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So I researched this a bit. Accounts vary on this. The RCG source I linked above puts China's territorial CO2 emissions at around 14 gigatons and China's consu

by jeeeb 5y ago

So I researched this a bit. Accounts vary on this. The RCG source I linked above puts China's territorial CO2 emissions at around 14 gigatons and China's consumption based emissions (accounting for place of consumption) at around 13 gigatons. So that's not actually a particularly significant adjustment. The Global Carbon Project also attempts to quantify this. They put China as a net exporter of CO2 to the order of 0.7 tons of CO2 per capita in 2018. Compared to this Western European countries imported around 1-2 tons of CO2 per capita (https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2 https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2). According to Global Carbon Project estimates China's 2018 CO2 consumption was similar to that of France or Spain. Of course since 2018 China's economy and CO2 emissions have continued to grow. So to summarize even adjusting for place of consumption China's CO2 emissions are at best broadly similar to those of Western Europe and certainly not 5x lower as originally implied. That said the US is definitely a worse emitter per-capita. That aside I think the problem of consumption based emissions accounting is that it ignores the impact of different industrial development choices made by different countries. For example if China chooses to burn dirty coal so that it can provide cheap energy to increase the competitiveness of its exporters that's okay, it's the fault of the countries taking those exports not China.

dirtyid 5y ago
Wonder how much of this is Chinese emissions being construction driven, especially on "new" stuff developed west gets to hide into historical emissiond data. This is the same in most developing countries who need to build on massive scale for the first time if they want to be uplifted from outdated building stock. More so in Asia lacking in renewable construction materials like wood. So we get stats like China using more concrete in a few years than US in last century. PRC is still at 60% urbanization rate. Even accounting for ghost city memes and 60M+ empty apartments, that's still ~300M dwelling units and infrastructure short for 80% urbanization goal in next 50 years. Unless there's significant building material improvements, China and many other countries still has a lot of emissions to "catch up". And for the purpose of development and alleviating poverty, the faster the better. >it ignores the impact of different industrial development choices made by different countries. That's another consideration that seperates PRC, who is actually competent at expediently building massively, both politically and industrially. A capability many countries lack. Majority of countries are unable adopt emission heavy policies even if they wanted to. Would be interesting to see projected US emissions if they could actually pursue uncompromised infrastructure plan. Something like total emission of plan since it'll likely be stretched over much longer period due to how slow US builds. Or what was Europe / Japan / Korea's per capita emission rebuilding the country post war which is akin the the breadth and speed of developement in China.
l332mn 5y ago
Those statistics are very incomplete, as they don't measure the emissions connected to the whole lifecycle of products, but rather seem to track only a weighted average of production based emissions (which appears to be their definition of consumption based emissions). In order to get a realistic measure, we need to keep track of the whole product lifecycle, from gathering materials and production, to lifetime usage, waste disposal and reabsorption into the earth and atmosphere. This multiplies the total sum of emissions many times over, and heavily disfavours high-consuming per capita countries. If we compare household consumption rates, China is emitting only a fraction of that of western households. In terms of money spent, consumption per capita of the US is about 6-7 times larger than that of China.
- jeeeb 5y ago
