Page 9 - AsiaElec Week 33 2021

AsiaElec EMISSIONS AsiaElec
China CO2 emissions growth falls to 1%
VIETNAM
CHINA’S CO2 emissions grew by 1% year on year in the second quarter of 2021, way below the first quarter increase of 15%, according to analysis from Carbon Brief.
The 1% growth in Q2 is a major slowdown from the record-breaking increase in Q1, when emissions grew at their fastest for more than a decade as the Chinese economy recovered from the coronavirus pandemic, driven by growth in construction, steel and cement production.
Carbon Brief said it used official figures for reporting the domestic production, import and export of fossil fuels and cement, as well as com- mercial data on changes in stocks of stored fuel to calculate the 1% rise in emissions.
Q2 saw a 16% fall in demand for diesel year- on-year and a 3% drop for oil products overall, with only modest growth of 1% for cement and 3% for coal power.
Carbon Brief said the changes reflected gov- ernment efforts reining in a runaway real estate sector and a rapid increase in steel production.
The decline in emissions growth also comes as Beijing is bedding in its new climate policies. The government wants emissions to peak in 2030 and for the country to be carbon neutral by 2060.
The government has said that it will publish more detailed plans later this year on how it will reach peak emissions in the iron and steel sector, the energy sector and the whole economy.
The growth in CO2 emissions in Q2 was
driven by the increased use of coal for power generation and increased use of fossil gas across all sectors, as emissions from coal use outside the power sector, from cement manufacturing and oil consumption, stopped growing, Carbon Brief said
In the second quarter, consumption of ther- mal coal – used for electricity production, as well as in industrial boilers and to heat buildings – increased by 3%, compared to 20% annual growth in the first quarter of 2021.
Consumption of fossil gas continued to boom, increasing 25% year on year in the sec- ond quarter of 2021. Annual growth in cement production, another major source of CO2 emis- sions, slowed from 47% in the first quarter to just 1% in the second quarter.
Meanwhile, China announced plans in the first two quarters of the year for eight new blast furnace projects with a total capacity of 35 mil- lion tonnes per year and 43 new coal-fired power plant units, the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) and Global Energy Mon- itor (GEM) said in a briefing.
If approved and built, they will emit an esti- mated 150 million tonnes of CO2 per year.
The briefing noted that as China has been the dominant driver of global emissions growth during this century, as well as during 2021, the success of China’s efforts plays a crucial role in the global picture.™
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