Joseph J. Romm's Blog, page 151

Factories In Two Of China’s Most Polluted Provinces Are Failing At Limiting Their Emissions

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This factory in Hebei exceeded emissions limits in 2014, Greenpeace says, adding to China’s air quality issues.

CREDIT: Courtesy Greenpeace

China’s call for emissions controls from factories are largely being ignored, according to a Greenpeace report.

The report, which looks at state-reported data for Jiangsu and Hebei provinces, shows that heavy industry is not complying with strict emissions standards China set for coal plants in January 2012, as well as standards for industries like steel and iron which were added later that year. The plants had a two-and-a-half-year grace period for compliance. According to the Greenpeace report, up to 85 percent of heavy industry in Jiangsu and Hebei have emissions that exceed the limits set by the 2012 standards.

“If we are to have a chance at breathing clean air in cities like Beijing, then we need these factories to respect the cap and for the government to transition towards clean, renewable energy sources,” Zhang Kai, climate and energy campaigner at Greenpeace East Asia, said in a press release. “Our findings show that after more than a year since the action plan was initiated, there are widespread problems in actually enforcing the cap on emissions.”

China’s 2012 emissions standards were largely a response to domestic pressure. Chinese activists and media have increasingly rallied for clean air in the rapidly developing nation. China currently gets about two-thirds of its electricity from coal, which contributes more than 40 percent of some types of the country’s pollutants.

Heavy industry sources, such as coal, iron, steel, and cement factories, are responsible for more than 80 percent of emissions in both provinces, according to the Greenpeace report. In Hebei, 30 percent of the factories and power plants surveyed “seriously exceeded” emissions standards. In Jiangsu, which is one of China’s most densely populated provinces, nearly half the plants “seriously exceeded” emissions standards.

The two provinces are among the most polluted areas in China. They also border China’s most populous cities, Shanghai and Beijing, and contribute greatly to urban air quality. Particulate matter in both cities has been found to exceed World Health Organization air quality guidelines.

Air pollution has been linked to 1.2 million premature deaths in China. In one shocking example, doctors blamed air pollution in Jiangsu for a case of lung cancer in an 8-year-old girl in 2013.

There have been some improvements in China’s emissions. By the end of 2014, the country of 1.3 billion had cut its coal consumption for the first time in more than a decade. And last fall, China and the United States reached a carbon emissions agreement in which China committed to getting 20 percent of its energy from non-fossil fuel sources by 2030, and to capping its overall carbon dioxide emissions that same year. A recent report also suggested that China could surpass these goals and get 85 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2050.

Still, these goals will be impossible without compliance from heavy industrial plants.

“While we welcome how transparently the government is reporting this data, it does paint a bleak picture of what the reality is one the ground,” Zhang said. “We believe that if current emissions are not improved soon, then Jiangsu will find it very difficult to meet its 20 percent emissions reduction target by 2017, and Hebei will also struggle to shake off its reputation as being a heavily polluted province.”

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Under U.S. Leadership, Arctic Council Vows To Fight Climate Change

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U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry speaks at the Arctic Council Ministerial Meeting in 2013.

CREDIT: AP

On Friday, ministers from eight countries and leaders of Arctic Indigenous Peoples met in Iqaluit, Canada for the biennial meeting of the Arctic Council, an international body charged with addressing the most important issues facing the Arctic region. The meeting, which took place 200 miles south of the Arctic circle, marked the beginning of the United States’ tenure as leader of the Council, with Canadian Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq handing reins of the Council over to Secretary of State John Kerry.

At the meeting, the Council — which is made up of representatives from the United States, Canada, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, Finland, and Russia — signed the Iqaluit Declaration 2015, meant to recap the accomplishments of Canada’s two-year leadership of the Council and serve as a guiding document for the United State’s as it looks to its two-year turn. The declaration reaffirmed each nation’s commitment to maintaining peace in the Arctic, sustaining indigenous communities, and combating climate change in the region.

According to Reuters, the most tangible outcome of the meeting was a new, nonbinding pledge to do more to fight black carbon and methane, two potent but fast-dissipating sources of greenhouse gas emissions. Black carbon — one of the primary components of soot emitted by diesel engines and wood-burning stoves — can settle on ice and snow, causing it to retain heat and melt faster. Methane, a greenhouse gas more potent than carbon, can be released by melting permafrost — vast tracts of frozen soil that store organic matter.