  The statistics I posted make a reasonable attempt to quantify consumption based emissions. If you have a better source I’d be interested in seeing it. Just stating dollar based household consumption values seems like a very poor proxy though. It assumes each dollar of consumption is equally emissions intensive and ignores non-household consumption. More fundamentally though shifting accounting for emissions to place of consumption absolves China of responsibility for its own industrial development choices. China is free to have lose (or laxly enforced) emissions standards to make its industry more competitive. For example China’s free to produce huge amounts of steel in inefficient blast furnaces instead of using more efficient, more expensive methods. According to consumption accounting all the responsibility for those emissions falls on the countries consuming those goods, even if they might not have ever wanted their industry to be undercut by cheap imports. It assumes that all the benefits of the CO2 emissions accumulate with the country consuming the goods, not the country producing the goods. According to the most obvious metric (territorial emissions) China’s per capita are significantly higher than Europe but trail those of the US.
  - l332mn 5y ago
    There is a broader international movement towards using better tracking of product life cycle emissions: https://www.unep.org/explore-topics/resource-efficiency/what-we-do/life-cycle-initiative https://www.unep.org/explore-topics/resource-efficiency/what... Such data, when generally available, will give us a better picture of the overall global situation. > Just stating dollar based household consumption values seems like a very poor proxy though I think it is, actually. Western citizens and US citizens in particular does not only have a much higher expenditure of consumer goods, the goods they prefer have higher emissions connected to them also. Here is a report from 2015 about Germany's average household emissions: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/276831049_Regional_carbon_footprints_of_households_a_German_case_study https://www.researchgate.net/publication/276831049_Regional_... "Households are either directly or indirectly responsible for the highest share of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions." The national average was found to be about 15 tons CO2 per capita per year. Here is a report with data from 2015 regarding China's average household emissions: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/18/4919/pdf https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/18/4919/pdf The national average was ~1.5 tons CO2 per capita per year. The following article claims 1.7 tons per capita. https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3165 https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3165 Here we can see that China's total household emissions were about 1/10'th of that of Germany in 2015. The following article compares China’s household emissions compared to UK and Canada https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2211464515000317 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S22114... “In the years when HCEs were first reported (1995 in China, 1990 in Canada and 1997 in UK), per person HCEs in China, Canada and the UK were 0.54 tCO2, 13.54 tCO2 and 9.63 tCO2, respectively. These values had changed to 1.77 tCO2, 13.14 tCO2, 8.20 tCO2 by the end of reporting (2011 in China and UK and 2007 in Canada),” As you can see, such analyses paints a very different picture, one where western households appears to be the main driver of global emissions. And thus the focus on production based emissions is largely a red herring, due to the fact that China has to catch up in infrastructure. The emissions tied to western infrastructure have already been emitted. In essence, China has become the scapegoat of the guilty conscience of the west, who will twist the data in such a way to paint themselves in the most flattering light they can, and China in the worst possible way. > It assumes that all the benefits of the CO2 emissions accumulate with the country consuming the goods, not the country producing the goods. All countries have a responsibility for decreasing emissions tied to the production of goods, but all goods are essentially produced for the global market and as such is driven by global demand. Hence consumption is the most important measure when delivering blame. Moreover, if hypothetically western Europe had been forced to produce the goods that China produces (per capita) and vice versa, the emissions tied to European production would rapidly increase, and the production of them would naturally become much dirtier as well due to the limited amount of green energy and cheapness of dirty sources of electricity. So delivering the blame on countries for the production of goods assumes the impossible alternative scenario where the west hypothetically could do a lot better in terms of production. It’s not clear that they could.

