China's Carbon Emissions May Reach Peak by 2030, State Researcher Says

China, the world’s biggest polluter, may see its carbon-dioxide emissions peak around 2030 as the country taps cleaner sources of energy, a researcher at a think tank run by the National Development and Reform Commission said.

Emissions may reach almost 9 billion metric tons in 2030, from about 7 billion tons currently, Jiang Kejun, director of energy and market analysis at the NDRC’s Energy Research Institute, said in an interview in Beijing today.

China has pledged to reduce its carbon-dioxide output per unit of gross domestic product by 40 to 45 percent from 2005 levels by 2020. The country overtook the U.S. as the world’s biggest energy user last year and relies on coal as fuel for 80 percent of its power plants, according to the International Energy Agency.

“The emissions target is not something easy to achieve, but we believe China has the ability to do it,” Jiang said.

China will have to raise the efficiency of burning coal and increase the share of cleaner sources including nuclear power in its energy mix, said Jiang, whose team helped the government draft the 2020 emissions-reduction target.

The nation’s energy consumption may rise to as much as 4.3 billion tons of coal equivalent by 2020, Jiang said, citing data from his institute. That’s equal to about 8.4 billion tons of carbon-dioxide emissions, he said. Energy use was 3.07 billion tons last year, according the National Bureau of Statistics.

To reduce China’s reliance on polluting fossil fuels, the government has been subsidizing renewable energy including wind and solar power. China spent $34.6 billion on clean-fuel projects last year, almost double the $18.6 billion invested by the U.S., estimates from Bloomberg New Energy Finance show.

China may spend about 5 trillion yuan ($738 billion) in the next decade developing cleaner sources of energy, Jiang Bing, head of the National Energy Administration’s planning and development department, said on July 20.

--Ying Wang. Editors: Ryan Woo, Jane Lee.

To contact the reporter on this story: Ying Wang in Beijing at ywang30@bloomberg.net

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