By Colleen Howe
BEIJING, May 27 (Reuters) – China’s latest carbon data suggests it has changed the way it calculates carbon emissions, reducing by half the emissions growth the country previously reported from 2020 to 2025, climate researchers argue in a new report.
The “dramatic” change by the world’s biggest emitter of carbon dioxide has “erased half of the previously reported emissions growth from 2020 to 2025”, said Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA).
China’s latest statistics on carbon intensity in its five-year plan, when extrapolated to absolute carbon emissions, imply that China’s carbon emissions rose 7% from 2020 to 2025. The previous yearly figures on carbon intensity implied that emissions would have risen 14% over the five-year period, according to the analysis by CREA for Carbon Brief, which was published on Tuesday.
That implies a downward revision in carbon dioxide emissions by about 700 million metric tons per year, equivalent to Germany or South Korea’s yearly emissions, CREA said.
The changes mean that China could meet its 2030 climate commitments even if its absolute emissions increase, the report said.
State planner the National Development and Reform Commission and the environment ministry did not immediately respond to faxed requests for comment.
Carbon intensity, which China has long used to track its progress on climate change goals, refers to the amount of carbon dioxide emitted per unit of economic output.
China does not detail publicly how it calculates carbon intensity, but the researchers reproduced the figures using GDP data and estimated emissions from fossil fuel use.
The modelling suggested that starting with the latest five-year plan, the methodology began to exclude non-energy uses of fossil fuels. Non-energy uses include the use of oil and coal in chemical production, which has risen in recent years.
The methodology also began to include industrial process emissions, the researchers said. While the cement industry is one of the largest sources of industrial process emissions, output in China has declined because of the weakness in its property sector.
Taken together, those changes would have the effect of making emissions appear lower, the researchers said.
Another factor could be gaps in monitoring. Some data suggests emissions in the chemicals industry could have been under-counted, possibly due to the pressure of annual reporting deadlines, they said.
“The change in the definition of carbon intensity has the effect of weakening China’s climate targets and introducing more uncertainty into tracking progress,” the report said.
China has a target to reduce its carbon intensity by 65% from 2005 levels by 2030.
Its climate commitments are increasingly coming into the spotlight as the U.S. backtracks on its climate ambitions.
“While under the UN’s climate framework China is free to use any definition it wants to meet its own nationally determined climate pledges, retrospective changes to methodology or inconsistent accounting could erode the value of the country’s commitments,” the report said.
(Reporting by Colleen Howe; Editing by Kate Mayberry)
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