Despite being lauded by President Obama for signing the Paris UN Climate Change Accords, China is still rapidly expanding greenhouse gas emissions.
President Obama and China’s President Xi Jinping issued a ‘U.S.-China Joint Presidential Statement on Climate Change’on March 31, 2016 stating that both nations were signing the Paris Accords and would take further “concrete steps” to “use public resources to finance and encourage the transition toward low carbon technologies as a priority.”
The joint statement on climate change was trumpeted as creating “an enduring legacy of the partnership.”
President Obama’s “concrete steps” for the U.S. to combat climate change included issuing an Executive Order ‘Preparing the United States for the Impacts of Climate Change’, directing the Environmental Protection Agency to cut 32 percent of power plant carbon emissions by 2025, mandating higher vehicle mileage, substantially limit oil and gas drilling on public lands and requiring energy-efficient building codes.
The Heritage Foundation estimated that if the Paris Accords Obama signed were fully implemented, it would have achieved a .36 degree Fahrenheit reduction in global temperatures.
But the economic costs of Obama’s Paris commitments over the next 20 years would have included the loss of $2.5 trillion in GDP, 400,000 jobs, over $20,000 less income per family of four; and about 17 percent higher electricity prices.
The Paris Accords’ also commitment so-called ‘advanced nations’ to provide $100 billion in ‘Green Climate Fund’ subsidies for reparations to developing countries to fund infrastructure improvements.
With the U.S. share already set at about $22 billion, Obama‘ Joint Presidential Statement’ committed the U.S. to increase climate change subsidies.
Despite already being the planet’s largest contributor of greenhouse emissions at 22 percent, China was required by the Paris Accords to curtail emissions’ growth only by 2030.
China did commit to promoting a “global clean and low-carbon energy transition, especially towards sustainable, affordable, reliable and modern energy services.”
To quantify China’s actions since signing the Paris Accords, the GWP Foundation issued an analysis titled, ‘China’s Climate U-Turn.’
According to the GWP analysis, China now has the world’s largest number of renewable energy installations. But as a percent of China’s total electric power production, wind accounts for 2.7 percent and solar accounts for just 0.5 percent.
Given the higher costs of maintaining interruptible power, the Chinese authorities curtailed about 50 percent of wind unit potential production.
Low utilization rates are also blamed on poor wind-farm siting, failing to build power grid connections, and installing inefficient wind turbines.
China’s air pollution levels did decline last year due to a reduction in electric power produced from coal. But greenhouse gas emissions grew due to a 15 percent increase in the use of natural gas.
As a result, China’s annual pollution levels remained 72 percent higher than World Health Organization guidelines.
Rather than planning for a post-carbon future, The International Energy Agency reported that China has been the world’s largest oil importer since 2013.
China has signed new oil supply agreements with Oman, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Angola, Iraq, UAE, Kuwait, Colombia, Kazakhstan, Congo, South Sudan, Brazil, Venezuela, and Canada.
China is set to be the world’s largest LNG importer in two years and is building natural gas import pipelines from Russia, Pakistan, Myanmar, and Turkmenistan
To keep its domestic coal miners employed, China increased its consumption of coal last year for the first time since 2013. As part of its “Belt and Road” initiative, China has plans to build 700 coal-fired electric plants across the Eurasian plain.
One of Donald Trump’s first actions after being inaugurated as President of the United States was issuing an Executive Order withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Accords.
China’s state news agency Xinhua led media outlets around the world in calling Trump’s move a “huge setback” in the global battle against climate change.
The official China news source deemed the move a U.S. retreat from the “common aspiration of mankind for a low-carbon future.”
Read more at American Thinker
The article is wrong in saying “China Ignores Paris Climate Accord.” As far as emissions go, the only commitment China made was to peak as of 2030. Any level of increase does not violate China’s Paris commitment.
It might be said they have violated their commitment to expand renewable energy. However, “sustainable, affordable, reliable and modern energy” has never existed. Germany has proved this by adding 30% renewable energy to there power grid and having their power rates go up by a factor of three, so it isn’t affordable. By its very nature solar power isn’t reliable because half of the time the sun isn’t shining, and wind isn’t reliable because sometimes the wind is still. Renewable energy isn’t reliable.
“The lowest price is the law” made China what it is today.
We effectively exported megatons of domestic pollution and millions of jobs in the transaction. Now we sell them raw materials, including fuel.
The culprit is in your bathroom mirror, not Beijing.
“The Man” promised “hoke and chains” – he delivered…..
Look the Dragon(CHINA) is the worlds leading producer of Greenhouse Gases disptite what Americas former dictator Obama told us meanwhile the Eagle(USA)continues to cut back and despite what we see and hear from the M.S. Media reptiles