HAO QUNYING/XINHUA PRESS/CORBIS

COMMENT
that the science is useful, usable and used9.
A high-level, transdisciplinary body
of international experts in disaster-risk
reduction should be established by national
governments and international organizations dealing with disaster risks, with input
from various sectors and civil society. Such
a body would have the reach and influence
from local communities, businesses and
governments to raise peoples awareness.
The same findings presented by an independent scientist or article would not.
The main practical difficulties will be in
incorporating the fields diverse information
and practices into an assessment, and demonstrating to policy-makers that it need not take
a extreme event to cause catastrophic human
consequences10. Government support for
the process will be essential. Synergies must
be found by combining and consolidating
disaster-risk reduction efforts across UN
institutions.
Disaster-risk management, climate
change and sustainable development targets will need to be aligned. For example,
there should be a coordinated assessment of
the state of knowledge in disaster risk and
its utility for supporting the UN Sustainable
Development Goals and the UN Framework
Convention on Climate Change.
Knowledge transfer will make communitybased resilience efforts possible. Illuminating
findings, best practices and state-of-the-art
modelling must become part of the evidencebased strategy for disaster-risk reduction.
Susan L. Cutter is professor of geography
at the University of South Carolina in
Columbia, USA. Alik Ismail-Zadeh is a
senior scientist in applied geosciences at the
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe,
Germany, and at the Russian Academy
of Sciences, Moscow, Russia. Irasema
Alcntara-Ayala, Orhan Altan, Daniel
N. Baker, Salvano Briceo, Harsh Gupta,
Ailsa Holloway, David Johnston, Gordon
A. McBean, Yujiro Ogawa, Douglas Paton,
Emma Porio, Rainer K. Silbereisen,
Kuniyoshi Takeuchi, Giovanni B.
Valsecchi, Coleen Vogel, Guoxiong Wu.
e-mail: scutter@sc.edu
1. Cutter, S. L. Chall. Sustain. 1, 7279 (2014).
2. Ismail-Zadeh, A. & Takeuchi, K. Nat. Hazard. 42,
459467 (2007).
3. Palmer, L. Nature Clim. Change 3, 857858 (2013).
4. Ismail-Zadeh, A. in Extreme Natural Hazards,
Disaster Risks and Societal Implications (eds
Ismail-Zadeh, A. et al.) 4760 (Cambridge Univ.
Press, 2014).
5. Gall, M., Nguyen, K. H. & Cutter, S. L. Int. J. Disast.
Risk Reduct. 12, 255267 (2015).
6. McBean, G. A. Curr. Opin. Environ. Sustain. 4,
122127 (2012).
7. Erisman, J. W., Brasseur, G., Ciais, P., van Eekeren,
N. & Theis, T. L. Nature 519, 151153 (2015).
8. Burton, I. Environ. Hazard. 3, 139141 (2001).
9. Boaz, A. & Hayden, C. Evaluation 8, 440453 (2002).
10. Cutter, S. L. J. Extrem. Events 1, 14 (2014).
Full author affiliations accompany this article online
at go.nature.com/fihq6v

Fossil-fuel factories are demolished in Chinas Hebei province.

Steps to Chinas
carbon peak

Regional targets and improved market mechanisms

could enable the nations carbon dioxide emissions to
peak by 2030, say Zhu Liu and colleagues.

n 2013, China released one-quarter of

the global total of carbon dioxide for
the year, and 1.5 times that released
by the United States. It is the worlds leading emitter of the gas. Without mitigation, Chinas CO2 emissions will rise by
more than 50% in the next 15 years. Last
November, in a joint announcement with
the United States, China pledged that its
CO2 emissions will peak by 2030. Existing policies are insufficient to make that
happen.
China has a two-pronged strategy for
tackling climate change increasing
energy efficiency in manufacturing, and
controlling regional emissions through targets. This approach has been effective: we
calculate that CO2 emissions per unit gross

domestic product (GDP) fell by 28.5%

between 2005 and 2013. This is equivalent
to a saving of more than 2.5gigatonnes of
CO2 (half of US total emissions). A fledgling domestic carbon-emissions-trading
scheme (ETS) has slowed CO2 emissions
growth by 23% in the seven provinces or
cities in which it has been piloted.
But rapid economic growth, especially the building of infrastructure, has
more than offset these reductions. Total
national CO2 emissions grew by 7% each
year between 2005 and 2013, although
growth of emissions is slowing in cities
such as Beijing and Shanghai as advanced
technologies and cleaner energy sources
are increasingly being used.
Curbing this growth will need a
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2015 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved

