23 October 2009

Two Views of BAU in China

The following two graphics show two starkly different views of business-as-usual emissions from China. Here are the EIA projections, as graphed by this week's Economist:

And here is a picture of how the Chinese government views BAU, from an article in this week's Nature:

Note that the EIA has emissions at about 12 GtCO2 whereas the domestic figure has about 7.5 Gt, about 40% less. Has China already reduced its emissions by 40% by 2030 from BAU? Or are we seeing some clever gamesmanship in advance of international climate negotiations? You can glean my answer from these two posts: here and here.