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China is aiming to reduce what it calls carbon intensity by 40 to 45 percent compared with 2005 levels, according to Xinhua, the state news agency.
The announcement came the day after President Barack Obama pledged a provisional target for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in theUnited States, the first time in more than a decade that an American administration had offered even a tentative promise to reduce production of climate-altering gases. Mr.
Obama discussed climate change with President Hu Jintao of China when the two met in Beijing on Nov. 16.
China and the United States, the two largest emitters of greenhouse gases, have been in discussions on their options on the issue of climate change. Both countries are expected to be crucial players next month at international climate meetings in Copenhagen, where nations will negotiate terms for a post- 2012 global treaty on reducing emissions, although leaders have said they do not expect to come to an agreement there.
Chinese officials announced Thursday that Prime Minister Wen Jiabao would attend, after U.S. officials said Wednesday that Mr. Obama planned to take part in the talks himself.
In Copenhagen,Mr.Obamawill tell the delegates that the United States intends to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions ‘‘in the range of’’ 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050, American officials said Wednesday.
China’s announcement of future reductions uses an altogether different benchmark. China will measure its reduction by carbon intensity, or amount of carbon dioxide emitted per unit of gross domestic product, meaning that emissions would still grow, though the rate would slow.
China has rejected demands to announce an absolute reduction in carbon emissions, arguing that environmental concerns must be balanced with economic growth and that developed countries must first demonstrate a significant commitment to reducing emissions.
China has been trying to deflect pressure, ahead of Copenhagen, by showing that it has made its own commitments to battling climate change. In September, Mr.Huannounced at theUnitedNations that China would reduce carbon intensity by 2020 but drew some criticism by not giving a number.
Earlier, China had set a goal of reducing by 2010 the amount of energy needed to produce every 1,000 yuan, or about $146, of G.D.P. compared with 2005 levels.
By choosing a base line of 2005 in improving output for each kilogram of carbon dioxide emitted, China is including considerable improvements that it has already made. The current five-year plan, which runs from 2006 through 2010, calls for an improvement of 20 percent in overall energy efficiency, and the great bulk of China’s carbon emissions come from burning fossil fuels.
As part of national civil service reviews, provincial and even municipal officials are now assessed partly on how they have improved energy efficiency.
In Guangdong Province, for example, officials have required the 200 largest city governments and the 200 largest companies to sign contracts pledging to improve energy efficiency by 20 percent by 2010, as older factories are being scrapped or renovated.
China has also made formidable investments in alternative energy over the past four years that will help it meet its target, with further installations of wind turbines, solar panels and nuclear power plants already planned.
Some analysts say China may be unwilling to make larger commitments until the U.S. Congress passes legislation on reduction targets. The figures released by the White House on Wednesday were based on targets specified by legislation that passed the House in June but is stalled in the Senate. The Congress has never enacted legislation that includes firm emissions limits or ratified an international global-warming agreement with binding targets.
Mr.Obamawill travel to theUnitedNations- sponsored talks in Copenhagen to deliver the promise. He will appear Dec.
9, near the start of the 12-day session, on his way to accept the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo on Dec. 10, officials said.
By making the pledge in an international forum, Mr. Obama is betting that Congress will complete action on a climate bill next year and will be prepared to ratify an international agreement based on the commitment.
But White House officials acknowledged that those outcomes were uncertain.
They will depend in large part on whether the Democratic sponsors of the legislation can win 60 votes in the Senate for a measure that is, at the moment, unpopular in the United States and on whether major developing nations, notably China and India, deliver credible emissions pledges of their own.
Mr. Obama has met over the past two weeks with the leaders of China and India, the fastest-growing sources of greenhouse gases, to discuss climate change and the Copenhagen conference.
U.S. officials said that leaders of both countries told Mr. Obama they would be prepared to announce steps to reduce the rate of growth of emissions if the United States put a pledge on the table.
‘‘Obviously, we hope other major economies will put forth ambitious action plans of their own,’’ Carol M.
Browner, the president’s senior adviser for energy and climate change, said at a White House briefing Wednesday.
Mr. Obama, who had not previously committed either to emissions targets or to going to Copenhagen, has been under considerable pressure from other world leaders and environmental advocates to reassert American leadership on climate change.
Andreas Carlgren, the Swedish environment minister, said Mr. Obama had now raised expectations for the Copenhagen talks, but he expressed a note of disappointment about the timing of his visit. He said he had hoped Mr. Obama would come in the final days of negotiations, when dozens of other heads of government are planning to arrive.
A White House official said a second appearance was ‘‘highly unlikely.’’ It was unclear what effect Mr.
Obama’s promise of domestic emissions reductions would have on the slow progress of climate legislation through Congress.
Until now, the administration’s negotiators have said they will not get ahead of Congress in making promises in an international forum, but Mr. Obama has essentially adopted the targets of the bill that passed the House in June.
The House bill aims at greenhouse gas reductions of 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and sharper cuts in the following decades, through a cap-andtrade system that includes most of the major U.S. sources of carbon dioxide emissions. Last month, a Senate committee passedameasure calling for a 20 percent cut by 2020, but that is expected to be weakened as the legislation moves through other Senate committees and onto the floor, perhaps next spring.
Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, a co-sponsor of the Senate legislation, said he believed that the president’s actionswould give a boost to the Copenhagen meetings and help move the Senate bill. He called the decision to declare an American target a ‘‘game changer,’’ domestically and internationally.
‘‘By announcing a provisional target, contingent on the support of Congress, the president has defined a path to an international agreement that challenges the developed and developing nations to fulfill their obligations,’’ he said. ‘‘It lays the groundwork for a broad political consensus at Copenhagen that will strip climate obstructionists here at home of their most persistent charge, that the United States shouldn’t act if other countries won’t join with us.’’ But Senator James M. Inhofe, the Senate’s most outspoken skeptic on climate change, said that Mr. Obama’s public pledge would do little to speed an international agreement and foolishly prejudged the outcome of a Senate debate that had barely started.
Mr. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, said that Senate climate legislation was ‘‘dying on the vine’’ and that the Senate would never ratify a treaty that did not require strong emissions reductions from major developing countries.
Mr. Obama takes little risk in appearing briefly at the Copenhagen conference because he and other world leaders punctured expectations for the session 10 days ago in a side meeting of leaders of Pacific nations.
The leaders agreed that they would work at Copenhagen toward an interim political declaration on climate change that stopped short of a binding international treaty. Delegates are expected to pledge to complete work on a treaty next year. Many foreign leaders, particularly those in European nations that have been more aggressive in dealing with climate change, have become critical ofMr.
Obama’s seeming passivity on the issue.
