Update on Potential Chinese Energy and Climate Policy Developments

This article clarifies what I referred to a few days ago. Setting an energy cap before an emissions cap would follow the Chinese pattern of setting energy intensity reduction targets before they set emissions intensity reduction targets. Setting an energy consumption cap might seem odd. At the meeting in India it was argued that this might be done for "social" reasons. The level of development in Europe and Japan is seen as desirable and adequate and the Chinese government doesn't want its society to become like the United States. Of course, it might be desirable to limit energy use for environmental reasons. Though some energy production and consumption processes are more environmentally damaging than others, in the end all energy use is used to transform nature in some way.

P.S. 21 August

Actually, none of this is news. I and most other people missed this news item back in March. The target didn't appear in the 5 year plan but it still seems to be under discussion as a potential future policy.