For China’s Polluted Megacities, A Focus on Slashing Emissions
The booming industrial center of Shenzhen is a showcase for Chinese efforts to cut CO2 emissions and make the nation’s burgeoning cities more livable. But it remains to be seen whether China’s runaway industrial development can give way to a low-carbon future.
Yet one side road here leads to a jarringly different scene: A riverside plot landscaped with bamboo trees and elevated boardwalks and dotted with energy-efficient buildings that a state-run developer either built from scratch or refashioned from the shells of old factories. “It’s a demonstration of how we can live in a place without pollution and with clear air,” Cheng Fang, a spokeswoman for the developer, said on a recent afternoon at the eco-complex.
Over the last decade, China has taken ambitious steps to begin curbing its carbon footprint. In 2009 the powerful State Council announced a plan to reduce the carbon intensity of the national gross domestic product by 40 to 45 percent by 2020 compared with 2005 levels. And in 2014, President Xi Jinping pledged to peak China’s emissions around 2030 and increase the share of renewable energy sources in the economy from 8.3 percent in 2010 to roughly 20 percent by 2030. Both moves helped lay the groundwork for last year’s landmark climate agreement in Paris, which China and the United States formally ratified this month at the G20 gathering of heads of state in the Chinese city of Hangzhou.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
