Enlarge image
Coal power plant in Huainan
Photo: Kevin Frayer / Getty Images
When the heads of government meet in Glasgow on Sunday for the UN climate conference, all eyes will be on China.
The country now emits more than twice as much greenhouse gas as the USA, the world's second largest emitter.
However, it is still unclear whether President Xi Jingping will attend the meeting at all.
The People's Republic wants to become climate neutral by 2060, according to the announcement.
How enormous the challenge is is illustrated by a study by the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) and the financial service »Bloomberg«.
According to this, the CO2 emissions in the country with 1.4 billion inhabitants are so enormous that individual companies exceed the emissions of entire countries every year.
The steel manufacturer
China Baowu emits
211 million tons more CO2 into the atmosphere than Belgium and Austria together
The construction company
CNBM
has a carbon footprint similar to that of France, at 255 million tons
The energy company
Huaneng Power
comes close to the output of Great Britain with 317 million tons
The car manufacturer
SAIC
produces 158 million tons of CO2 similar to Argentina
The oil and petrochemicals company
Sinopec
has 733 million tons, more than Spain and Canada combined.
Oil producer Canada ranks 11th among the countries with the highest greenhouse gas emissions
This is just an excerpt from the list.
Many companies from the energy, steel, cement and oil sectors have a long way to go to reduce their emissions to zero in the long term, said CREA expert Lauri Myllyvirta to »Bloomberg«.
They would have to align their investments and business plans with the climate goals.
The Chinese government wants to soon present a concrete roadmap on how emissions in the country are to be reduced.
But they should still be allowed to rise until 2026 and only then fall.
Beijing points out that the rich industrialized countries are responsible for the majority of emissions in the atmosphere and that they themselves have problems reducing CO2 emissions.
"Without China there is no way to 1.5 degrees"
While head of state Xi Jingping announced in September that he no longer wanted to build coal-fired power plants in other countries, the situation is different in his own country.
China can mine coal itself, which reduces its dependence on energy exports.
On the other hand, the country is a world leader in the expansion of renewable energies - solar and wind power are also cheaper.
The five largest energy suppliers in the country, the so-called Big Five, have committed to reducing their emissions from 2025.
Nevertheless, new coal-fired power plants are still being built.
The building boom and the construction of entire cities are also turning the climate balance deep red because steel and cement are needed for this.
"Without China, there is no plausible way to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees," according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
The country is responsible for a third of CO2 emissions.
These would continue to rise, but “a high point is in sight before 2030”.
The earlier that happens, the greater the chances that China will become climate neutral in time.
fww
