Achieving National Emission Reduction Target—China’s New Challenge and Opportunity

Abstract

I order to realize sustainable economic development, the Chinese government developed a national emission reduction policy within its 11th five-year plan (2006−2010), targeting energy consumption reduction per unit GDP by 20% and main pollutants reduction (COD and SO2) per unit GDP by 10%. The National Development and Reform Commission monitors progress at the midyear and evaluates results at year’s end. A local official failing to meet the targets for three consecutive years will be ineligible for promotion during the next five years. Thus, strong political incentives exist for local officials to execute national environmental policy within their jurisdictions. Such a policy was successfully implemented during 2006−2010, with a result of significant COD (from 25.49 to 22.95 million tons) and SO2 (from 14.14 to 12.73 million tons) reduction. Given these previous successes, the national government sought to continue the pollutant emissions reduction policy in its 12th five-year plan (2011−2015) and added two new indicators, ammonium nitrogen and nitrogen oxide pollutants. It also stipulates that the total emission of heavy metals, total phosphorus (TP) and total nitrogen (TN) will be controlled in sensitive watersheds, coastal areas, and regions, although without a detailed quantitative target. However, on October 11, 2011 the Ministry of Environmental Protection announced that the newly released national emissions reduction targets were not completely achieved, whereas some emissions reduction targets were not met, some actually increased. Nitrogen oxide emissions increased by 6.17%. The reasons are multiple and complicated. First, the 11th five-year emission reduction target was achieved mainly through an engineering approach, namely, establishing wastewater treatment plants and desulfurization facilities in coal-burning power plants. This approach was effective, and relatively efficient, during 2006−2010 because of China’s immature environmental control infrastructure, but provided smaller potential for further reduction through engineering efforts. Second, the emission reduction policies expanded from manufacturing, services and residential sectors to include agricultural (ammonium nitrogen) and transportation sectors (nitrogen oxide), requiring new knowledge development and investigation to identify effective techniques. However, to meet the soaring demand on food production, fertilizer use has continuously increased. Also, to support rapid domestic auto industry development, the national government has continued a policy to encourage consumer motor vehicle purchase. In addition, nitrogen oxide is also generated from coal-burning power plants and cement factories. These two sectors have seen unprecedented growth due to increasing energy demand. Third, China faces imbalanced development across different regions. While it is easier for more prosperous eastern China regions to achieve these targets, the much less prosperous western China regions are still struggling to achieve basic economic development goals. The national government recognized such a fact and has implemented different provincial targets. This form of target setting, although socially understandable from an economic development perspective, is not scientifically rational from an environmental perspective. Finally, current quantitative targets are relative and not absolute indicators. Relative, ratio-based, indicators provide only a partial picture of environmental performance. Absolute indicators need to be included to show a more complete impact of activities and outcomes because a relative reduction in emissions does not necessarily mean a net absolute reduction in environmentally detrimental emissions. Relative environmental emissions improvement may still occur even when a net emission increase occurs if a region’s annual economic growth rate is significant, especially in China. In order to overcome these challenges an integrated approach should be adopted. First, the focus should move to production efficiency and industrial structural change, such as circular economy policy (the realization of a closed loop of materials flow