set the country's emission levels to peak at 2030. Aside from pointing out that emission levels can peak by 2025, researchers are also confident at the possibility that the peak can be reached earlier, meaning greenhouse gases contributed by China will also drop sooner than expected. The researchers also believe that the country's political culture may have led the government to "err on the side of caution" when it released figures for its estimated peak in emissions.
China's growth has heavily relied on industrial expansion, resulting in severe air pollution in the country. However, after efforts from the government, coal consumption in China fell in 2014 as well as in 2015's first quarter. The researchers also calculated that coal use in the country has already reached its maximum threshold and will be plateauing in the next five years. At the same time, use of natural gas will grow rapidly.
According to the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the two-degree Celsius goal will call for a yearly reduction in greenhouse gases by 40 to 70 percent, compared with levels recorded in 2010, by 2050 and zero and below that number by 2100.
As the world's largest source of carbon emissions, China's contribution to the effort will have far-ranging effects, potentially deciding whether or not the goal will be met. As such, it is good news that the country is estimated to peak earlier than expected since that will result in earlier cuts in carbon emissions.
Climate negotiators are meeting in Bonn ahead of the climate conference in Paris at the end of the year to smooth out the details of the deal that will limit global warming to the 2-degree goal.
Global warming, however, is just one effect of climate change, which is also causing sea levels to rise as polar ice melts and warming that is, in turn, dramatically disrupting animal and human life.
Photo: Honza Soukup | Flickr
