Monday 8 June 2015

China’s emissions ‘likely to peak by 2025’

China’s greenhouse gas emissions could peak more than five years earlier than expected.

That’s according to a new paper published by the Grantham Research Institute and the ESRC Centre for Climate Change Economics.

The paper found although President Xi Jinping has publicly agreed to reduce emissions by 2030, they're likely to start declining by 2025.

It states: “Analysing trends in the key emitting sectors, we conclude China’s greenhouse gas emissions are unlikely to peak as late as 2030 and are much more likely to peak by 2025. They could peak even earlier than that.”

The report also found if China’s greenhouse gas emissions peak by 2025, it would reach between 12.5 billion and 14 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent.

The authors of the paper, Fergus Green and Professor Lord Nicholas Stern, claim it's increasingly likely the world will avoid global warming of more than 2°C above pre-industrial levels.