A THINK tank with links to the Chinese government has predicted that the nation’s carbon emissions could peak in 2030. This conclusion, in the 2050 China Energy and CO2 Emissions Report released by the Energy Research Institute, is at odds with the government’s insistence that the country’s rapid economic growth will mean that emissions cannot decline before 2050.
If China adopts an “enhanced low carbon scenario” with very stringent policies, emissions could peak in 2030 and fall to 1.4 billion tonnes in 2050, equivalent to their 2005 level, the report says. This would be “difficult but doable”, says lead author Jiang Kejun.…
