China Environmental Law

I have not been slow to criticize Greenpeace when I believe it has pursued soft targets or otherwise pulled its punches in China, so when it tackles an important and sensitive domestic issue and delivers a clear and needed message to the Chinese government, I am happy to offer it praise.

Last week Greenpeace issued “Polluting Power: Ranking China’s Power Companies,” a short but well-crafted analysis of the environmental consequences wrought by Chinese top-10 power producers (all or the vast majority of which are state-owned.  I’m too lazy to look it up) and their heavy reliance on coal.  Here’s the basic conclusion:

The massive expansion of coalfired plants has created enormous economic, social and environmental losses for China. The huge amount of carbon dioxide emitted by these coal-fired plants, the primary greenhouse gas responsible for climate change, has yet to be seriously addressed.

In the last few years, the Chinese Government has made significant progress in improving energy efficiency and reducing major pollutants. However, to ensure the development of a sustainable low-carbon pathway and environmental protection, China has to swiftly transform its energy industry. The electricity sector plays a critical role in deciding China’s climate performance.

Julian at The Green Leap Forward has run down some of the bad points and, since he is a “glass half full” kind of guy, has emphasized the good points in China’s carbon emission story set forth in this report.

The report concludes that China’s power sector needs to do (and is fully capable of doing) a lot more to combat climate change.

What is needed is an Energy [R]evolution , a revolution in how energy is generated and used.

Like the McKinsey study “China’s green revolution“, Greenpeace has looked at what China is doing to reduce carbon emissions, acknowledged it as praiseworthy, and concludes it’s not enough.

Greenpeace offers six recommendations for China’s power industry.  Julian believes the first recommendation-an energy tax and environmental tax for coal-won’t work because “energy price reform in [China's] electricity sector is hugely wanting,” and price signals can not readily be passed on to consumers.  He’s absolutely right, but that problem could be fairly easily [in the perfect world] solved with a targeted regulation allowing the automatic pass-through of costs related to such taxes.

So I applaud Greenpeace for a job well done.  I like the clear headed analysis in the report and the fact that it has not been seduced by the hype surrounding China’s “greening.”  Lots of good things are being done, but much more can, should and must be done.  Don’t believe me or Greenpeace?  Then look at the numbers.

Julian quotes a snippet from a recent NYT article which reports

China’s improvements are starting to have an effect on climate models. In its latest annual report last November, the I.E.A. cut its forecast of the annual increase in Chinese emissions of global warming gases, to 3 percent from 3.2 percent, in response to technological gains, particularly in the coal sector, even as the agency raised slightly its forecast for Chinese economic growth.

It sounds like China is making great progress, but China’s release of “global warming gases” is still predicted to INCREASE AT 3% (on a huge base) for the next twenty years.  Is there any plausible scenario anyone can devise where that rate of growth does not result in “ecological apocalypse?”