Carbon emissions might have peaked in China, study finds

China’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions fell from 2014 to 2016 and might already have peaked, according to a study published on Monday, with structural economic changes allowing Beijing to meet targets earlier than expected.

China vowed before the Paris climate talks in 2015 to bring CO2 emissions to a peak by “around 2030”, and the country’s top climate official, Xie Zhenhua, has already said it could meet the pledge ahead of time.

But the study, published by Nature Geoscience, said “in retrospect, the commitment may have been fulfilled even as it was being made”, with emissions hitting a record 9.53 gigatonnes in 2013 and falling in the next three years to 9.2 gigatonnes in 2016.

While emissions rose by an average of 9.3 per cent per year from 2000 to 2013, China’s economy underwent a “structural break” in 2014, and was shifting to less carbon-intensive high technology sectors, it said.

“Unless there is a significant amount of change – a large government intervention like the stimulus package of 2008 – then China’s emissions will stabilise and gradually go down,” said Dabo Guan, a professor of climate change economics at the University of East Anglia, one of the authors of the study.

In May, environment group Greenpeace estimated that China’s CO2 emissions rose 4 per cent in the first quarter of this year after increasing 2 per cent last year, adding that “backsliding” on earlier progress could this year result in China’s biggest annual rise in emissions since 2011.