Handful of cities driving urban greenhouse gas emissions
reuters.com
reuters.com
When you look at who's polluting and who's emissions are on an upward trajectory, there's one obvious country that's actively working against the environment. China's emissions aren't slowing down. Coal is incredibly cheap when there's no carbon tax or emission standards. One of the many reasons it's cheaper to manufacture in China and why North Americans and Europeans can't compete [0]. Comparing the US[1] and China[2], the US has:
- Decreasing per capita emissions in the US starting in 1973 (-27%)
- A decrease in the countries emission starting in 2007 (-13%)
Meanwhile for the same period China has had
- a 7x increase per capita since 1973 (+532%)
- 48% increase for its global emissions since 2007
So it is possible to drastically reduce our carbon footprint thanks to innovation and smarter power generation.
Time to add tariffs on goods produced by states who made the decision of going all-in on polluting power generation, and potentially apply immigration quotas to citizens of these countries.
[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/26/us-leads-greenhouse-gas-emis...
It doesn't account for all of the supporting emissions needed to power a factory, just the cement needed to build that factory and the electricity needed to run it. The emissions for the infrastructure and transport aren't accounted properly.
There is as of yet no solid data for this.
> Whilst China is a large CO2 emissions exporter, it is no longer a large emitter because it produces goods for the rest of the world. This was the case in the past, but today, even adjusted for trade, China now has a per capita footprint higher than the global average (which is 4.8 tonnes per capita in 2017).
I personally could buy the 14% deficit number for China based on gut feel alone but I also think the trend line looks weird and indicates maybe something off with the accounting. For example I would expect the deficit now to much smaller than it was 20 years ago whereas it in fact appears to be considerably larger. Indeed if the graph is to be believed it appears this deficit has been growing this decade compared to past decades (although perhaps the last few years may indicate a reversal?) which is not what I would expect.
That is only true for the first chart, not the chart we’re referencing in this conversation.
> Note: This measures CO₂ emissions from fossil fuels and cement production only – land use change is not included.
It merely adjusts Chinese domestic C02 emissions by adding imported emissions that are encapsulated in imported goods.
The term "Consumption" as used for the chart does not mean Chinese domestic consumption, but rather describes all C02 emitted domestically, including in the manufacturing of goods destined for export.
https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2
> To calculate consumption-based emissions we need to track which goods are traded across the world, and whenever a good was imported we need to include all CO2 emissions that were emitted in the production of that good, and vice versa to subtract all CO2 emissions that were emitted in the production of goods that were exported.
None of this is feasible. The inevitable cries of imperialism and sinophobia and nativism ensures such policies are dead on arrival. Instead we will simply inculcate the necessary cognitive dissonance to overlook this and other unfortunate realities (Chinese rivers being the source of most ocean plastics, banned CFCs still widely used by Chinese manufacturers, etc.) and continue muddling along with the smoke stacks neatly hidden on the opposite side of the planet while chanting "we're the consumers!" That the blame is ascribed to the optimal criminal is sufficient and delivers all the solution required.
Prosperity comes with responsibility. China has been the largest automobile market since 2009, with annual grow rate 45%. Almost 1 in 3 vehicles sold in 2020 is in China. The majority of them are personal vehicles.
You're right though that there are really no "others" here to blame. We will be doomed if we can't fight pollution and climate change collectively.
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_economic_zones_of_Chin...
For the US at least, there has not been a major drop in production-based emissions in the last thirty years:
The reality is that an urban person in China produces ~as many emissions as an urban person anywhere in the developed world, and has a ~similar material quality of life, in terms of goods consumed. They get paid less than their Western counterpart, but not by that much. These days, the median salary in Shanghai is ~$45,000. The median salary in Paris is ~$65,000.
This isn't the 90s, the wage gap is not that large anymore.
It's worth noting that more people live in Urban China than in the entirety of the United States. (Again, a stark contrast to the 70s.)
If your new tariffs caused Chinese manufactured goods to become less competitive, and resulted in the reversal of offshoring and the rebirth of American and European manufacturing, what would your tariffs have achieved?
