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CHINA’S ONGOING REFUSAL to agree binding emission reduction targets is supported by new research that says half of the country’s recent emissions increase is due to the production of exports – most for western countries.

The fact that China recently overtook the US as the world’s largest emitter is increasingly used to excuse western nations from taking a lead on climate change. A new report from a collaborative research team, just the latest in a string of similar claims, says that the increase is largely down to international demand for Chinese produce.

China’s CO₂ emissions increased 45% between 2002 and 2005; only 7% was due to domestic household consumption. 50% is due to production of exports (chemicals, metals, and electronics) of which 60% heads to the west. Last year the Stockholm Environment Institute estimated that the US is responsible for 9% of all Chinese emissions and the EU responsible for 6%.

In May 2008, tce spoke to Oxford University’s professor of energy policy Dieter Helm. He said that Kyoto is failing to reduce emissions, as the scheme only counts the volume produced within national borders. By this reckoning, the UK has reduced its emissions by 18% on 1990 levels – a success in the eyes of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

However, add imports, exports and international transport and this puts UK emissions at a 20% increase on 1990 levels. This is ‘carbon leakage’ – the emissions supporting UK consumption are occurring overseas.

The authors of the latest research agree with Helm that a border tax on carbon transfer would go a way to solving this discrepancy and bringing China to the negotiating table when forming the successor to the Kyoto Protocol in Copenhagen later this year: “We do not need to completely redesign Kyoto, but we could include incremental changes that address ‘carbon leakage’ and competitiveness concerns,” says report co-author Glen Peters. “Climate policy could be designed in similar ways to existing tax policy. For example we could design carbon taxes in a similar way to value-added taxation which covers imported products. In that way the consumer would pay for the emissions caused by his or her consumption.”

Following exports, capital formation – primarily construction – is the second-largest driver of the emissions increase in China.

The research Journey to world top emitter – an analysis of the driving forces of China’s recent CO₂ emissions surge has been accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters doi:10.1029/2008GL036540