Berkeley Lab on U.S.-China Joint Announcement on Climate Change

On Nov. U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping made a historic U.S.-China Joint Announcement on Climate Change outlining each country's commitment to strengthen bilateral cooperation on climate change and to announce post-2020 actions in support of the effort to transition to low-carbon economies. Regarding China's announced target of peaking of carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions around 2030, Lynn Price, Leader of the China Energy Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), said: "When we compare China's 2030 target to the results of a number of recent or ongoing studies of China's energy and emissions pathways to 2050, this appears to be a relatively ambitious date to achieve a CO₂ emissions peak and implies a meaningful effort beyond business-as-usual. An important consideration, though, is the level of CO₂ emissions when the peak occurs, which was not included in China's announcement. Current studies show a range of 12 to 15 GtCO₂ (gigatons CO₂₎ between 2038 and 2040 in the baseline scenarios and a range of 10 to 11 GtCO₂ between 2025 and 2030 in the ambitious scenarios." Regarding China's pledge to increase the non-fossil fuel share of all energy to around 20 percent by 2030, Nan Zhou, Deputy Group Leader of the China Energy Group, said: "A number of recent studies show a 20 percent share to be achievable in their continuous effort scenarios, while the more ambitious scenarios indicate a possible a range of 25 to 30 percent non-fossil energy sources by 2030.