China Environmental Law

While the rest of the world was wringing its hands about China surpassing (this time they really mean it apparently) the US to become the global leader in GHG emissions, I spent all day yesterday celebrating the kick-off of China’s 18th annual publicity week on energy saving. What a party! If it wasn’t standing in line for a one kuai “5-watt or 10-watt energy-saving bulb,” it was standing in line to sign my name “on a banner in support of the energy-saving efforts.”

To continue the celebrations

The central government said it would help spread the use of 150 million energy-saving bulbs with subsidies within three years. These bulbs are expected to save 29 billion kwh of electricity annually.

A couple of other initiatives in the works according to “an official of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC)” include

higher electricity prices for energy-guzzlers, preferential tax policies for imports of energy-saving equipment and more credit support to restructuring projects with energy-saving technologies.

The NDRC official said the country would also publish specific regulations and standards that go with the energy saving law as soon as possible, and vowed the country would put more punch into the law enforcement.

Now to the hand wringing. Its been common knowledge for sometime that China was a big producer of green house gases and getting bigger. The numbers publicized yesterday are “guesstimates” by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, and they are in line with other recent studies (see here), but I think they will have little effect on China’s post-Kyoto negotiating position. Those who say that the numbers will embarrass China into agreeing to emission limits have an unrealistic sense of China’s embarrassment threshold.

One small quibble with the New York Time’s report on this issue. It says

Neither China nor the United States participated in the current treaty to limit emissions, the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012 and will be replaced by a new agreement to be signed in Copenhagen at the end of 2009.

This is a common mistake. China is a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol. Kyoto does not require China (or other “developing” countries) to agree to GHG emission limits. The US did not sign the Protocol; since the US was, at the time, the largest GHG emitter in the world, we can see just how powerful a motivator “embarrassment” is.