The United States and China recently agreed to reduce carbon emissions in what has been called a landmark climate change agreement. This agreement followed months of negotiation. While the U.S. agreed to reduce carbon emissions by 26-28 percent of 2005 levels by 2025, China agreed to draw 20 percent of its energy consumption from alternative fuels and peak its carbon emissions by 2030. For China, the effort is plausible and may do more than analysts believe – indeed, it can be viewed as a good start toward reducing carbon emissions and promoting renewable energy.
Often, the view of China’s environmental regime is negative. This is not only because China’s environment is severely polluted, but also because its track record on reducing carbon emissions is mixed. China has in the past set targets for the renewable energy composition of all energy sources. China’s Renewable Energy Law of 2007 aimed to quadruple GDP while only doubling electricity consumption by 2020. China also set a goal in the Eleventh Five Year Plan to reduce the energy intensity of GDP by 20 percent by 2010, implying a 2.8 percent annual growth rate in energy use. So far, these goals have not been met.
On the other side of the coin, China’s leadership is well aware that the role of its carbon emissions in climate change is problematic. Premier Li Keqiang declared a “war on pollution” in March 2014. Dan Rosen, in a report written for the Asia Society in October, points out that China has already made progress by destroying some highly polluting plants, negotiating requirements for particulate matter reduction, installing pollution controls on coal-fired plants, and revising the Environmental Protection Law (EPL) to allow for public interest lawsuits, among other moves. Rosen asserts that emissions reduction at the firm level will depend on enforcement of emissions laws, and that a litmus test for emissions law enforcement will lie in the number of public environmental interest lawsuits accepted by courts beginning January 1, 2015, when the revised EPL is put into effect. China therefore appears to be moving in the right direction using a number of different tactics.
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