What the giants China and India are doing about global warming

Nothing works without China and India
Asia's giants are needed to limit global warming. But how important is climate protection there?

China's climate and environmental policy delivers the most contradictory headlines: China is the world's largest CO2 emitter, is rapidly building new coal-fired power plants in its own country, also along the “New Silk Road”, and will only reach its maximum in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. On the other hand, China is the largest producer of solar and wind turbines, enjoys fast-growing electromobility, runs pilot projects on hydrogen use and fuel cell technology, and has already installed innovative technology for electricity transportation.

These superlatives can initially be explained by the sheer size of the country. And on the fairness criteria of savings targets: the emission of environmentally harmful gases per capita of the population can be compared internationally. Countries with high per capita income consume more energy than poorer countries or middle-income countries like China, so they should save more. Another aspect: countries with a high proportion of industrial production - such as China - produce a unit of social product more energy-intensive than equivalent countries with a high proportion of services.

In the years of negotiation processes on the way to the Paris climate protection agreement, all these aspects have been debated internationally. The year-long weighing process was finally cast into a negotiation result that was considered exemplary at the time. China's role in Paris was recognized as a particularly constructive contribution to finding solutions. In the meantime, it has already fulfilled its Paris commitments for 2020 ahead of schedule. In view of the increasing assessment that many other contracting states will not meet their commitments and that CO2 readings worldwide will rise more steeply than forecast, China is now demanding more ambitious goals, in particular the use of coal to generate electricity and heat more quickly shut down as promised in Paris.

A conflict between economic and ecological goals is also clearly stated in China.

Until around 2006, the importance of climate and environmental policy in China was negligible. It was only in the course of preparations for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing that a rethink became apparent, above all because of the air pollution in the big cities. When you measure China's ambitions to invest in renewable energy, you see a steady increase in effort, which has peaked in 2017 so far. Massive subsidies were used as instruments in the solar industry, while German production was going downhill steeply, but massive investments were also made in wind energy and e-mobility. China was seen as the engine of change for sustainable development.

Then the curve bends significantly. The 2016 American elections have turned China's international frame of reference. An external economic pressure is beginning to build up that is to slow China's economic progress. There are also economic imbalances inside: the high levels of debt in some provinces and state-owned companies, the size of shadow banks and the way in which some fast-growing companies are financing themselves appear to be threatening. Averting these dangers is now at the top of the political agenda. At the same time, economic growth must not drop too much. In this changed assessment of the situation, environmental and climate policy issues are lagging behind the economic stabilization target. Coal production and electricity generation were throttled less radically than planned in 2015, and subsidies for sustainable concepts were cut.

The path of action in environmental and climate policy has been decided and controlled in China "from above" by the country's political elite. This is what Xi Jinping's speech at the 18th party conference in 2012, which describes the shift from a purely quantitative to a qualitative growth. The political leadership constantly promotes these goals and measures decision-makers in the provinces against compliance. This strategy follows the realization that climate, but above all environmental aspects of its growth model are strongly in China's own interest.

But: A conflict between economic and ecological goals is also clearly stated in China. Quantitative growth is still required to achieve high levels of employment and social stability. The promotion of environmentally friendly technologies is also seen in the long term as an economic opportunity. In the short term, however, the internalization of external environmental effects makes production more expensive and / or subsidies have to be awarded that tie up resources and are lacking elsewhere.

The outlook: China will stay on course, particularly with regard to environmental policy measures. Air quality is an ongoing issue among city dwellers, soil and water quality in its current state are acute obstacles to the further progress of the country towards an ecological civilization - this is the officially formulated political goal. In the environmental field, Chinese politics will therefore follow sustainable paths in its own interest.

Climate policy will benefit from this in that energy savings or the expansion of renewables will help immediately. However, as long as the external economic pressure persists, there will be no major shift to instruments originally motivated by climate policy, as long as they hinder the economic catch-up process. The demand for grid parity now applies to renewables: their feed-in must not be more expensive than the currently most efficient sources. Even if nationwide protests regarding environmental measures (tractor demonstrations in Germany) or climate-politically motivated tax increases (French yellow vests) do not threaten, the population's resentment potential is also an important factor for China's political leadership.

The international community looks at China because of its size: a five percent reduction in climate-damaging emissions here helps the world more than a saving in Luxembourg of 50 percent. Therefore, many countries appeal to the Chinese leadership to set more ambitious goals. China has a tendency to set more modest goals, but also to meet them. The reverse would be perceived as embarrassing. In addition, the fact that the US government has declared that it will withdraw from the Paris Agreement in order to generate economic benefits does not make the domestic argumentation easier for the Chinese leadership. Added to this is the fact that important European partners will not meet their 2020 commitments.