Canada’s Arctic Council chairmanship from 2013 to 2015 was dictated by a theme of “Development for the People of the North,” which took a decidedly pro-industry approach to Arctic relations by calling for the development of oil resources and Arctic shipping routes. The United States’ theme will be “One Arctic: Shared Opportunities, Challenges and Responsibilities” and will focus on addressing the living conditions of Arctic communities as well as combating the threats of climate change.

“There’s only ‘one Arctic’ and all of us – the United States, other nations, indigenous peoples, and Arctic communities – must join together to ensure responsible stewardship of this incredible region,” Kerry said at the meeting.

The United States takes the helm of the Council at a time when the Arctic region is undergoing rapid changes. The Arctic, which is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world, saw the lowest winter maximum of sea ice on satellite record this year. From 1975 to 2012, the ice thickness during the summer minimum has dropped 85 percent; some scientists think that by 2020, the North Pole will be ice-free in the summer.

Arctic communities are especially vulnerable to eroding coastline and sea-level rise, which threaten to reshape the geography of the Arctic so profoundly that entire villages have begun making plans to relocate.

Even as indigenous communities are battling a future with less ice, others see a warming Arctic as an untapped resource for industries like oil and gas, shipping, and tourism. Shell, with the permission of the United States government, is hoping to begin drilling in the Arctic as early as this summer. Other countries are also eyeing the Arctic’s resources: during a visit to a scientific research station just days before the Council meeting, Russian deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin called the Arctic “a Russian Mecca.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who has been the Russian representative at the Arctic Council for more than a decade, missed the meeting, sending Russia’s environmental minister Sergei Donskoi in his stead. Though Lavrov cited scheduling conflicts as the reason for his absence, some think the move might have been motivated by the United States and Canada’s criticism of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

At the meeting, however, each nation stressed the importance of putting aside geopolitical issues for the benefit of the Arctic.

“It’s in no one’s interest to let problems elsewhere impact cooperation in the Arctic,” Erkki Tuomioja, Finland’s foreign minister, said.

The post Under U.S. Leadership, Arctic Council Vows To Fight Climate Change appeared first on ThinkProgress.

Obama Finally Gets Angry At Climate Science Deniers And It’s Hilarious

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President Obama brings out actor Keegan-Michael Key from “Key & Peele” to play “Luther, President Obama’s anger translator” during his remarks at White House Correspondents’ dinner Saturday night.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Evan Vucci

President Barack Obama just gave pitch-perfect delivery to one of the most brilliant pieces of writing on climate change you are ever going to see. At the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner Saturday night in DC, Obama used devastating humor to express rare passion and anger over climate science denial.

Obama is famously low key. That’s why on the hit Comedy Central show “Key & Peele,” Keegan-Michael Key plays “Luther, President Obama’s anger translator.” The Correspondents’ dinner, however, is a rare place where the President can cut loose — as long as he uses humor.

In a hilarious admission that he has been too low key to convey the moral outrage justified by humanity’s myopic march toward self-destruction — and by the brazen denial of climate science by many conservatives — Obama brought out “Luther” to express that outrage. And then, in an ingenious twist, Obama became so outraged that he didn’t need Luther and in fact Luther himself couldn’t take the genuinely angry Obama, who says of denial, “What kind of stupid, shortsighted, irresponsible, bull–”

Watch it:

I’ve been critical in the past for Obama not speaking forcefully enough about climate change — and for not realizing until mid-2013 that moral outrage is the winning way to speak about it.

But this was not only Obama’s best “speech” on climate change to date, it was delivered to the perfect audience — the DC elite and the panjandrums of the media. The “not-so-intelligentsia” have been wildly underplaying the story of the century for a long, long time.

They should have called “Bull–” on deniers a long time ago. Kudos to the President for finally doing so.

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‘Explosive’ Wildfires Are Already Out Of Control Months Before Fire Season

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California’s firefighters are bracing for a long summer.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez

“Wildfire season” seems to be a thing of the past for drought-stricken California, with fires now raging throughout the year.

There have already been nearly 850 wildfires this year — 70 percent above the average, according to CAL FIRE data. High temperatures and low precipitation, both related to climate change, have dried out forests and scrublands across the western United States, allowing fires to spread faster and farther than usual, any time during the year.