Just like drink manufacturers should be responsible for the plastic waste they produce.
Reducing emissions, presumably. Wasn't that the point?
If course the majority of these cities are in China, they're some of the most densely populated areas on the planet, located in a country that is still developing its economy.
It's true that the rise of new and old economies such as those of China or India are bad for the environment as billions of people reach the same levels of wealth, luxury and emissions the West has enjoyed for decades, but as the richest economies in the world, the Western bloc should really be at the forefront of green energy and pollution reduction. Yet today these countries still stand out at the top of the charts, together with (other) oil economies.
China hasn't stood still either in the past few years, and despite its measures to combat smog and power shortages, will probably see an increase in emissions as more people get access to more technology.
China clearly doesn't have the environment in mind, but neither does the US. You paint a picture of the US improving massively while China worsens, but neither country really cares about their emissions. If anything, the Trump administration was proof that (nearly) the majority of America doesn't want to reduce carbon emissions.
Until China reaches the CO2 emissions per capita of the US, I don't think any comparison between the two is fair. Whether that's because of infinite growth on the Chinese side of the equation or because of long overdue carbon emission cuts from the American side doesn't matter.
https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2017/03/02/518173670/...
https://reneweconomy.com.au/china-driving-global-green-shift...
The question arises: which country (or countries) has been driving this global green shift in electric power generation? The answer is clear as soon as we look at the comparable charts for China. We carried these charts in the earlier blog posting, but reproduce them here for ease of comparison.
Chart 3 reveals that the proportion of China’s electric power capacity sourced from WWS rose from 20% in 2007 to 35% in 2017 (1H) – or a 15% swing in a decade.
And the shift is of exactly the same form as the global shift revealed in the IEA data, making it an inescapable conclusion that China is the driver of the world trend.
> - A decrease in the countries emission starting in- 2007 (-13%)
> Meanwhile for the same period China has had
> - a 7x increase per capita since 1973 (+532%)
> - 48% increase for its global emissions since 2007
I can't help but read this and feel that you're deliberately leaving out the per-capita emissions of Americans vs. Chinese in favor of relative changes from 1973.
China emits 8.12 tons of CO2 per-person[1].
The US emits 15.52 tons of CO2 per-person[2].
The US is the "unfair" emitter here. That said, the true "fair" emissions that an individual can have would be roughly 1.61 tons.
[1] https://knoema.com/atlas/China/CO2-emissions-per-capita
[2] https://knoema.com/atlas/United-States-of-America/CO2-emissi...
On a per capita basis, many Chinese metros are among the worst, as is much of the US (especially in the midwest and south), Canada, and Australia.
China plan is for emissions to peak in 2030 and then fall to reach net zero by 2060. They've just launched a big cap and trade system to support this.
The EU's plan is to reach a 55% reduction by 2030 and net zero by 2050. They too are going for a cap and trade system, to launch by 2026.
And the US? At the Federal level, we've got one major party that wants to do plans similar to the EU or China, and one major party that at best wants the government to do nothing and at worse wants to promote the increasing use of fossil fuels.
Whenever the first party controls the House of Representative, the Senate, and the Presidency we can get Federal action on climate change. But whenever that party loses any one of those the other party can largely stop them from further action. When all three go to that party, they can even reverse prior actions.
China has a very good chance of implementing their plan. The EU has a pretty good chance too. There is a good chance the US won't have a plan that can survive a party change for at least another generation.
Since we don’t care about area under the curve, or the current y axis value, but only slope, I would optimize for dumping mondo CO2 for the next 25 years and then spend the remainder of humanity’s time lecturing everyone else on why they haven’t cut as much as me.
A hugely disproportionate amount of China's CO2 emissions (compared to the West) has been in construction [1].
China has built a mind-bogglingly insane amount of housing in the last 30 years - and given its population growth - it will not need to continue emitting CO2 for construction at this rate.