COMMENT
decrease in projected emissions between
2015 and 2035 that is almost equivalent to the
total global CO2 emissions in 2013 30gigatonnes (see Carbon crunch). This challenging goal is within reach if China keeps its
annual growth in emissions below 2%, rolls
out a national carbon-trading system and
obtains 30% of its energy from renewables
and natural gas by around 2035. Chinas per
capita emissions in 2030 would then mirror
those of the European Union (EU) in 2013 (a
little under 8tonnes of CO2 per person).
We propose four steps for China to hit this
ambitious target. It must strengthen regional
emissions targets; improve the reporting and
verification of emissions data; enhance the
regulation and supervision of a nationwide
emissions-trading market; and incentivize
the uptake of green technologies, especially
in underdeveloped regions.
Set regional emissions targets. A single
target will not be suitable for all of Chinas
30provinces and autonomous regions,
which have different energy-source mixes,
uses and economic development needs.
Peak emissions targets need to be designed
for each region such that the national total
falls by 2030.
Wealthy cities such as Beijing, Tianjin and
Shanghai, which have reversed emissions
growth since 2011, could cap their emissions
and set and adjust reduction targets at fiveyear intervals. Developed coastal provinces,
such as Guangdong, Zhejiang and Jiangsu,
that have benefited from the pilot ETS since
2010 should pledge more-aggressive and
earlier peak targets for example, reducing carbon emissions per capita to below
those of the EU before 2030 or even 2020.
Emissions in underdeveloped regions such
as Shanxi province and the Ningxia and Xinjiang autonomous regions could be allowed
to peak after 2030 to leave room for more
infrastructure construction.
Fossil-fuel use needs to be curtailed first.
The countrys ambitious plan to cap national
coal consumption in 2015 at 3.9 gigatonnes
must be met. Beijing and Tianjin are
required to halve their coal consumption by
2017 to meet mandated air-quality requirements. All conventional coal-fired plants in
Beijing will be converted to gas by the end of
2015 and an extra 13billion cubic metres of
natural gas from western China and 12billion cubic metres from other countries are
being piped to Beijing and the surrounding
cities. Smaller cities and other regions, too,
must reduce their coal use.
China can strengthen technology-driven
improvements in emission intensity (CO2
emissions per unit of GDP), especially in the
less developed regions. But loopholes also
need to be closed. For instance, two-thirds
of regions achieved their 200209 intensityreduction targets by enlarging the scale of

production1, which increased national emissions by 50% (ref. 2). To end this practice,
emission-intensity targets should be supplemented by indicators of physical emissions efficiency, for example, emissions per
unit of steel production. Such indicators are
easier to monitor and verify and can be used
to measure the efficiency of sectors, as well
as of individual factories.
Air-quality indicators, such as particulate concentrations, should be integrated
with emissions targets. Duplicate investments and work plans are common, with
Chinas National Development and Reform
Commission (NDRC) in charge of climatechange mitigation and the Ministry of
Environment responsible for air-pollution
abatement. Better coordination between
departments and a set of joint emissionscontrol measures managed by one agency
are needed.
Emissions targets must be decoupled from
GDP. Criteria by which local and provincial
leaders are evaluated for career promotion should include energy efficiency and
pollution-abatement targets, rather than
measures of economic development. Otherwise, greater growth will always trump
environmental sustainability.
Ensure transparent emissions monitoring, reporting and verification. Data sets
for Chinas total carbon emissions, especially
those generated by regions and sectors, are
not always reliable. Official national emissions totals have differed from self-reported
provincial statistics by 20%. And in sectoral
data sets, factories may overstate their emissions to make it easier for them to achieve
reduction targets 3 .
Also, the average car- China
bon content of Chinas produced
coal is not accurately 60% of the
known, given the worlds solar
variation in the qual- photovoltaic
ity of coal used across cells in 2014,
yet less than
different regions.
As a first step, the 5% were
Chinese Academy of installed
Sciences is coordinat- domestically.
ing a national investigation of major emissions sources and sinks
that should be complete by the end of this
year4. This should be expanded to include
private and small-scale enterprises, which
tend to use inefficient and dirty technologies. Small boilers, for example, consume
about 10% of Chinas coal and are one of the
main sources of air pollution in Beijing.
The compilation and reporting of local
emissions data are coordinated by regional
environmental-protection departments,
which also issue environmental certificates for firms and construction projects.
This conflict of interest sometimes leads
to data manipulation and bribery; each

