Imperial Professor works with international task force to help China go green

'Low carbon road map' proposed by team of experts<em> - News</em>

By Danielle Reeves
Wednesday 25 November 2009

An international task force has recommended ways for China to develop a low-carbon economy to tackle climate change, in a report presented to Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao this month. The task force was co-Chaired by Imperial College London's Professor Sir Gordon Conway.

The report's 'low carbon road map' recommendations will be incorporated into China's next five year economic plan (2011 – 2015), a decision that Sir Gordon says is 'momentous' for both China and the world.

Speaking last week at the British Government's Department of Energy and Climate Change, Sir Gordon, Professor of International Development at Imperial's Centre for Environmental Policy, said: "China has shown great leadership in accepting the urgency of moving to a low carbon economy."

The task force's low carbon economy plans were developed by a task force of Chinese and international experts drawn from governments, the private sector, non-governmental organisations and think tanks. Sir Gordon has been a co-Chair of the task force since 2007, when he was Chief Scientific Advisor for the British Government's Department for International Development (DfID). They worked under the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development (CCICED), chaired by Li Keqiang, Chinese vice-premier. Lord Stern, the climate economist, attended the September 2009 meeting of the task force in Beijing. He believed the report was the most careful, thorough analysis by any country.

Professor Sir Gordon Conway, co-Chair of the international task force

The report's recommendations, aimed at reducing China's carbon emissions to nearly 9bn tonnes by 2050, include:

- Reducing carbon emissions per unit of GDP by 4 or 5 percent year-on-year.
- Reducing energy consumption per unit of GDP by between 75 and 85 percent by 2050 – driven by efficiency gains in every economic sector.
- Cutting the share of manufacturing industry in the economy from the current 50 percent to around 30 percent by 2050.
- Increasing the use of renewable energy and nuclear power, with 50 per cent of new generating capacity being low-carbon by 2030. By 2050 all new power sources will be low carbon.
- Installing carbon capture and storage on a large scale by 2030.

Sir Gordon commented: "Technology will be critical. Much can be achieved by adapting existing technologies to Chinese conditions. But a lower, more desirable target of 5bn tonnes can only be achieved if there is shared innovation on a global scale."

Writing about the report in the Financial Times on November 12, Sir Gordon said that China's decision to embark on the road to a low carbon economy is partly a result of a growing sense of necessity: "China is a huge land mass with diverse climate regimes, all subject to the effects of climate change. In northern China the Ningxia province already suffers a two percent loss of gross domestic product per year from the effects of climate extremes. This will only worsen."

However, Chinese leaders are also aware of the economic potential of a low carbon society, said Sir Gordon: "They want to be one of the leading providers of clean technologies," he wrote. "China is already a world leader on solar power, heat and wind turbines, and is rapidly developing key technologies for electric vehicles."

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