China Getting On Board with GHG Emissions

So, I have some great news for you this morning! China, which was on track to be the world’s worst polluter (knocking us off the throne, of course), has hopped on board with the rest of the developing world to cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

According to The Telegraph, China was set to overtake the US in per-person CO2 emissions in 2017. However, this rate of growth in their emissions is contested. The Telegraph reports that technically, China overtook the US in 2007 as the world’s larget producer of greenhouse gasses; however, China claims that their emissions are reasonable for the size of their country, when calculated on a per-person basis. So, when you break it down per-person like that, they still have until 2017 to overtake us.

But realistically, they’ve left us in the dust.

However, according to the Environmental News Network, last week China’s government ordered five cities, and two provinces, to cut their greenhouse gas emissions.

The first province is Guandong, which is the country’s largest producer of greenhouse gasses. Their proposal for reducing emissions has already been developed and approved by the government. The plan, so far, is that Guandong must reduce its fossil fuel consumption by 20% by 2015. This must be replaced by energy from renewable sources, nuclear, or hydroelectric.

Other cities that are in this reduction zone include Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Shenzen, and Chonqing. The province of Hubei also falls into this zone as well.

And China isn’t stopping there. The country aims to reduce its overall carbon intensity by 40%-45% by 2020, which is hugely ambitious. What’s even better is that there are 100 other cities or provinces in China that are also following allowing with these directives, even though they haven’t been ordered to.

Although the US does have similar measures, like California’s strict GHG emission regulations, as a whole we’re still woefully behind many other countries, one of which now includes China, in our regulation of GHGs.