E3G

The Independent: The Great Pall of China

By Chris Littlecott

UK newspaper The Independent today reports on the incredible growth in carbon emissions from China, featuring quotes from 2 E3G Founding Directors.

The article highlights the new figures from the International Energy Agency which predict that China will become the world’s biggest emitter later this year.

It then moves on to discuss the role that this summer’s G8 summit at Heiligendamm in Germany will play in shaping a response. This will need to focus on how developed nations cooperate with China and India on the rapid deployment of new technologies such as carbon capture and storage.

Given China’s dependence on coal, this technology is rapidly growing in importance:

We’re going to have to figure out pretty quickly how Europe and China can work together to come up with a carbon-neutral coal option,” said [E3G Founding Director] Tom Burke, a leading environmentalist.

The article then looks at the tensions within the G8 over how to reach a global deal, before ending with a focus on the thoughts of another E3G Founding Director:

Britain’s special representative for climate change, John Ashton flew to China last night on a mission to explore how trade policy could influence the development of markets in low-carbon technology. He said of the news that China would overtake the US as the leading greenhouse gas emitter: “I think what this does is increase even more than we understood hitherto the urgency of the process and the scale of the response needed. It is about a structural transformation of the global economy, from high-carbon to low-carbon, that we need to make together. It is even more urgent than we thought it was.”