While China’s future development is clearly trending toward low-carbon growth, China will face a number of challenges in achieving its INDC targets, including constraints resulting from China's current stage of economic and social development, its underlying economic structure, and limited natural reserves, energy resources, energy efficiency, technological capacity, institutions and policy, as well as complexities in the international political and economic landscape at large.
1.Access to natural resources is a key risk factor in the achievement of China's INDC. Abundant sources of natural gas and other clean energies, for example, will be necessary to replace coal consumption. Securing access to a sufficient and reliable supply of resources and ensuring national energy security while controlling costs will be a major challenge as China seeks to achieve its INDC targets.
2.As China is still in the process of industrialization and urbanization, heavy industry sectors such as steel, petrochemicals, construction materials, and equipment manufacturing continue to represent a large portion of the economy. This economic makeup, combined with the scaling up of infrastructure development that comes alongside rapid urbanization, is likely to result in increased energy consumption and carbon emissions. While the Chinese government has committed to rebalancing the economy, the fact remains that industrial restructuring cannot be accomplished overnight, and downward pressure on the economy presents serious challenges to transition.
3.As a rising proportion of the Chinese population enters the middle class, increasing emissions from transportation and building are likely to surpass emissions from manufacturing over the medium- to long-term. In order to achieve the targets set out in the INDC, the younger generation must be educated to adopt low-carbon lifestyles and consumption habits.
4.The relative reliability and uncertainty of technology is another major challenge China faces in achieving its INDC objectives. For example, China needs to address issues surrounding renewable energy generation and the reliability of power grids, environmental impacts from hydropower, the safety of nuclear power, and the uncertainty of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology.
5.As a developing economy, China lags in terms of overall technological sophistication, with limited R&D capacity in certain key technologies, especially in low-carbon and adaptation technology. Effective international cooperation to secure access to technology will be an important factor in the successful implementation of the INDC targets.
6.Achieving the mitigation and adaptation targets will require enormous investment and construction costs. While some of these are incremental investments that will generate economic returns, a greater majority of these—such as the application of CCS technology—will engender economic costs. In addition to these economic costs, China may face social costs in the process of transitioning, such as structural unemployment caused by the closure of outdated production facilities. Additional measures will be necessary to mitigate these social impacts.
7.Capacity among key stakeholders remains limited, and there is an urgent need to raise social awareness and improving institutional and social mechanisms dealing with climate change. China lacks the macro-management capabilities to address climate change and its legislative and policy systems remain underdeveloped. China still lacks a sound statistical and accounting system for GHG emissions and is comparatively weak in the monitoring and calculation of GHG emissions, as well as in regulation and enforcement. All of these shortcomings represent challenges for China as it seeks to realize its INDC targets.
Fu Sha, Zou Ji, Liu Linwei
China National Center for Climate Change Strategy and International Cooperation (NCSC)
Translated by China Carbon Forum
