As the world’s largest energy consumer, China sees the challenge presented by climate change as a historical opportunity in the transformation of energy development.
At the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference in Beijing last year, Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Barack Obama issued the U.S.-China Joint Announcement on Climate Change. The U.S. intends to reduce emissions to 26 percent to 28 percent below its 2005 level in 2025, while China intends to increase the share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy consumption to around 20 percent and achieve the peaking of CO2 emissions by around 2030.
Pan Jiahua, director of the Institute for Urban and Environmental Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, noted that Europe saw its CO2 emissions peak in 1990, while the U.S. achieved the peak in 2010. Nevertheless, the continued reduction in CO2 does not now solely rest on the shoulders of the developing world. Despite the reverse in course in most developed countries, emissions per capita are still three to five times those of developing countries.