by jeeeb 5y ago

dirtyid 5y ago

Wonder how much of this is Chinese emissions being construction driven, especially on "new" stuff developed west gets to hide into historical emissiond data. This is the same in most developing countries who need to build on massive scale for the first time if they want to be uplifted from outdated building stock. More so in Asia lacking in renewable construction materials like wood. So we get stats like China using more concrete in a few years than US in last century. PRC is still at 60% urbanization rate. Even accounting for ghost city memes and 60M+ empty apartments, that's still ~300M dwelling units and infrastructure short for 80% urbanization goal in next 50 years. Unless there's significant building material improvements, China and many other countries still has a lot of emissions to "catch up". And for the purpose of development and alleviating poverty, the faster the better. >it ignores the impact of different industrial development choices made by different countries. That's another consideration that seperates PRC, who is actually competent at expediently building massively, both politically and industrially. A capability many countries lack. Majority of countries are unable adopt emission heavy policies even if they wanted to. Would be interesting to see projected US emissions if they could actually pursue uncompromised infrastructure plan. Something like total emission of plan since it'll likely be stretched over much longer period due to how slow US builds. Or what was Europe / Japan / Korea's per capita emission rebuilding the country post war which is akin the the breadth and speed of developement in China.

l332mn 5y ago

Those statistics are very incomplete, as they don't measure the emissions connected to the whole lifecycle of products, but rather seem to track only a weighted average of production based emissions (which appears to be their definition of consumption based emissions). In order to get a realistic measure, we need to keep track of the whole product lifecycle, from gathering materials and production, to lifetime usage, waste disposal and reabsorption into the earth and atmosphere. This multiplies the total sum of emissions many times over, and heavily disfavours high-consuming per capita countries. If we compare household consumption rates, China is emitting only a fraction of that of western households. In terms of money spent, consumption per capita of the US is about 6-7 times larger than that of China.

jeeeb 5y ago
The statistics I posted make a reasonable attempt to quantify consumption based emissions. If you have a better source I’d be interested in seeing it. Just stating dollar based household consumption values seems like a very poor proxy though. It assumes each dollar of consumption is equally emissions intensive and ignores non-household consumption. More fundamentally though shifting accounting for emissions to place of consumption absolves China of responsibility for its own industrial development choices. China is free to have lose (or laxly enforced) emissions standards to make its industry more competitive. For example China’s free to produce huge amounts of steel in inefficient blast furnaces instead of using more efficient, more expensive methods. According to consumption accounting all the responsibility for those emissions falls on the countries consuming those goods, even if they might not have ever wanted their industry to be undercut by cheap imports. It assumes that all the benefits of the CO2 emissions accumulate with the country consuming the goods, not the country producing the goods. According to the most obvious metric (territorial emissions) China’s per capita are significantly higher than Europe but trail those of the US.
- l332mn 5y ago
  There is a broader international movement towards using better tracking of product life cycle emissions: https://www.unep.org/explore-topics/resource-efficiency/what-we-do/life-cycle-initiative https://www.unep.org/explore-topics/resource-efficiency/what... Such data, when generally available, will give us a better picture of the overall global situation. > Just stating dollar based household consumption values seems like a very poor proxy though I think it is, actually. Western citizens and US citizens in particular does not only have a much higher expenditure of consumer goods, the goods they prefer have higher emissions connected to them also. Here is a report from 2015 about Germany's average household emissions: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/276831049_Regional_carbon_footprints_of_households_a_German_case_study https://www.researchgate.net/publication/276831049_Regional_... "Households are either directly or indirectly responsible for the highest share of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions." The national average was found to be about 15 tons CO2 per capita per year. Here is a report with data from 2015 regarding China's average household emissions: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/18/4919/pdf https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/18/4919/pdf The national average was ~1.5 tons CO2 per capita per year. The following article claims 1.7 tons per capita. https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3165 https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3165 Here we can see that China's total household emissions were about 1/10'th of that of Germany in 2015. The following article compares China’s household emissions compared to UK and Canada https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2211464515000317 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S22114... “In the years when HCEs were first reported (1995 in China, 1990 in Canada and 1997 in UK), per person HCEs in China, Canada and the UK were 0.54 tCO2, 13.54 tCO2 and 9.63 tCO2, respectively. These values had changed to 1.77 tCO2, 13.14 tCO2, 8.20 tCO2 by the end of reporting (2011 in China and UK and 2007 in Canada),” As you can see, such analyses paints a very different picture, one where western households appears to be the main driver of global emissions. And thus the focus on production based emissions is largely a red herring, due to the fact that China has to catch up in infrastructure. The emissions tied to western infrastructure have already been emitted. In essence, China has become the scapegoat of the guilty conscience of the west, who will twist the data in such a way to paint themselves in the most flattering light they can, and China in the worst possible way. > It assumes that all the benefits of the CO2 emissions accumulate with the country consuming the goods, not the country producing the goods. All countries have a responsibility for decreasing emissions tied to the production of goods, but all goods are essentially produced for the global market and as such is driven by global demand. Hence consumption is the most important measure when delivering blame. Moreover, if hypothetically western Europe had been forced to produce the goods that China produces (per capita) and vice versa, the emissions tied to European production would rapidly increase, and the production of them would naturally become much dirtier as well due to the limited amount of green energy and cheapness of dirty sources of electricity. So delivering the blame on countries for the production of goods assumes the impossible alternative scenario where the west hypothetically could do a lot better in terms of production. It’s not clear that they could.