What Can China Do? China's Best Alternative Outcome for Energy Efficiency and CO2 Emissions

After rapid growth in economic development and energy demand over the last three decades, China has undertaken energy efficiency improvement efforts to reduce its energy intensity under the 11th Five Year Plan (FYP). Since becoming the world's largest annual CO{sub 2} emitter in 2007, China has set reduction targets for energy and carbon intensities and committed to meeting 15% of its total 2020 energy demand with non-fossil fuel. Despite having achieved important savings in 11th FYP efficiency programs, rising per capita income and the continued economic importance of trade will drive demand for transport activity and fuel use. At the same time, an increasingly 'electrified' economy will drive rapid power demand growth. Greater analysis is therefore needed to understand the underlying drivers, possible trajectories and mitigation potential in the growing industrial, transport and power sectors. This study uses scenario analysis to understand the likely trajectory of China's energy and carbon emissions to 2030 in light of the current and planned portfolio of programs, policies and technology development and ongoing urbanization and demographic trends. It evaluates the potential impacts of alternative transportation and power sector development using two key scenarios, Continued Improvement Scenario (CIS) and Accelerated Improvement Scenario (AIS). CIS represents the most likely path of growth based on continuation of current policies and meeting announced targets and goals, including meeting planned appliance efficiency standard revisions, fuel economy standards, and industrial targets and moderate phase-out of subcritical coal-fired generation with additional non-fossil generation. AIS represents a more aggressive trajectory of accelerated improvement in energy intensity and decarbonized power and transport sectors. A range of sensitivity analysis and power technology scenarios are tested to evaluate the impact of additional actions such as carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) and integrated mine-mouth generation. The CIS and AIS results are also contextualized and compared to model scenarios in other published studies. The results of this study show that China's energy and CO{sub 2} emissions will not likely peak before 2030, although growth is expected to slow after 2020. Moreover, China will be able to meet its 2020 carbon intensity reduction target of 40 to 45% under both CIS and AIS, but only meet its 15% non-fossil fuel target by 2020 under AIS. Under both scenarios, efficiency remains a key resource and has the same, if not greater, mitigation potential as new technologies in transport and power sectors. In the transport sector, electrification will be closely linked the degree of decarbonization in the power sector and EV deployment has little or no impact on China's crude oil import demand. Rather, power generation improvements have the largest sector potential for overall emission mitigation while mine-mouth power generation and CCS have limited mitigation potential compared to fuel switching and efficiency improvements. Comparisons of this study's results with other published studies reveal that CIS and AIS are within the range of other national energy projections but alternative studies rely much more heavily on CCS for carbon reduction. The McKinsey study, in particular, has more optimistic assumptions for reductions in crude oil imports and coal demand in its abatement scenario and has much higher gasoline reduction potential for the same level of EV deployment. Despite these differences, this study's scenario analysis of both transport and power sectors illustrate the necessity for continued efficiency improvements and aggressive power sector decarbonization in flattening China's CO{sub 2} emissions

Outlook and Challenges for Chinese Coal

China has been, is, and will continue to be a coal-powered economy. The rapid growth of coal demand since 2001 has created deepening strains and bottlenecks that raise questions about supply security. Although China's coal is 'plentiful,' published academic and policy analyses indicate that peak production will likely occur between 2016 and 2029. Given the current economic growth trajectory, domestic production constraints will lead to a coal gap that is not likely to be filled with imports. Urbanization, heavy industry growth, and increasing per-capita consumption are the primary drivers of rising coal usage. In 2006, the power sector, iron and steel, and cement accounted for 71% of coal consumption. Power generation is becoming more efficient, but even extensive roll-out of the highest efficiency units could save only 14% of projected 2025 coal demand. If China follows Japan, steel production would peak by 2015; cement is likely to follow a similar trajectory. A fourth wedge of future coal consumption is likely to come from the burgeoning coal-liquefaction and chemicals industries. New demand from coal-to-liquids and coal-to-chemicals may add 450 million tonnes of coal demand by 2025. Efficient growth among these drivers indicates that China's annual coal demand will reach 4.2 to 4.7 billion tonnes by 2025. Central government support for nuclear and renewable energy has not been able to reduce China's growing dependence on coal for primary energy. Few substitution options exist: offsetting one year of recent coal demand growth would require over 107 billion cubic meters of natural gas, 48 GW of nuclear, or 86 GW of hydropower capacity. While these alternatives will continue to grow, the scale of development using existing technologies will be insufficient to substitute significant coal demand before 2025. The central role of heavy industry in GDP growth and the difficulty of substituting other fuels suggest that coal consumption is inextricably entwined with China's economy in its current mode of growth. Ongoing dependence on coal reduces China's ability to mitigate carbon dioxide emissions growth. If coal demand remains on its current growth path, carbon dioxide emissions from coal combustion alone would exceed total US energy-related carbon emissions by 2010. Broadening awareness of the environmental costs of coal mining, transport, and combustion is raising the pressure on Chinese policy makers to find alternative energy sources. Within China's coal-dominated energy system, domestic transportation has emerged as the largest bottleneck for coal industry growth and is likely to remain a constraint to further expansion. China is short of high-quality reserves, but is producing its best coal first. Declining quality will further strain production and transport. Transporting coal to users has overloaded the train system and dramatically increased truck use, raising transport oil demand. Growing international imports have helped to offset domestic transport bottlenecks. In the long term, import demand is likely to exceed 200 mt by 2025, significantly impacting regional markets. The looming coal gap threatens to derail China's growth path, possibly undermining political, economic, and social stability. High coal prices and domestic shortages will have regional and global effects. Regarding China's role as a global manufacturing center, a domestic coal gap will increase prices and constrain growth. Within the Asia-Pacific region, China's coal gap is likely to bring about increased competition with other coal-importing countries including Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and India. As with petroleum, China may respond with a government-supported 'going-out' strategy of resource acquisition and vertical integration. Given its population and growing resource constraints, China may favor energy security, competitiveness, and local environmental protection over global climate change mitigation. The possibility of a large coal gap suggests that Chinese and international policy makers should maximize institutional and financial support to moderate demand and improve energy efficiency

