China’s CO2 Emissions Now on a Par With Italy’s (Per Capita)

October 27th, 2011 by Susan Kraemer

Even though China has doubled its installed wind and solar power capacity for the sixth year in a row, its emissions continue to rise as its growth has continued. In a study from the European Commission: Longterm Trends in Global CO2 Emissions, over the entire 20 year period studied — from 1990 till 2010 — China increased all forms of energy production to keep pace with its growth, increasing renewable energy sources like solar and wind by 10%, and gas and coal-fired power by 11.6%.

It increased steel production by 11.6% and cement production by 15.1% over the 20 years, and both steel-making and cement are big CO2 emitters.

The European study goes back to 1990, the base year of the Kyoto Accord, which China did not sign. In the last six years, however, China has made huge jumps in renewable energy capacity, with new wind power capacity growing faster than coal, while during the earlier years tallied, coal was the preferred new energy source.

CO2 emissions per capita have grown to where now it is on a par with Italy’s, higher than France’s, and lower than Germany’s.

China’s CO2 emissions per capita have increased from 2.2 to 6.8 tonnes (per capita) in the 20 years since since 1990, while they have decreased in the EU-15 from 9.1 to 7.9 tonnes per capita. The EU-15 were the 15 highly developed core European Union nations that signed the Kyoto Accord. Since 1990, other less industrialized nations, mostly former soviet satellites have now joined the EU, making up the EU-27.

While Europe and China have seemed to converge at somewhere under ten US tons per capita, however, the US remains the world’s highest CO2 emitter..

Since 1990, the US reduced emissions from 19.7 tonnes per capita (22 US tons), to 16.9 tonnes per capita, still the highest per capita rate, but lower, and the comparably developed, but Kyoto-signing, EU-15 nations dropped from their already much lower 9.1 tonnes (10 tons) to 7.9 tonnes per capita.

Image: New Chinese protest art at the Robischon Gallery

Susan Kraemer@Twitter
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About the Author

Susan Kraemer writes at CleanTechnica, CSP-Today, PV-Insider , SmartGridUpdate, and GreenProphet. She has also been published at Ecoseed, NRDC OnEarth, MatterNetwork, Celsius, EnergyNow, and Scientific American. As a former serial entrepreneur in product design, Susan brings an innovator's perspective on inventing a carbon-constrained civilization: If necessity is the mother of invention, solving climate change is the mother of all necessities! As a lover of history and sci-fi, she enjoys chronicling the strange future we are creating in these interesting times. Follow Susan on Twitter @dotcommodity.

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Coalportal

coal statistics would suggest the commodity isn’t going anywhere. Coal reports show if we have to live with it, we may as well reduce the impact of coal and CCS seems to be the best solution found to date. Cherry http://www.coalportal.comWhile for some an ideal world would see no reliance on coal industry to produce electricity,
- Anonymous
  
  We need to get coal off all our grids. CCS is not a solution, it’s nothing more than a stalling technique.
  
  Coal, if we do honest accounting, is our most expensive way to produce electricity. Here in the US we pay somewhere around $0.18/kWh in taxpayer dollars and health insurance premiums in addition to what we pay at the meter for coal-electricity. CCS would do nothing but make coal even more expensive.
  
  The coal industry talks about CCS because it helps diffuse some of the pressure on their industry to just go away.
  
  Wind is cheaper than coal. Geothermal is cheaper than coal. Solar is cheaper than coal.
  
  Wind and solar along with the storage is cheaper than coal.
  
  Put the money directly into clean energy. Time to quit supporting fossil fuels.
Anonymous

hmm, i read that Australia passed up the U.S. in per capita emissions a couple years ago (http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/1804691/australia-tops-global-capita-carbon-emissions-report). has that switched back (not finding more current data anywhere)
Anonymous

“…the Kyoto Accord, which China did not sign.”

The PRC did sign, and ratify, Kyoto. Didn’t commit them to do anything, but hey….
- Susan Kraemer
  
  You’re right – they have now signed it. Initially though, when Europe signed Kyoto and began their carbon reduction implementation, China did not sign on, and they didn’t really start cracking down on their own ambitious renewable plans till after the EU did. But now they have overtaken them.
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