China May Fuel Global Risks if U.S. Fails to Push Conservation
Both countries might be better off if the United States encouraged China to invest in hydrogen fuel cells or solar energy rather than an American oil company.
Since CNOOC Ltd., an oil company owned mostly by the Chinese government, made its unsolicited $18.5-billion bid for California-based Unocal Corp. last month, the Washington debate has revolved mostly around the deal’s economic and national security implications.
But the energy and environmental ramifications may justify far more concern. The acquisition attempt, which the Unocal board is studying, suggests that China is anticipating enormous increases in its consumption of fossil fuels. The direct result for the United States and other nations could be a threatening rise in the carbon dioxide emissions associated with global warming, as well as higher gas prices at the pump.
“The more their demand, the higher oil and gas prices are going to go here,” says Michael R. Wessel, a member of the congressionally chartered U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. “All people have to do is look at the $2.50 a gallon for gas they spend on their summer vacation to realize that the China problem is here to stay.”
Chinese demand isn’t the only cause of rising gas prices, of course. China uses far less energy per person than the United States or other Western nations. But it is much less efficient in its energy use than major industrialized nations, partly because it relies so heavily on coal to generate electric power.
China requires about three times as much energy as the United States to produce $1 in economic output. It emits nearly four times as much carbon dioxide per dollar of economic activity as the United States. That means that as China’s rapid economic growth continues, its demand for energy and its contribution to global warming will skyrocket.
China consumes 40% as much energy as the United States. The U.S. Energy Information Administration, the government’s source for energy statistics, projects that over the next 20 years, that ratio will rise to two-thirds. China has moved past Japan into second place (behind the United States) among the world’s largest oil importers. With new cars flooding China’s roads, the agency projects that through 2025, the country’s oil consumption will increase 2 1/2 times faster per year than the average for the industrialized Western nations.
The Chinese are feeling the environmental implications of these trends first, with heavy traffic and thick pollution in their major cities. But China’s energy use could affect people around the world by accelerating global warming.
China was exempted from reductions required by the Kyoto Protocol on global warming because it was classified as a developing country. But if China can’t reduce the growth of its carbon emissions, it could overwhelm efforts to control them elsewhere. The Energy Information Administration forecasts that from 1990 through 2025, China’s total carbon emissions will rise more than the combined increase for the United States, Western Europe and Japan.
The most frightening part is that such forecasts may be optimistic. They assume that China over time will produce each dollar of economic output with less energy and carbon emissions. That’s been the pattern until recently. But Jeffrey Logan, China program manager for the International Energy Agency in Paris, points out the most recent Chinese figures show energy efficiency declining as the nation continues an energy-intensive boom in housing, industrial and road construction. “That’s tremendously scary,” Logan says.
Experts like Logan and David Jhirad, vice president for science and research at the World Resources Institute, say the Chinese government is genuinely concerned about these trends. Chinese officials are shifting more reliance for power generation from coal to cleaner sources such as natural gas and hydropower. Last fall, China adopted automotive fuel economy standards slightly more stringent than those in the United States. And China is cooperating with the United States on joint programs to study “clean coal” and other green energy approaches.
The problem is that these efforts don’t remotely match the scale of the problem. China, for instance, deserves credit for imposing fuel economy standards marginally tougher than America’s. But China projects that by 2020, the number of cars and trucks on its roads will increase sevenfold, to 140 million. Against that tide, slightly exceeding the modest U.S. standards seems the equivalent of raising a dam 6 inches to protect against a tsunami.
China needs to think more boldly. As the Unocal bid suggests, China now expects to rely primarily on the same fossil fuel-based strategy as nations, such as the United States or Germany, that industrialized over a century ago. But China could contribute enormously to the global environment, the sustainability of world oil supplies and the health of its own citizens by working to leapfrog to cleaner 21st century energy technologies -- like wind and solar energy for electricity, hybrid cars and ultimately vehicles powered by hydrogen fuel cells that emit only water and heat.
“There is a need in China for much more than just an incremental improvement in efficiency,” says Jhirad, who dealt with international energy issues in the Clinton administration. “There is a need for considering revolutionary approaches.”
Admittedly, the United States lacks much standing to demand more energy efficiency from anyone. While completing an energy bill last month, the Senate rejected mandatory reductions in carbon dioxide emissions and tougher fuel economy standards. President Bush continues to minimize the dangers of global warming.
Those decisions strip America of its power of example -- its best tool to promote transformative energy changes in China that would benefit the United States too. If America clings to the energy strategies of the past, it won’t have the leverage to nudge China and other rising economic powers toward the fuels of the future.
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Ronald Brownstein’s column appears every Monday. See current and past columns on The Times’ website at www.latimes.com/brownstein.