2 8 0 | NAT U R E | VO L 5 2 2 | 1 8 J U N E 2 0 1 5

2015 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved

year, hundreds of government officers are

investigated.
The government needs to set up an
independent agency to monitor and verify
emissions data for regions, sectors and
companies. The regulator would establish
baseline emissions inventories and verify
reductions through spot inspections, modelling and the installation of tamper-proof
monitoring equipment.
Monitoring by third parties the public,
the media and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) needs to be encouraged.
Environmental laws and regulations must
offer citizens the right to know emissions
figures and the right to sue an agency or
company if information has been concealed
or manipulated.
State-owned projects should make information available to the public by publishing
it online, as is done with Beijings air-quality
data. More web portals should be established
to show the improvement, or lack of it, in pollution reduction over time. Examples include
the Air Quality Index map (see go.nature.
com/82gvyn), run by a Beijing-based NGO,
and the pollution map produced by the
non-profit Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs in Beijing, which displays
real-time emissions information for more
than 6,000 large-scale enterprises in China
(see go.nature.com/vb6uht). Such efforts will
enable government regulators and citizens
groups to name and shame companies that
do not adhere to environmental regulations.
Expand carbon trading nationwide. Chinas pilot ETS traded nearly 14 megatonnes
of CO2 in 2013. This is less than 0.5% of the
national total, but the scheme is still the
second largest in the world, after that of the
EU. Starting in 201617 (ref.5), the NDRC
intends to extend the scheme to all 30 Chinese provinces, making China the worlds
largest carbon market. In the pilot ETS,
each participant set its own cap and decided
which sectors it would cover. For example,
transport is included only in Shanghais ETS.
Each also determined how compliance is
measured. Hubei province targets enterprises consuming more than 60,000 tonnes
of coal-equivalent per year, a threshold six
times that of Guangdong.
In the expanded scheme, a national
emissions cap must be set and central government should develop standards and
a timeline to unify cap criteria across the
country. The first step should be to introduce
a national ETS for the top six CO2-emitting
industries power generation, ferrous
and non-ferrous metallurgy, construction,
chemicals production and aviation services
to be extended later to others. Regulations
and laws are needed that mandate emissions
caps for certain enterprises and encourage
emissions trading. Accounting and tax

COMMENT
CARBON CRUNCH
Chinas carbon dioxide emissions will grow beyond the year 2030 unless it adopts strict low-carbon measures.
Greater production efficiency, use of renewable energies and natural gas, and nationwide emissions-trading schemes
can allow emissions to peak by 2030, and reduce national CO2 emissions by 30 gigatonnes (Gt) by 2035.

Projected emissions, with and without mitigation

20
18

Best-practice
low-carbon scenario

Average lowcarbon scenario

No mitigation

Best practices
would remove 30 Gt
of CO2.

Gt CO2

14
12

More-efficient
technologies
would lower
emissions from
manufacturing.

2010

2015

2020

30%

2025

2030

Low-emission
fuels and
renewables

30 Gt
CO2

Historical
emissions

4
2005

50%

Improved
industrial
efficiency

Without interventions,
emissions would grow by
3% per year until 2030.

16

10

Carbon-saving strategies

2035

20%

Carbon-trading
schemes

Projections on the basis of Chinas official five-year plan and reports of the International Energy Agency and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

treatments need to be clarified.

