China’s Energy Policies fail to tackle climate change

Asian economic power house China, is failing with its environmental, economic, and energy policies that have not been geared to fight climate change, says a newly published study.
Imme Scholz and Carmen Richerzhagen of the German Development Institute have made a review of China’s recent climate-related actions and policies.

They find that China is struggling hard to increase its basic energy efficiency but very many, of China’s policies, while contributing to climate change mitigation, are motivated by the idea of cutting energy costs instead of cutting carbon emissions.

The government of China has set out a target of reducing energy consumption by 20 per cent of 2005 levels by as early as 2010. But this objective has been stifled by lower energy prices and a lack of competition in the energy field.

The authors stated: “Climate change is a cross-sectoral issue, but China considers it mainly as an economic issue,” and that: “China, the world’s second largest carbon emitter, has made no international commitments to cutting carbon emissions, and there are few incentives for it to do so.”

To push off international pressure, China has created the National Coordination Committee on Climate Change. To show how seriously they take the matter, the committee is headed by non other than, the prime minister.

But national government’s attempts to try to reduce carbon consumption are held back by local political autonomy, in addition to a general lack of energy policy coordination.

China’s public awareness of the world climate change problem is low, and the influence of business, and other groups, such as the scientific community, and the mass media, is limited.
The authors suggest that: ‘China should enhance its capacity to deal with climate change by increasing policy coordination between different sectors and mobilising more actors — such as civil society organisations and the scientific community — in the fight against climate change.”

At the Research Centre for Sustainable Development, of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Senior researcher, Zhuang Guiyang agrees that: “it is important to increase China’s capacities to cope with climate change.” And went on to say: “But in the current development stage, at which China does not have emission reduction obligations, it could be better to coordinate various efforts under the goal of saving energy,” SciDev.Net.
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