China 'lacks resources' to cut critical emissions

China is concerned about global warming but lacks the money and technology to significantly reduce its own greenhouse gas emissions that are worsening the problem, a top government scientist said today.

China is the world’s biggest consumer and producer of coal, and is expected to surpass the US as the world’s No 1 greenhouse gas emitter in the next decade.

It wants to reduce its dependence on coal but converting to cleaner energies on a mass scale would be prohibitively costly for China, which is still a developing economy.

It also “lags behind Europe and the US” in the technology needed to burn cleaner coal, which accounts for 69% of its energy output, said Qin Dahe, chief of the China Meteorological Administration, and an adviser to the government on climate change.

“It takes time to catch up,” he said at a news conference.

Qin served as one of China’s representatives to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which last week announced that global warming is very likely caused by mankind and that climate change will continue for centuries.

He said China agreed with and was concerned about the report’s conclusions.

China, like the rest of the world, will increasingly face problems of extreme temperatures, rising sea levels, drought and more intense typhoons because of the effects of global warming, he said.

Qin’s comments come as winter temperatures in China’s capital have hit a 30-year high, state media said.

Qin and other scientists are preparing to brief the central government on climate change based on the findings of the UN study.

They would recommend that China invest more in research and observation of weather patterns and climate change and promote environmental awareness, Qin said.

He said the central government had already set a “very ambitious and arduous goal” of reducing carbon dioxide and other emissions by 4% a year over the next five years.

The central government is “very serious about the commitment and has firmly demanded all regions to meet the emissions reduction targets”, he said.

However, China has no binding international commitments to reduce its emissions and failed to meet similar targets set by the government five years ago.

Last month, state media reported that some regions were suspected of submitting fake data on emissions in 2006.

A separate Chinese report released last month said climate change could cause large drops in agricultural output over the coming decades.

In the latter half of this century production of wheat, corn and rice in China will drop by as much as 37%, and the country’s average temperatures would rise by 2 or 3 degrees Celsius in the next 50 to 80 years, the report said.

It also said evaporation rates for some inland rivers would increase by 15%. China already faces a severe water shortage, especially in the northern part of the country.

A British environmental expert said yesterday that water shortages in China were already reaching “incredible” proportions, with Shanghai particularly vulnerable unless drastic action is taken quickly.

“The Chinese are facing an incredibly water-stressed economy,” Justin Mundy, a government adviser on climate change said.

“All the water in the south-west of China is fed by glacial melt,” he said. “Glacial melt in about 25 years’ time is not going to be there in anything like the capacity that is going to be required. What then, Shanghai?”

The China Daily newspaper said Beijing’s temperature hit 12.8 degrees Celsius on Saturday – a 30-year high for the date – prompting an early spring, with frozen lakes melting and trees blooming.