China's second biggest source of emissions is Coal. This is becoming rapidly uneconomical in China. And unlike in the US, it doesn't seem like the special coal interests are given much consideration. This source of carbon will likely be 90% gone within 20 years.
Finally - China does not have much oil, and seems to have very little interest in importing massive amounts of oil for cars. China is RAPIDLY moving to electric vehicles. And already, China uses much less CO2 per capita on transport than the West.
If China is going to be a long-term problem on emissions - it's only because 22% of the world's population lives in China - and China is no longer poor. It's not going to be because Chinese people insist on driving gas powered vehicles everywhere and eating bacon 24/7.
[1] https://chinapower.csis.org/china-greenhouse-gas-emissions/
And despite standards of living in China still much lower than western countries, you can already see the reduction in per-capita emission since 2013, thanks to all the measures you mentioned.
https://www.frontiersin.org/files/Articles/696381/frsc-03-69...
The per capita numbers in China are already big, but the biggest difference seems to be that there are a lot of people in those Chinese cities.
Sidenote, looks like the study authors think Quebec City is in a developing country? Ouch.
I laughed.
https://ourworldindata.org/contributed-most-global-co2
My point is, playing this blame game is not helping anything. It's a global problem, so we all have to contribute. The atmosphere does not know or care about national boundaries, so we need to do as much as possible. The fact is, America has high emissions per capita, and the resources and know-how to fix it.
I'm not saying we should give China a free pass, but I believe the correct path is for the West (or whatever country you're in) to take initiative and reduce CO2, while using that as a leverage to pressure other nations. Too many arguments end up sounding like "Why should I do anything when $(country X) isn't doing its share?" I believe that's not productive.
* Also, what's up with immigration quotas? You don't want more people to live in a society with more efficient energy usage (by your own admission)?
Perhaps some Gold Medal count for lowest emissions per capita is needed!
> "23 Chinese cities - among them Shanghai, Beijing and Handan - along with Moscow and Tokyo accounted for 52% of the total [greenhouse gas emissions]"
but admits that
> "In per capita terms, however, emissions from cities in the richest parts of the world are still generally higher than those from urban centres in developing countries..."
not only could you draw the mistaken conclusion that cities are pollution machines, but that china is the problem child, a double-whammy of subtle sensationalism.
the west, and the US in particular, should be leading the fight against pollution, not just because it's the right thing to do for ourselves and future generations, but also because it's a geopolitical and economic lever. instead, our collective complacency and greed drives us to subtly blame developing countries stiving for parity with the west, rather than tackling the problem with economic might and wild abandon. instead it's another notch in the belt for capital misallocation.
Every single western city could drop to 0 emissions, but those 23 Chinese cities along with Moscow and Tokyo already account for the majority of urban greenhouse gas emissions.
The only number that matters to humans is the quota per capita. It's how we set policy.
What is the per-capita carbon budget that you'd like to assign to the US, the EU, and to China? If those numbers are different, why? If they are the same, which region exceeds them, and by how much?
after all, that would pretty much screw your lovely market
If a country splits in two (something like Yugoslavia or Sudan), has its emissions halved? If a city gobbles up its neighbor, has that city's emissions doubled?
Why count only cities, then?
Because this is often used as an excuse to do nothing, until the other side does it first. And they say the same...
This is such flawed reasoning if you actually want to accomplish anything. When everyone thinks of the issue as an all-or-nothing problem everyone will act in their own interest. It’s always better for the prisoners to defect. But when one prisoner has the benefit of knowing the other prisoner’s decision then everything changes.
Specifically, the majority of emissions from the 167 chosen cities, not the majority of the entire world's emissions.
The conclusion is flawed - the United States does not have many large cities, or even large metropolitan areas. Comparing Bejing (21 million people), Shanghai (24 million), or Tokyo (14 million) to NYC (8 million) or Los Angeles (4 million), of course the larger cities which are entire multiples larger are going to going to account for a majority of the emissions.
Bejing has a population roughly that of Florida, the third largest US state.
Was it the original title? Neither Reuter's article nor the study is titled as such.