“Since 2000 we’ve been seeing larger and more damaging fires,” Daniel Berlant, chief of public information for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE), told NBC News. “What we’re seeing now is that the rain is starting later and stopping much earlier. The fires are burning at explosive speed because the vegetation is so dry and that allows them to get much larger.”

In February, residents were shocked by a fire that destroyed 60 homes at the base of the Sierra Nevada range, in eastern California.

“Three years before, I had 12 feet of snow at my house on that exact date in February,” volunteer Fire Chief Dale Schmidt told the San Jose Mercury News. “Four years ago, they would have had a couple to 3 feet of snow where the fire started.”

Snowpack is a key source of water for California, and it is now at a historic low. In fact, even the ponds where firefighters fill up their helicopters have run dry.

“Because of the drought we are having to locate other water sources for our aerial program. Some of the holding ponds in central California are just not there anymore. So we have to plan prior to the fires where the helicopters can go to fill up,” Mike Mohler, a fire captain with CAL FIRE, told NBC News.

This all fits in with the scientific community’s consensus on climate change. The U.S Global Change Research Program — headed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and backed by the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, NASA, and the Smithsonian Institute among others — says there will be “more frequent heat waves, extreme precipitation, wildfires, and water scarcity” due to climate change.

Firefighters are seeing the climate change effects firsthand. The drought and higher temperatures are not only increasing the likelihood of fires, they are making fires worse, experts say.

“Five years ago without a drought in California you would still get wildland fires. But the vegetation wouldn’t burn as quickly. Now there’s zero moisture and you get explosive fire growth,” Mohler said.

The increased numbers and severity of fires is also taking a toll on the state’s finances. On top of the $209 million included in the state budget for firefighting, Gov. Jerry Brown has authorized an additional $113.7 million in emergency funds this fiscal year, which ends in June.

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California Lawmakers Want To Ban Cities From Fining Residents Who Don’t Water Their Lawns

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Water runs off from a sprinkler in a neighborhood in the Hollywood Hills area of Los Angeles.

CREDIT: AP

Plagued by one of the worst droughts on record and faced with mandatory water cuts, some California residents are choosing to let their lush, green laws turn dry and brown — and facing fines for it.

After hearing reports that some cities have fined residents for allowing their lawns to turn brown during the drought, the California state Assembly passed a bill Thursday that prohibits penalties for residents who choose not to water their grass, the Los Angeles Times reports.

“If California is going to manage its water resources efficiently and sustainably, then we cannot allow municipalities to penalize individuals for conserving water by not regularly watering their lawn,” assemblywoman Cheryl R. Brown (D-Rialto) said.

A number of California cities have maintenance ordinances specifying the condition in which residential laws must be kept. According to the LA Times, fines for these ordinances range from $100 a week to a flat fee of $500.

On April 1, Governor Jerry Brown announced the state’s first-ever mandatory water cuts, requiring the state to reduce its water usage 25 percent by February 2016 — a move that would save some 500 billion gallons of water.

California’s water resources are split among environmental uses — such as water in protected rivers and streams, or water set aside for protecting habitat — and agricultural and urban uses. Environmental demands take up 50 percent of the state’s water, with agriculture accounting for 40 percent. Urban use clocks in at just 10 percent.

Of that 10 percent, outdoor residential water — the water used in swimming pools and landscape irrigation — is the single largest use, accounting for 34 percent of the state’s total urban water use. According to the University of California, a lawn is “almost always the single largest user of water in the home landscape” — a 500-square-foot lawn can use more than 18,000 gallons of water a year.

In April of 2014, Gov. Brown signed an executive order mandating that homeowners’ associations could not fine homeowners for failing to water their lawns. But specific homeowners’ association rules can still make water conservation measures complicated for homeowners, something that Greg Greenstein, a resident of Southern California, says has been happening to him.

According to KLTA5 News in Los Angeles, Greenstein replaced his home’s grass with artificial turf in January in an effort to conserve water. Since then, he claims to have accumulated over $4,000 in fines from his homeowners’ association, which claims the replacement was made without proper architectural approval. When Greenstein refused to remove the turf, the homeowners’ association began fining him $50 a day.

