U.S. is pressured to help China curb emissions

The argument for aiding China is being made in the most urgent terms. While scientists agree that the United States and other wealthy nations caused the greenhouse gas buildup that has brought the planet close to a "tipping point" of irreversible warming, there's also growing consensus that the growth of China's emissions could push the world over the edge.

"With China surpassing the United States as the No. 1 producer of carbon dioxide emissions, we're missing an historic opportunity to create a global alliance with China on clean energy," said Rep. Steve Israel, D-N.Y., who is planning to introduce legislation to create U.S. assistance to China on low-emissions energy technology. "But instead, we're moving closer to military confrontation and economic competition."

New data released last month confirmed that China has become the No. 1 greenhouse gas producer, with its emissions rising at a rate that could overwhelm the world's attempts to limit the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Buried in these data, released by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, as well as in reports by other international agencies and the Chinese government, is the fact that China's coal-fired power plants are increasing their emissions by an annual amount that is twice as large as the total emissions growth of all the world's industrialized economies combined.

"If the United States and China don't get together to solve the problem of clean coal, it doesn't matter what anyone else does in world on global warming," said Orville Schell, former dean of the UC Berkeley School of Journalism and now director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society in New York.

China is building an average of two large, coal-fired plants per week, almost all of which use out-of-date, high-emissions equipment rather than more expensive, clean-burning technologies, Schell noted.

The new data show that last year China produced 6.2 billion tons of carbon dioxide, the most common greenhouse gas, up 8.4 percent from 2005 -- an increase much faster than most international economists expected. The United States, meanwhile, emitted 5.8 billion tons, a 1.4 percent decline that analysts say was primarily caused by a warmer-than-normal winter and higher gasoline prices.

In Washington, neither the energy bill recently passed by the Senate nor the version under debate in the House provide for new technology assistance to China, but support in Congress is building to help the Chinese pursue a greener energy path.

Last month, a bipartisan congressional advisory panel -- the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission -- held two days of hearings at which scientists, energy analysts and lawmakers urged creation of a U.S. emergency program to help China improve the efficiency of the coal-fired industrial generators that have largely escaped government regulation.

Kelly Gallagher, director of the Energy Technology Innovation Policy Project at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, proposed a multibillion-dollar, multinational fund with a "major U.S. contribution" that would give loans and grants for construction of low-emission power plants.

Currently, the Bush administration spends approximately $1 million per year in energy cooperation with China -- less than the $5.7 million spent on China last year by the Energy Foundation of San Francisco, much of which was given to scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for their work with Chinese policymakers.

"Given what's at stake for us, that's an insignificant amount of money," said Jeffrey Logan, an analyst at the World Resources Institute in Washington, referring to the federal outlay.

Other experts warn, however, that there are no short-term fixes. Karen Harbert, the Energy Department's secretary for policy and international affairs, said the most widely touted technology for reducing coal generation emissions -- carbon sequestration, in which global warming gases are siphoned off and pumped underground -- will require another 30 years of research before it is ready for widespread use in China or anywhere else.

"That's way too late," replied Richard D'Amato, a former senior congressional staff member who is a Democratic appointee on the security review commission. "We have only 20 years to get this under control before the tipping point (of climate change) could occur. We need something like our effort in World War II. We need to be more aggressive."

Thomas Donnelly, a China expert at the conservative American Enterprise Institute and a longtime China skeptic, said that helping China adopt energy efficient technology could reduce its need to seek energy from governments hostile to Washington, including Iran, Sudan and Venezuela.

"The degree to which the Chinese feel themselves less vulnerable in the international energy market, the less they will use energy supplies from unstable places," he said.

But old-style U.S.-China trade frictions haven't gone away, either in Washington or Beijing.

"China has $1.2 trillion in reserves, so I don't see that they need money," said the commission's chairman, Carolyn Bartholomew. "The American taxpayer is not going to look favorably at spending money on the Chinese when they have that kind of money and we have the trade deficit we do."

Beijing officials responded to the latest emissions data by arguing that the West was to blame.

"What many Western consumers wear, live in, even eat is made in China," government spokesman Qin Gang told a news briefing in Beijing. "On the one hand, you want to increase this production in China. On the other hand, you want to condemn China over the issue of emissions reductions."

Ironically, the best way of winning congressional support for energy cooperation with China might be to cast it as a solution for the bilateral tension, said Israel, who will soon introduce legislation to create a $20 million program to fund joint research and development with Chinese universities on low-emissions coal generation, as well as solar and wind energy.

"As long as many of my colleagues don't really believe in global warming, they won't care that China is the No. 1 emitter," Israel said. "But if they believe that the United States is less secure because of China's voracious appetite for energy, they will be more receptive to ways to reduce that appetite."

E-mail Robert Collier at rcollier@sfchronicle.com.