Global leadership on climate is changing with China and India significantly outweighing negative effects on emissions from the Trump administration's proposed rollback in the U.S. estimated at around 0.4 gigatonnes of CO2 by 2030, Climate Action Tracker (CAT), an Independent scientific-based assessment said on Tuesday.
"Positive developments on coal use in China and India are likely to reduce projected global carbon emissions growth by roughly two to three billion tonnes by 2030 compared to forecasts made a year ago," according to CAT.
CAT estimates that Trump's recent, sweeping policy rollbacks are unlikely to have a major impact on global emissions by 2030.
Professor Niklas Hohne from the NewClimate Institute in Germany said that, "the highly adverse rollbacks of U.S. climate policies by the Trump Administration, if fully implemented and not compensated by other actors, are projected to flatten U.S. emissions instead of continuing on a downward trend."
Meanwhile, both China and India are set to supersede their Paris Agreement climate pledges.
"China’s coal consumption has declined over three consecutive years (2013 to 2016), and a continued slow decline is expected. India has stated that its planned coal-fired power plants may not be needed," the report said.
CAT also indicated that if India fully implements the recently announced policies, it would see a significant slowdown in the growth of CO2 emissions over the next decade.
Bill Hare of Climate Analytics in Berlin said that five years ago, the idea of either China or India stopping—or even slowing—coal use was considered an insurmountable hurdle.
This perception was because coal-fired power plants were thought by many to be necessary to satisfy the energy demands of these countries, he explained.
Hare stated that recent observations show that both China and India are now on the way towards overcoming this challenge.
The positive developments in India and China significantly outweigh the potentially negative effects on emissions from the Trump Administration’s proposed rollbacks in the U.S., estimated at around 0.4 gigatonnes of CO2 by 2030.
CAT's analysis on China, India, and the U.S. was released during the Bonn climate talks, which are running between May 8 to 18.
(Anadolu Agency)
