As China's government finalises the country's 13th Five Year Plan for economic development (2016)(2017)(2018)(2019)(2020), this article takes stock of recent changes in China's economy and energy system since the turn of the century, and looks ahead to the likely trajectory of Policy Relevance StatementThe article suggests a number of important areas of Chinese policy focus to mitigate risks and challenges that might otherwise prolong the peak date for CO2 emissions. Our analysis and conclusions also have more general implications for Chinese and international climate policy.They suggest that China's international commitment to peak emissions 'around 2030' should be seen as a highly conservative upper limit from a government that prefers to under-promise and over-deliver. They also reinforce the virtue of a 'dynamic' approach to international climate cooperation, as envisaged under the Paris Agreement, whereby countries' targets and policies are regularly updated in light of new information. The importance of macroeconomic analysis for emissions projections climate policy development is also highlighted.
Proponents of climate change mitigation face difficult choices about which types of policy instrument(s) to pursue. The literature on the comparative evaluation of climate policy instruments has focused overwhelmingly on economic analyses of instruments aimed at restricting demand for greenhouse gas emissions (especially carbon taxes and cap-and-trade schemes) and, to some extent, on instruments that support the supply of or demand for substitutes for emissions-intensive goods, such as renewable energy. Evaluation of instruments aimed at restricting the upstream supply of commodities or products whose downstream consumption causes greenhouse gas emissions-such as fossil fuels-has largely been neglected in this literature. Moreover, analyses that compare policy instruments using both economic and political (e.g. political Bfeasibility^and Bfeedback^) criteria are rare. This article aims to help bridge both of these gaps. Specifically, the article demonstrates that restrictive supply-side policy instruments (targeting fossil fuels) have numerous characteristic economic and political advantages over otherwise similar restrictive demand-side instruments (targeting greenhouse gases). Economic advantages include low administrative and transaction costs, higher abatement certainty (due to the relative ease of monitoring, reporting and verification), comprehensive within-sector coverage, some advantageous price/efficiency effects, the mitigation of infrastructure Block-in^risks, and mitigation of the Bgreen paradox^. Political advantages include the superior potential to mobilise public support for supply-side policies, the conduciveness of supply-side policies to international policy cooperation, and the potential to bring different segments of the fossil fuel industry into a coalition supportive of such policies. In light of these attributes, restrictive supply-side policies squarely belong in the climate policy Btoolkit^.Climatic Change (2018) 150:73-87
Historically, climate governance initiatives and associated scholarship have all but ignored the potential for Bglobal moral norms^to bring about changes in the political conditions for global climate mitigation. This is surprising, since global moral norms are widely employed-as both a mode of governance and an analytical framework-in other domains of global governance, from international security to human rights. However, recent national-level fossil fuel divestments, moratoria on new coal mines and bans on gas fracking, among other developments, suggest the promise of global moral norms prohibiting fossil fuel-related activities, which this article terms Banti-fossil fuel norms^(AFFNs). The article interprets recent examples of such activities in the light of international relations theory on moral norms to provide a general framework for understanding how AFFNs originate, spread and affect states. Specifically, the article argues that there are: (i) influential agents that are originating, and likely to continue to originate, AFFNs; and (ii) international and domestic mechanisms by which AFFNs are likely to spread widely among states and have a significant causal effect on the identity-related considerations or rational calculations of states in the direction of limiting or reducing the production or consumption of fossil fuels. The article also shows that, because they spread and affect state behaviour through mechanisms of Binternational socialization^and domestic Bpolitical mobilization^, AFFNs cohere with and build upon the new paradigm of global climate governance crystallized in the Paris Agreement. AFFNs, the article concludes, represent a promising new frontier in climate governance.
China is the world's largest consumer of coal-at present accounting for 50% of global demand, thus having a worldwide impact economically and environmentally 1. Between 2000 and 2013, consumption rose from 1.36 billion tons to over 4.24 billion tons, at an average annual rate of 12% (Figure 1) 2. This prodigious consumption has fueled China's economic growth over the past three decades. Since coal use is also a significant source of CO 2 emissions and air pollution, China has come under increasing international and domestic pressures to reach peak emissions 3. Consequently, moving the economy away from coal dependency-which remains China's primary energy source-has become an important development strategy. The timing of China's peak coal consumption has been disputed, with a majority of recent projections placing it between 2020 and 2040 4. Yet China's coal use dropped to 4.12 billion tons, a decrease of 2.9%, in 2014, with another 3.6% decrease in 2015, all while GDP continued to grow by 7.3% and 6.9% respectively. As Liu et al. (2015) and Korsbakken et al. (2016) discuss, there are ambiguities in the accuracy of China's coal use data, which have implications in China's energy and emissions policy. However, the government has retrospectively revised statistics on the basis of more accurate accounting (which are used here).
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