Climate Change: China

Question

Asked by

Lord Hunt of Chesterton
To ask Her Majesty's Government, in light of their recent report, The Road to Copenhagen, which calls for an international agreement on cutting emissions, how they intend to respond to the Government of China's stated intention to increase their emissions by a factor of two or three by 2050. [HL4900]

The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Lord Hunt of Kings Heath)
We are not aware that the Chinese Government have officially endorsed any particular projection of their future emissions. Projections from Chinese and international experts vary considerably in magnitude and are highly dependent on assumptions about government policy. The UK is calling for China to commit at Copenhagen to pursue a low-carbon development plan in which future emissions growth deviates substantially from what would be expected in the absence of mitigation policies.

At the Major Economies Forum summit on 9 July 2009, major developing countries, including China, committed to undertake low-carbon-growth plans, and agreed that they would have to show how these produce meaningful deviation from their projected emissions, should no mitigation action have been taken.