The homeowners’ association says that Greenstein wasn’t fined for having turf, but for installing it without prior approval. Greenstein’s homeowners’ association passed a ban on artificial turf on front lawns in 2008, and said that there wasn’t enough interest to change the rule when the association recently reconsidered it.

The state Assembly’s bill seeking to block cities from leveraging fines on residents with brown lawns passed 74 to 0, and now goes to the state Senate for a consideration. Lawmakers are also considering a bill that would prevent homeowners’ associations from prohibiting homeowners to install turf as a water conservation measure.

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North America’s Oil And Gas Industry Has Taken Over 7 Million Acres Of Land Since 2000

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This June 12, 2014, aerial photo shows four oil wells in various stages of production, from drilling to a fully functional pump producing well, in McKenzie County, N.D.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast

Millions of acres of land across the U.S. and Canada has been taken over by oil and gas development in the last 12 years, according to a new study.

The study, published Friday in Science, tallied up the amount of land that’s been developed to house drilling well pads, roads, and other oil and gas infrastructure in 11 U.S. states and three Canadian provinces. It found that between 2000 and 2012, about 3 million hectares (7.4 million acres) have been turned over to oil and gas development, a stretch of land that, combined, is equal to three Yellowstone National Parks.

This land takeover can have ecological consequences, according to the report.

“Although small in comparison with the total land area of the continent, this important land use is not accounted for and creates additional pressures for conserving rangelands and their ecosystem functions,” the report states. “The distribution of this land area has negative impacts: increasing fragmentation that can sever migratory pathways, alter wildlife behavior and mortality, and increase susceptibility to ecologically disruptive invasive species.”

Most of the land converted into drilling operations was cropland and rangeland — a term that encompasses prairies, grassland, shrubland, and other ecosystem types — and roughly 10 percent was woodland. Wetlands, according to the report, were mostly spared by oil and gas developers, though a very small amount have been converted into oil and gas sites.

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CREDIT: Science/AAAS

Land takeover due to oil and gas development can have a number of negative consequences, the report states. It removes vegetation that’s important for food, habitat, and carbon storage, and it also fragments ecosystems in such a way that can disrupt the natural behavior of wildlife.

According to the report, oil and gas development reduced the study area’s net primary production (NPP) — the rate at which an ecosystem produces plant biomass, which the report calls “a fundamental measure of a region’s ability to provide ecosystem services” — by 4.5 teragrams (9,920,801,798 pounds). The amount of vegetation lost from rangelands amounts to about five million animal unit months (the amount of vegetable forage required to feed an animal for one month), which “is more than half of annual available grazing on public lands managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.”

“The loss of NPP is likely long-lasting and potentially permanent, as recovery or reclamation of previously drilled land has not kept pace with accelerated drilling,” the report states.

Steve Running, co-author of the study and ecology professor at the University of Montana, told Midwest Energy News that the upward trend of oil and gas development is concerning in terms of land use, especially if serious efforts to reclaim land aren’t taken.

“The point we’re trying to make with this paper is not so much that some huge fraction of current land area has been de-vegetated, as much as the trajectory of drilling, (consuming) a half-million acres per year,” he said. “If we continue that to 2050, you get to some seriously big amounts of land.”

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CREDIT: Science/AAAS

Right now, there’s not much known about to what extent oil and gas areas in the U.S. are being reclaimed after they’ve been developed, said Samuel D. Fuhlendorf, another co-author of the report from Oklahoma State University. And, he said, there isn’t much work at the federal or state level to regulate or enforce this reclamation. Some states — including Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Dakota, and West Virginia — do require oil and gas companies to submit plans for reclaiming land after they’re done drilling. But others, like Colorado, don’t require these plans.

“You’d expect there would be both state- and federal-level policy,” Running told Midwest Energy News. “But we’re not aware of a clear policy on this. We don’t see any active discussion or regulatory planning of how that’s going to be done, who will do it and when it will be done. Beyond policy, is there actual enforcement. We are not aware that any state or federal policies are actively following this.”

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Earthquakes Linked To Fracking Activity Are On The Rise, U.S. Government Says

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Research has identified 17 areas in the central and eastern United States with increased rates of induced seismicity. Since 2000, several of these areas have experienced high levels of seismicity, with substantial increases since 2009 that continue today.

CREDIT: USGS.gov

Man-made earthquakes have been on the rise in the United States, and the government is taking notice.