> but admits that
This is a study by a university in China. Not sure what you mean by "admit"? It's the fact that a large amount of greenhouse emission is driven by a handful of cities predominantly in China. It's also the fact that, per capita, Western countries still emit more.
> instead, our collective complacency and greed drives us to subtly blame developing countries striving for parity with the west, rather than tackling the problem with economic might and wild abandon
Perhaps you have a bigger point to make, because this article is very far from blaming. Also, the same point is essentially regurgitated in every article mentioned China's or India's responsibility in fighting pollution. Make no mistake, they do bear large responsibility, if only because they control over what can happen within their borders.
There are obvious reasons why massive economies won't just replace factories etc. with cleaner tech so instead, those of us who really care should be developing the tech that drives this. Invent an amazing wind turbine or clean battery and let the Chinese and whoever else buy it up to clean up their country!
This isn't just for pollution though. If you think that you can do policing/government/privacy/transport/whatever better then do it and let all the other countries copy you :-)
How do these emissions look when normalized by density and economic output? Is there industry within city limits? Is it really a mystery that the largest cities in the world are also responsible for the largest emission outputs?
Because this honestly sounds like a non-story by a journalist that doesn't understand per capita terms.
Yes, we still haven't decoupled economic output from emissions.
Yes, we need to tackle it.
What's the proposed solution here? Not having cities?
Really thought Reuters would have some editors or standards, rather than publishing sensationalist nothingburgers like this.
"Stationary energy is one of the largest contributors to GHG emissions of cities, which includes emissions from the fuel combustion and electricity use in residential and institutional buildings, commercial buildings, and industrial buildings in the study. Nearly half of the 109 cities had stationary energy emissions that represented more than 70% of their total GHG emissions, and more than 80% of the cities had stationary energy emissions that represented over 50% of total emissions; therefore, most of these cities can achieve significant GHG reduction progress only if this portion of energy emissions can be well-controlled."
[1] - https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frsc.2021.69638...
In per capita terms, however, emissions from cities in the richest parts of the world are still generally higher than those from urban centres in developing countries*
In terms of sectors, the GHG emissions from the stationary energy uses (such as residential, commercial, and industrial buildings) and transportation sector contributed the most*
https://www.frontiersin.org/files/Articles/696381/frsc-03-696381-HTML/image_m/frsc-03-696381-g001.jpg
Chinese cities are remarkably inefficient on the surface, but most of their energy consumption seems to come from 'industrial buildings'. The primary course (paper) does not elaborate on what constitutes industrial buildings.
https://www.frontiersin.org/files/Articles/696381/frsc-03-696381-HTML/image_m/frsc-03-696381-g004.jpg
I disagree with the focus of the conclusions in the paper.
My conclusion:
1. Road transportation is the main contributor to emissions in medium-large sized sparse cities. Instead of targeting per-capita efficient mega cities like Bangkok and Seoul without much head-room left, we should look at per-capita leaders like Atlanta, Perth and LA/SD to make improvements.
2. Someone needs to take a closer look at what China's 'industrial emissions' are. They are off the charts, and far outpace anything the rest of the world puts forth.
3. When people say : "The developing world's abuse of coal is causing huge emissions and the Paris climate accords don't address it'; they should say China and China exclusively. Other country's emissions are an order of magnitude off from Chinese cities at both absolute and per capita numbers. India's and SEA's cities are remarkably efficient. (probably due to underdevelopment, but still) (If this is due to the world exporting its manufacturing to China, then stringent trade laws on emissions will either lead to increased downstream prices in consuming countries or manufacturing will return to developed/greener countries due to cleaner infrastructure/tech. I am fine with both).
Shocker.
...I see happy downvotes, but I don't really see why. Don't we have very very recent evidence of Chinese provincial governments fucking around with official numbers in the form of 2019-2020 COVID stats? Don't we have recent evidence of Chinese interests ignoring agreed-upon international standards in the form of CFC emissions of the sort that everybody else managed to get out of their economic systems 30 years ago?