China, India making big strides on climate change
UNTIL recently, China and India have been cast as obstacles, at the very least reluctant conscripts, in the battle against climate change. That reputation looks very much out-ofdate now that both countries have greatly accelerated their investments in cost-effective renewable energy sources – and reduced their reliance on fossil fuels. It’s America – Donald Trump’s America – that now looks like the laggard.
According to research released last week at a United Nations climate meeting in Germany, China and India should easily exceed the targets they set for themselves in the 2015 Paris Agreement signed by more than 190 countries. China’s emissions of carbon dioxide appear to have peaked more than 10 years sooner than its government had said they would. And India is now expected to obtain 40 percent of its electricity from nonfossil fuel sources by 2022, eight years ahead of schedule.
Every one of the Paris signatories will have to reduce emissions to ward off the worst consequences of global warming – devastating droughts, melting glaciers and unstoppable sea level rise. But the tangible progress by the world’s No1 producer of greenhouse gases (China) and its No3 (India) are astonishing nonetheless, and worth celebrating.
There is also a lesson here for the United States. Piece by piece, agency by agency, the Trump administration inistration seems determined to destroy or undermine every initiative on which President esident Barack Obamama based his pledge edge in Paris to sububstantially reduce Ameririca’s greenhouse gases: his plan to close old, coalalfired power plants, his proroposals to reduce methhane emissions ns from oil and gas wells, his s mandates for more fuel-efficient vehicles. The excuse given in every case is that these rules would cost jobs obs and damage the economy – the he same bogus argument once usedd by Vice President Dick Cheney to persuade President George W Bush to renege on his campaign promise to combat global warming.
China and India are finding that doing right by the planet need not carry a big economic cost and can actually be beneficial. By investing heavily in solar and wind, they and others like Germany have helped drive down the cost of those technologies to a point where, in many places, renewable sources can generate electricelectric ity more cheaply than dirtier sources of energy like coal. In a recent auction in
India,I di developersd l of solar farms offered to sell electricity to the grid for 2.44 rupees per kilowatt-hour (or 3.79 cents). That is about 50 percent less than what solar farms bid a year earlier and about 24 percent less than the average price for energy generated by coal-fired power plants.
The shift from fossil fuels has thus been much faster and more pronounced than most experts expected. China has reduced coal use for three years in a row and recently scrapped plans to b build more than 100 coal powe power plants. Indian officials havehav estimated that the country might no longer need to build new coal plants beyond thos those that are under construction construction.
One other hearten heartening fact: Electric vehicle sale sales in China jumped 70 percent last year, thanks in large part to generous government inc incentives. India is much furth further behind in this area, but the country’s minister of power said last month that all ca cars sold in the country sho should be electric by 20 2030. China an and India’s enthusias enthusiasm for cleaner energy arises in part from a wish to red reduce the te terrible air p pollution t that afflicts c cities like B Beijing and N New Delhi; any move away f from coal would make a b big difference in public he health. I Investments i in cutting-edge energy and transportation technologies would also bolster the economy as a whole.
There are, of course, formidable challenges, not least developing batteries to store the excess electricity generated by solar farms on sunny days and wind farms on windy days. And there are emissions from industry and agriculture to worry about. Still, Beijing and New Delhi – not, sadly enough, Washington – are showing the way forward.