Climate Alliance Calls for Cuts in China’s Carbon Dioxide Emissions

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATE: July 16, 2021
FROM: The West Virginia Climate Alliance
CONTACT: Perry Bryant: perrybryantwv@outlook.com or 304-344-1673
FOR MORE INFO and to arrange interviews: Douglas John Imbrogno at douglaseye@gmail.com

Climate Organizations Calls for Cuts in China’s Carbon Dioxide Emissions

China’s climate policy threatens the world’s ability to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, according to the West Virginia Climate Alliance, a broad-based climate action coalition.

The Climate Alliance called on Special Climate Envoy John Kerry to negotiate an end to China’s financing and construction of coal-fired power plants and change how they report their greenhouse gas emissions under the Paris Climate Agreement.

“China is an outlier for constructing new coal-fired power plants,” said Perry Bryant, co-founder of the 19-member Climate Alliance. They constructed 38 gigawatts of electrical power in 2020, which is “a lot,” he said. “It’s almost 20 times the amount of new coal-fired power constructed in India and 40 times the amount constructed in Poland.”

These power plants could be in operation for 50 years, damaging prospects in the world’s efforts to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, according to Bryant. The conservative International Energy Agency has called for an end to new coal-fired power plants this year. “It is our hope that Envoy Kerry can convince China to heed the IEA’s advice and stop financing and constructing new coal-fired power plants,” said Bryant.

Equally important to the Climate Alliance is the need for American leadership on the climate crisis, he said. “China’s failure, which we hope will be corrected soon, cannot be an excuse or justification for inaction by the United States.”

“The world depends on American leadership. We have the talent and expertise to demonstrate to the world that investing in clean energy — solar, wind and battery storage — will create good paying jobs and help protect the planet from the worst impacts from global warming.”

The Climate Alliance also called for Kerry to urge China to change how they report the country’s emissions under the Paris Climate Agreement. The United States and many other countries report their total greenhouse gas emissions. China reports their emissions as a percentage of their gross domestic products.

“With a growing economy, China can claim that their ’carbon intensity’ is decreasing, which is how they report their emissions under the Paris Agreement, when in fact their carbon dioxide emissions are actually increasing,” said Bryant. “It’s fuzzy math, and it should stop. We need transparency by China and what their emissions actually are.”