Lord Deben was on the Toady programme this morning discussing whether other countries were doing as much as us on the renewables front (audio below). This statement grabbed my attention.
If you look at what China's doing...China's actually moving a lot faster than we are now, and it's actually moving towards a peak in its emission in the mid, maybe even in the early, 2020s...
This is pretty bizarre when you think about it. Per capita emissions have been falling in the UK for decades, as has the carbon intensity of the economy. How has China been doing? Not so well actually, as this graph of per capita carbon dioxide emissions shows (source).
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Click for full sizeHowever, according to this article, this 2020s peak in emissions is correct and is earlier than prevously expected, although it's not entirely clear if it refers to total emissions or per capita. I'm guessing the former. So how is the UK doing on the total emissions front? The answer is shown below (source).
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Click for full sizeSo UK total emissions have been falling for decades apart from a blip in recent years, which looks to be connected with the Climate Change Act from the timing of it. Again, it seems hard to represent China as moving faster than the UK.
But perhaps Lord D just meant that the Chinese are installing renewables faster than us? Renewables are certainly said to be one of the reasons for the peak in emissions arriving faster than expected (alongside lower economic growth and other factors).
According to this article at Bloomberg:
The [Chinese] government aims to have 100 gigawatts of wind-power installed capacity and more than 35 gigawatts of solar power by 2015...
With a population of 1.34bn, 100 GW of wind power represents about 72 W/capita. The UK currently has 8445 MW of wind for a population of 63 million, which is 134 W/capita. So we are already doing roughly double what China is expected to achieve by 2015.
For solar, China's 2015 figure of 35 GW represents 26 W/capita, while the UK has about the same already.
In fact, China has been developing very large amounts of hydro power This is possible in totalitarian countries where whole populations can be moved at the stroke of a pen, but is not really an option here, although perhaps Lord D thinks otherwise. Comparing figures here was tricky. I found a 2009 figure for Chinese hydro capacity of 196GW. Another article suggested this has been growing at 15GW per annum. Let's say that they currently have 250GW or 186 W/capita. The UK has 1650MW or 26 W/capita.
Overall I reckon from here that China is adding renewables capacity at around 35GW per annum, or about 26 W per capita per annum. The UK meanwhile is adding renewables capacity at roughly 2GW per annum which is about 31 W per capita per annum. I'm therefore struggling to find any evidence at all that China is moving lots faster towards decarbonisation than us.
Of course these figures represent capacity increases rather than actual generation and wind power is famously useless. So it may be that if you did the figures again with power generated by type you would find that China's decision to install a sensible form of power - hydro - rather than a foolish one - wind - means that they are indeed making faster progress towards decarbonisation than us.
But that wouldn't be much of an advertisement for the policies Lord Deben upholds, would it?