On November 26, 2009, China announced it would adopt a domestically-binding goal of cutting carbon intensity--the amount of carbon dioxide it emits per unit of GDP--by 40-45 percent from 2005 levels by 2020. It also reiterated previous goals of increasing its share of primary energy produced from renewable fuels and nuclear energy to 15 percent by 2020, and of increasing forest volume by 1.3 billion cubic meters over that period while increasing forest cover by 40 million hectares.
These targets, while impressive in some meaningful ways, are disappointing. They reflect important measures implemented in recent years, but they do not represent a deviation from existing Chinese policy. In evaluating the Chinese offer, U.S. and other policymakers will need to decide how much weight to assign to each of these two facts. This brief is a preliminary attempt to put the new numbers in context.
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