Cross posted from https://scribe.disroot.org/post/2064725
China missed a key climate target in 2024 and emissions in the world’s second-largest economy rose slightly as coal remained dominant despite record renewable additions, official data showed Friday.
The figures mean the world’s biggest emitter is off-track on a key commitment under the Paris climate agreement, analysts said.
Beijing’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said carbon intensity, which measures emissions of planet-warming carbon dioxide per unit of GDP, fell 3.4 percent in 2024—short of an official target of 3.9.
That also put the country well behind on its goal for an 18-percent reduction from 2020 to 2025.
The data showed carbon emissions rose slightly from last year, though far short of previous jumps, as experts speculate about whether China may have reached peak emissions ahead of a 2030 target.
Still, the data showed it will be “extremely hard” for China to meet a pledge to reduce carbon intensity by 65 percent of 2005 levels by 2030, said Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.
“Even with optimistic assumptions for 2025, carbon dioxide intensity must fall by 22 percent in (the period) 2026-2030 to meet China’s key Paris target,” Myllyvirta said.
“This is a key test of China’s commitment to its pledges under the agreement.”
[…]
[Edit typo.]
Does this just mean they’re gdp didn’t grow as much as they wanted?
The overall emissions per person and total are still going up.
No. first line in the article - “emissions in the world’s second-largest economy rose slightly as coal remained dominant”. It’s bad news. Also, article is about 2024 and your plots stop in 2019/20.
However your question is reasonable - when they made such “intensity” (emit-per-gdp) based targets, it seemed like a way to avoid constraining the economy and disguise emissions growth - but they didn’t anticipate the covid slump and such rapid demographic peaking, so maybe they’ll change the methodology for next ndc target.