A research published in the journal of Nature Geoscience, reports the decline of China's carbon footprint in the recent years. The paper further predicts a continuing downward trend should the Asian economic powerhouse continues to implement its new industry policies.
China has undeniably been one of the world's biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, with the US closely following behind. However, unlike its Western counterpart, China has undergone an economic boom forcing it to rely on conventional energy sources like coal, to fire up its rapidly growing industries.
Coal is the most polluting variant of fossil fuel, which when burned, releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
According to earlier data from the Global Carbon Project, China emits more than 10 million metric tons of the said pollutants per year.
However, new data came in to shed light on the concerted effort of the Xi Jinping administration and the country's industrial sector to alleviate the climate change situation, at least on China's front.
The latest findings, cited over at XinHuaNet, indicates the substantial improvement on China's carbon emission rate from years 2013 to 2016.
The study, which was conducted by Tsinghua University in cooperation with academes from Britain, the United States, and in China, points out the main factors that influence the rise and decline of the country's carbon footprint from the year 2000 to 2016.
As found out, the emission spike occurred between 2000 and 2013. All the while, the rate bounced back from 2013 and onwards.
The country's accelerated infrastructure investment in 2007 to 2013 has a major contribution to the rising emission. The following year, China put a halt on its investment surge consequently affecting, in a positive way, its CO2 input.
The report further attributed the government's initiative to upgrade its economic structure, moving from heavy industry to a more technical and service-oriented enterprise. Meanwhile, its commitment to a newer energy source enables the country to gradually replace coal as its primary fuel.
The prospect of seeing a cleaner and greener China is more than likely to happen if its government carries on with the changes.
