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...were fuzzy - aside from the fact that it would be called the Panda Standard - the move is an early step toward creating a voluntary carbon-trading system in China. Although China is still very far from accepting the mandatory carbon caps used by countries covered by the Kyoto Protocol - Hu emphasized the importance of economic development first in his speech - the Panda Standard is a sign that China could see a stake in the creation of a global carbon market. "Any carbon market inside China has the potential to be a game changer," says David Yarnold, the executive director...
...word is voluntary - China is a long way from accepting the need to put an absolute cap on its carbon emissions. Hu didn't promise to actually reduce Chinese carbon emissions, but simply for China to become more energy efficient - something it needs to do anyway. "China knows that if it continues consuming and developing the way it has been, the machine will collapse," said Yvo de Boer, the head of the United Nations Framework on Climate Change. But China hasn't even said how much it will improve its carbon intensity. Xie Zhenhua, China's top environmental official, told...
...there was a single underlying idea, it was that China, having just become the world's largest emitter of CO2 gases, was going to jump wholeheartedly on the global bandwagon to combat climate change. But on the conference's final day, during the main event and keynote address, President Hu Jintao talked about China's commitment to economic reform, to maintaining its extraordinary pace of economic growth, to opening China's market further to foreign investment and products - but only the barest nod in the direction of climate change. A confused American environmental consultant left the speech sputtering. "What...
...Tuesday at the U.N. General Assembly in New York City, Hu made a widely anticipated speech on climate change, finely calibrated for diplomatic effect. He was nothing if not cautious, saying - accurately - that China was in the process of increasing its energy efficiency, reducing the amount of energy required to produce a unit of GDP. Indeed, China's energy efficiency has improved in each of the past two years, a trend likely to continue, because a huge surge in investment in energy-intensive industries like steel and cement in the early part of this decade has run its course...
While some observers were buoyed by Hu's statements, many environmental groups were disappointed. Most critics, however, have to temper their criticism. The irony is that China actually is developing renewable-energy sources faster than any other country in the world. Hu vowed yesterday that by 2020 renewable sources will account for 15% of China's total energy output - and there are industry analysts, both foreign and domestic, who believe that figure is probably conservative. The problem is that China is at the same time still investing massively in coal-fired electricity plants, the primary source of CO2 emissions...