How China’s big dreams will wipe out the world’s climate gains

The data on carbon emissions in 2023 is only just in, but we can already predict where things will go this year.

That’s because a country’s greenhouse footprint can be boiled down to three factors: its economic growth, the energy intensity of that growth, and the carbon intensity of that energy. On all three, China performs dismally outside the norm — and the dirigiste policymaking typified by the NPC is the major culprit.

Put those numbers together with the GDP growth target, and we can already see that a pollution peak won’t come this year unless China’s economy gets far more efficient at turning carbon into growth. Those lower levels would be sufficient to bring China’s emissions to a peak, but it’s not going to happen at this year’s mandated pace of GDP growth. To achieve a decline, carbon efficiency would need to improve close to its fastest rate since President Xi Jinping came to power.Such a downbeat picture might seem surprising when set against the fact that China installed about three-fifths of all wind power and roughly the same share of solar globally last year.

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