Global Carbon Emissions in the Coming Decades: The Case of China

China's annual energy-related carbon emissions surpassed those of the United States in In order to build a more robust understanding of China's energy-related carbon emissions, emissions after 2001? The divergence between actual and forecasted carbon emissions international trade, and central government policies in driving emissions growth. so greatly in error and what drove the rapid growth of China's energy-related carbon this article reviews the role of economic restructuring, urbanization, coal dependence, underscores the rapid changes that have taken place in China's energy system since 2001

Chapter 2: Sustainable and Unsustainable Developments in the U.S. Energy System

Over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the United States developed a wealthy society on the basis of cheap and abundant fossil fuel energy. As fossil fuels have become ecologically and economically expensive in the twenty-first century, America has shown mixed progress in transitioning to a more sustainable energy system. From 2000 to 2006, energy and carbon intensity of GDP continued favorable long-term trends of decline. Energy end-use efficiency also continued to improve; for example, per-capita electricity use was 12.76 MWh per person per year in 2000 and again in 2006, despite 16 percent GDP growth over that period. Environmental costs of U.S. energy production and consumption have also been reduced, as illustrated in air quality improvements. However, increased fossil fuel consumption, stagnant efficiency standards, and expanding corn-based ethanol production have moved the energy system in the opposite direction, toward a less sustainable energy system. This chapter reviews energy system developments between 2000 and 2006 and presents policy recommendations to move the United States toward a more sustainable energy system

Urban Form Energy Use and Emissions in China: Preliminary Findings and Model Proof of Concept

Urbanization is reshaping China's economy, society, and energy system. Between 1990 and 2008 China added more than 300 million new urban residents, bringing the total urbanization rate to 46%. The ongoing population shift is spurring energy demand for new construction, as well as additional residential use with the replacement of rural biomass by urban commercial energy services. This project developed a modeling tool to quantify the full energy consequences of a particular form of urban residential development in order to identify energy- and carbon-efficient modes of neighborhood-level development and help mitigate resource and environmental implications of swelling cities. LBNL developed an integrated modeling tool that combines process-based lifecycle assessment with agent-based building operational energy use, personal transport, and consumption modeling. The lifecycle assessment approach was used to quantify energy and carbon emissions embodied in building materials production, construction, maintenance, and demolition. To provide more comprehensive analysis, LBNL developed an agent-based model as described below. The model was applied to LuJing, a residential development in Jinan, Shandong Province, to provide a case study and model proof of concept. This study produced results data that are unique by virtue of their scale, scope and type. Whereas most existing literature focuses on building-, city-, or national-level analysis, this study covers multi-building neighborhood-scale development. Likewise, while most existing studies focus exclusively on building operational energy use, this study also includes embodied energy related to personal consumption and buildings. Within the boundaries of this analysis, food is the single largest category of the building energy footprint, accounting for 23% of the total. On a policy level, the LCA approach can be useful for quantifying the energy and environmental benefits of longer average building lifespans. In addition to prospective analysis for standards and certification, urban form modeling can also be useful in calculating or verifying ex post facto, bottom-up carbon emissions inventories. Emissions inventories provide a benchmark for evaluating future outcomes and scenarios as well as an empirical basis for valuing low-carbon technologies. By highlighting the embodied energy and emissions of building materials, the LCA approach can also be used to identify the most intensive aspects of industrial production and the supply chain. The agent based modeling aspect of the model can be useful for understanding how policy incentives can impact individual behavior and the aggregate effects thereof. The most useful elaboration of the urban form assessment model would be to further generalize it for comparative analysis. Scenario analysis could be used for benchmarking and identification of policy priorities. If the model is to be used for inventories, it is important to disaggregate the energy use data for more accurate emissions modeling. Depending on the policy integration of the model, it may be useful to incorporate occupancy data for per-capita results. On the question of density and efficiency, it may also be useful to integrate a more explicit spatial scaling mechanism for modeling neighborhood and city-level energy use and emissions, i.e. to account for scaling effects in public infrastructure and transportation