Domestic firms step up efforts to cut emissions

China will be able to meet Paris climate deal goals: experts

Domestic energy-consuming companies will get the chance to improve their core competitiveness and sustainable development ability, but still face many challenges after China and the U.S. ratified the Paris climate deal, experts said Sunday.

China and the U.S., the world's two largest emitters of greenhouse gases, ratified the Paris Agreement to address global warming the day before the opening of this year's Hangzhou G20 summit, which was held during September 4 to 5, in East China's Zhejiang Province.

In a bid to meet the targets of the agreement, which was adopted at the Paris Climate Change Conference at the end of 2015, China plans to launch a national carbon market in 2017, covering eight core industries, Geng Chenghui, director with the department of energy management and environment protection of domestic oil giant Sinopec Corp, told the Global Times over the weekend.

"By then, all refineries, power-generation enterprises and some oilfield companies under Sinopec Corp will be involved in the national carbon market," Geng said.

"Over a long period, the agreement will push for advances in enterprises to meet targets for saving energy and reducing emissions and facilitate structural upgrades and improve efficiency. It will also help them grow in a green and low-carbon way and improve their core competitiveness and sustainable development ability," Geng noted.

"But companies will also face pressure from aspects such as emission cuts, agreement fulfillment and an increase in costs," he said.

Lin Boqiang, director of the Center for Energy Economics Research at Xiamen University, told the Global Times on Sunday one of the main challenges domestic firms will face is to balance the carbon trading in the upcoming carbon market, which will possibly be comprehensively launched during the 13th Five-Year-Plan (2016-20) period.

In carbon trading, companies that produce more than their share of emissions are allowed to buy unused quotas on the carbon market from those that produce less, according to Lin.

"Companies that actively make efforts to cut carbon emissions will benefit while others may be negatively affected," Lin said.

More efforts

"In order to save energy and reduce carbon emissions to advance the implementation of the Paris Agreement, Wuhan Iron and Steel (Group) Corp will step up efforts to control the total steel capacity in the future and speed up pace to upgrade the industrial structure," Lei Tixin, director of the manufacturing department of Wuhan Iron and Steel Co Ltd, told the Global Times Saturday.

"We will focus on optimizing the product structure and on producing energy-saving steel products… our company will promote green development, trying to set up a system that could conduct real-time tracking, collecting and evaluating of carbon emissions to master the situations of our firms," Lei noted.

The enterprise will also try to innovate in regards to energy saving and low carbon technologies and beef up cooperation with steel firms at home and abroad to improve their research and development abilities, said Lei.

According to Geng, Sinopec also plans to adjust its energy structure, such as further developing shale gas, with an annual capacity target of 10 billion cubic meters in 2017.

Beijing-based BCEG Environmental Remediation Co told the Global Times that it will continue to apply China's sustainable development strategy and to promote advanced environment remediation technology.

Continuous contribution

China's carbon emissions have been greatly cut in the last two years as the consumption of coal, China's major energy source, decreased due to the sluggish economy, said Lin, the expert with Xiamen University.

The coal consumption in the country decreased 2.9 percent year-on-year in 2014, the first negative growth in 15 years, and continued to fall by 3.7 percent in 2015, media reports said.

"The cut of carbon emissions by China in 2014 and 2015 overtook the joint emission reduction efforts by countries and regions across the globe during both years," Lin noted.

It is likely that China will be able to meet the target set in the Paris climate deal and that China will continue to make contributions to global carbon emission reductions, according to Lin.

For example, China is trying to increase the proportion of clean energy to 15 percent of its energy sector by the end of 2020, which will be conducive to the replacement of coal, he said.