A cascading management framework of
carbon trading needs to be established, with
provincial ETS exchanges linked to higherlevel, regional exchanges. For example, Beijings exchange could coordinate provincial
exchanges across northern China.
Market mechanisms should also be introduced to the energy-supply system. First,
the monopoly of electricity and energy
supply by major state-owned companies
must be broken to encourage innovation
and improved efficiency. PetroChina and
Sinopec, the two main state-owned oil
companies, together account for 80% of the
national oil supply and 10% of the nations
total carbon emissions.
Second, an energy-supply market needs
to be set up to allow prices to respond to
demand and incentives. The price for energy
delivered to the grid is now controlled by the
government and is largely static. This creates
barriers to the connection of power from
renewable sources: low-carbon electricity is
sold at a higher price than electricity generated from fossil fuels. Subsidies for fossil
fuels, such as the contract price of coal sold
to power plants, need to be removed so that
renewables and low-carbon energy technology can be competitive. A carbon tax
starting low and ratcheting up over the next
decade on certain emissions-intensive
sectors, such as transport, that are susceptible to a change in behaviour would slow the
growth in fossil-fuel consumption.
Advance green technology in under
developed areas. Government incentives have stimulated double-digit growth

in renewable-energy technologies in the

past decade. The green-energy industry
will contribute 2% of GDP (45,000 billion
yuan) to the economy by the end of 2015.
Yet the nations focus is still on manufacturing rather than implementation. China
manufactured wind-power capacity equivalent to 114,763 megawatts in 2014 (half of
the worlds added capacity for the year),
but only one-third of that operates in the
country. China also produced 60% of the
worlds solar photovoltaic cells in 2014, yet
less than 5% of these panels were installed
domestically.
Incentives should be targeted to domestic consumers of renewable energy and
eco-products, instead of encouraging production for the global market. Low-carbon
technologies should be targeted especially
at power production in Chinas underdeveloped and poor regions. These regions provide power and goods for others and stand
to gain most from generation efficiency and
development.
In 2010, for example, the emission factor
(CO2 emissions per kilowatt-hour of electricity generated) of coal-fired thermal
power plants in Inner Mongolia was 20%
higher than that of power plants in Guangdong on the south coast3. Yet one-third of
the power generated by Inner Mongolia is
exported to the east-coast regions6. Poor
central and western provinces should
instead exploit their vast land areas for solar
and wind farms.
Regional grid construction and integrated
technologies should be encouraged. China is
a world leader in ultra-high-voltage transmission technology. This will be essential

for linking areas generating renewable

electricity, mainly in the west, to the large
coastal cities. Initiatives to develop smart
electricity grids and high-speed connections would save energy through improving
electricity distribution. Mass-transit systems
and regional rail expansion would similarly
reduce emissions from road traffic and
construction.
We call on Chinas leaders to be bold
and create a low-carbon economy that will
benefit the country and the globe.
Zhu Liu is at the Institute of Applied
Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences,
Shenyang, China. Dabo Guan is at the
School of International Development,
University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK.
Scott Moore, Henry Lee and Z.L. are at
the John F. Kennedy School of Government,
Harvard University, Cambridge,
Massachusetts, USA. Jun Su is at the School
of Public Policy and Management, Tsinghua
University, Beijing, China. Qiang Zhang
and D.G. are at the Center for Earth System
Science, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
e-mails: dabo.guan@uea.ac.uk;
liuzhu@iae.ac.cn
1. Guan, D. et al. Nature Clim. Change 4, 1017
1023 (2014).
2. Liu, Z., Geng, Y., Lindner, S. & Guan, D. Energy 45,
10591068 (2012).
3. Guan, D., Liu, Z., Geng, Y., Lindner, S. & Hubacek, K.
Nature Clim. Change 2, 672675 (2012).
4. Jiao, L. & Stone, R. Science 334, 886887
(2011).
5. National Development and Reform Commission
of China. Interim Plan for Carbon Trading in China
(NDRC, 2014).
6. Feng, K. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 110, 11654
11659 (2013).
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2015 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved