Upcoming UN Climate Summit Can't Overlook China's Support of Global Coal Power

When global leaders converge on Paris on Nov. 30 for the 2015 United Nations climate change conference, their goal will be to deliver an agreement that, for the first time, seeks to safeguard the Earth's climate by having all nations that are significant sources of carbon dioxide rein in their emissions.

A threat to that plan might be the unchecked growth of coal-intensive energy in the world's developing nations — a dangerous trend recently accelerated by the expansion of Chinese firms seeking business internationally, according to researchers from Princeton University, Tongji University in Shanghai and the University of California-Irvine.
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The researchers write in the journal Nature Climate Change that any agreement reached in Paris also should be expanded to provide guidelines and incentives — already under discussion for industrialized countries — for developing nations to cooperate with one another on lower-carbon energy projects.  Failure to do this, the authors write, could allow further "dirty" energy cooperation between developing nations and complicate the United Nations' goal to keep the global average temperature within 2 degrees Celsius of what it was around 1750 at the dawn of the Industrial Age.

"After years of effort to construct a truly global climate agreement, negotiators are on course to accept a system with incoherent rules for developed and developing countries in terms of investing in low-carbon energy outside their borders.  We think that may be harmful in the long run," said lead author Phil Hannam, a doctoral candidate in the Program in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy (STEP) at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.
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Carbon emissions continue to rise from energy production as developing nations such as India, Brazil and South Africa fuel their rapid industrialization, the researchers report.  At the same time, developing nations such as China have the capital and technology to support other burgeoning economies.  But the lack of international attention -- and UN incentives -- for developing nations to support each other's energy needs in a low-carbon way has helped keep coal power a popular choice, according to the authors.

Chinese firms -- which often have financial or policy backing from China's state banks -- have poured coal-power equipment into other Asian countries, partly as a result of China's slowing domestic power-market growth.  The situation could get worse as China pledges to reduce domestic carbon emissions, according to the paper.  The researchers found that of the total power capacities in Asian countries other than China that have involvement from Chinese firms, 68 percent in operation, 77 percent under construction and 76 percent in planning burn coal.  This level of involvement in coal exceeds the global trend, Hannam said.

"While China has tightened its belt on coal power domestically, that's pushing Chinese firms to help build coal plants in other countries, so much so that China's firms are disproportionately focused in coal-intensive energy abroad relative to other nations," Hannam said.  "Instead, if the UNFCCC integrated low-carbon cooperation between developing countries in the climate agreement, China could lead the way for countries to make pledges for low-carbon investment globally, just as they pledge domestic emissions cuts."

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