On Thursday, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) released a report which, for the first time, includes human-induced earthquakes on the agency’s official seismic hazard maps. Those maps aim to calculate the risk of earthquakes in specific areas — how often they are expected to occur, and how hard the ground might shake when they do. The maps are important because they help influence building codes, insurance rate structures, and other risk prevention policies.

“These earthquakes are occurring at a higher rate than ever before and pose a much greater risk to people living nearby,” said Mark Petersen, the USGS National Seismic Hazard Modeling Project chief, in a statement. “The USGS is developing methods that overcome the challenges in assessing seismic hazards in these regions in order to support decisions that help keep communities safe from ground shaking.”

In the report, the USGS noted a dramatic increase in earthquake activity in the central and eastern United States since 2009. It also asserted that many of those quakes were likely caused by the underground injection of wastewater — specifically, wastewater from oil and gas drilling operations. The popular but controversial process of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, produces significantly more wastewater than conventional drilling, which results in more underground injections.

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Cumulative number of earthquakes with a magnitude of 3.0 or larger in the central and eastern United States, 1973-2014. The rate of earthquakes began to increase starting around 2009 and accelerated in 2013-2014.

According to the USGS scientists, there are 17 regions within eight states — all of which “are located near deep fluid injection wells or other industrial activities capable of inducing earthquakes” — that have significantly increased rates of earthquakes. Those regions, the report said, are now 100 times more likely than they were in 2008 to have an earthquake of magnitude 3 or larger on the Richter scale.

The regions include a large portion of Oklahoma, a state which is no stranger to headlines about its dramatic increase in earthquake activity alongside the rise of fracking wastewater injection. They also include Azle, Texas — a region where, just this week, researchers linked earthquake activity to wastewater disposal.

Still, the USGS noted in its report that modeling the probability for future human-induced earthquakes is “very difficult,” mostly because there is still much to be understood about the differences between natural and human-induced earthquakes.

“Predicting when and where induced seismicity will occur in the future is challenging,” the report reads. “For example, induced seismicity does not occur near every disposal well, so it is important that we continue to study and learn more about how these earthquakes are generated, so we can better assess future patterns and trends.”

Though most human-induced earthquakes have been too small to feel, some scientists have suggested that they will get stronger as wastewater injection keeps occurring.

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The Senate’s Top Climate Denier Redefines Chutzpah

Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), shown here, is an outspoken denier of climate science and chairman of the Senate’s environment committee.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta

The traditional definition of chutzpah involves a guy who kills his parents, then pleads for mercy because he is now an orphan. The modern definition of chutzpah involves … Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK).

The chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee has an Earth Day (!) op-ed arguing we should embrace carbon-free nuclear power because of the threat posed by global warming. You remember Inhofe, the guy who called global warming a hoax, the guy who for over a decade has trashed climate scientists, such as James Hansen, whom he called in 2006 a “NASA scientist and alarmist.”

Apparently, however, Inhofe no longer sees Hansen as radioactive. He writes, without a trace of irony:

James Hansen, the former head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said in 2013 that ‘continued opposition to nuclear power threatens humanity’s ability to avoid dangerous climate change.’

How cool is it that Inhofe is now apparently on board with top climatologist Hansen on the urgent need “to avoid dangerous climate change” by accelerated deployment of zero-carbon technologies? Presumably he’ll soon be on board with Hansen’s call for a high and rising carbon dioxide fee (returned to the public as a dividend), and a World War II scale effort to return CO2 levels back to 350 parts per million from their current level of 400 ppm (and rising 2+ ppm a year).

As an aside, what’s holding nuclear power back is its exorbitant price. Indeed, just this week a panel of experts unanimously agreed that nukes have all but priced themselves out of the market. Perhaps Inhofe should have supported the climate bill that came out of the House of Representatives in 2009, since its carbon pricing mechanism would have been nuclear power’s best chance at a resurgence.

As for Inhofe’s bromancing of Hansen, I suspect it is unrequited, but then they say politics does make for strange bedfellows. Or at least for new definitions of chutzpah.

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The Senate’s Top Climate Denier Is Using Climate Change To Argue For More Nuclear Power

Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), shown here, is an outspoken denier of climate science and chairman of the Senate’s environment committee.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta

The traditional definition of chutzpah involves a guy who kills his parents, then pleads for mercy because he is now an orphan. The modern definition of chutzpah involves … Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK).

The chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee has an Earth Day (!) op-ed arguing we should embrace carbon-free nuclear power because of the threat posed by global warming. You remember Inhofe, the guy who called global warming a hoax, the guy who for over a decade has trashed climate scientists, such as James Hansen, whom he called in 2006 a “NASA scientist and alarmist.”

Apparently, however, Inhofe no longer sees Hansen as radioactive. He writes, without a trace of irony:

James Hansen, the former head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said in 2013 that ‘continued opposition to nuclear power threatens humanity’s ability to avoid dangerous climate change.’

How cool is it that Inhofe is now apparently on board with top climatologist Hansen on the urgent need “to avoid dangerous climate change” by accelerated deployment of zero-carbon technologies? Presumably he’ll soon be on board with Hansen’s call for a high and rising carbon dioxide fee (returned to the public as a dividend), and a World War II scale effort to return CO2 levels back to 350 parts per million from their current level of 400 ppm (and rising 2+ ppm a year).

As an aside, what’s holding nuclear power back is its exorbitant price. Indeed, just this week a panel of experts unanimously agreed that nukes have all but priced themselves out of the market. Perhaps Inhofe should have supported the climate bill that came out of the House of Representatives in 2009, since its carbon pricing mechanism would have been nuclear power’s best chance at a resurgence.

As for Inhofe’s bromancing of Hansen, I suspect it is unrequited, but then they say politics does make for strange bedfellows. Or at least for new definitions of chutzpah.

The post The Senate’s Top Climate Denier Is Using Climate Change To Argue For More Nuclear Power appeared first on ThinkProgress.

China Could Get 85 Percent Of Its Electricity From Renewables By 2050, Report Finds

Beijing air pollution is some of the worst in China.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Andy Wong

The world’s largest consumer of coal could undergo a dramatic transformation in its energy profile in the coming decades, according to a report released this week.

China could get 85 percent of its electricity from renewable resources by 2050, according to the China 2050 High Renewable Energy Penetration Scenario and Roadmap Study, a nongovernmental report by Energy Foundation China.

Reducing the country’s dependence on fossil fuels, particularly coal, is both technically and economically possible, the report found. In fact, non-fossil fuel sources could account for 91 percent of China’s total power generation, a scenario in which coal-fired power generation would drop from 75 percent to less than 7 percent, without sacrificing reliability. Wind and solar would be China’s “backbone” energy sources.

“We hope that renewable energy in China can be developed quickly and on a large scale,” said Li Junfeng, the director general for China’s National Center for Climate Change Strategy and International Cooperation, a sponsor of the report.

Li acknowledged that the report’s projections are ambitious, but “you can make a dream, at least,” he told the audience during the report’s release in Washington, D.C.

If China wants to become a developed nation, it’s important to switch from a heavy-industrial economy to a low-carbon economy, and renewable energy will play a key role in that, he said.

Last year, China and the United States reached a carbon emissions agreement in which China committed to getting 20 percent of its energy from non-fossil fuel sources by 2030, and to capping its overall carbon dioxide emissions that same year. By the end of 2014, the country of 1.3 billion had cut its coal consumption for the first time in more than a decade.

If it’s going to move off coal, the country doesn’t have much in the way of traditional energy resources, said Melanie Hart, director for China Policy at the Center for American Progress.

“What do they have at home that they can ramp up very fast? Solar and wind,” Hart told ThinkProgress. “It’s important to realize this study is aspirational, but, at the same time, what China has done over the past 10 to 20 years is to take things that seem aspirational and impossible, and not only do those things but go well beyond.

China’s move to renewables will be “the world’s biggest clean energy technology experiment,” Hart said. “They are full speed ahead on renewable energy, and their motives are not the global community.”

Under pressure from its own population, battling this historic, costly, and unhealthy pollution has become a priority in recent years for China. China currently gets about two-thirds of its energy from coal, and coal is dirty. Air pollution has reportedly been responsible for 1.2 million premature deaths in China.

The report’s authors recognize that the goals outlined are ambitious, but they also indicate the trend towards renewables is inevitable.

“In the history of energy, it is an irreversible path that we will gradually move away from dependence on fossil fuels and transit to a ‘high renewable energy penetration’ future,” the report states.

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