Over the weekend I participated in the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development (CCICED) Low-carbon Task Force Scoping Meeting. Over two days we discussed how a roadmap for a low carbon development could look like. Some key areas that I think would be worth considering are:
1. Balance between incremental and transformative change in key sectors (most of the work now focus on low-hanging fruits that can be delivered by incremental improvements. These are important, but not enough if we are to reach the deep reductions needed, then transformative change with new innovative way of providing the services are needed)
2. How China can move up the value chain in a low carbon way (ensuring that a low carbon economy is part of the overall economic development, instead of creating a high-carbon lock-in where CO2 reductions are applied ad-hoc) This would mean that China will approach a low carbon development very different from OECD countries that still try to reduce CO2 emissions in an ad-hoc way in a system that promote a high-carbon development.
3. Low carbon export from China (how can China support a world with cost effective low carbon solutions).
4. Accelerating well-off low carbon lifestyles (it is easy to forget that about a billion people in China still have a low carbon life style due to poverty. How people can have a well-off life combined with small carbon emissions is the key challenge)
The case of Baoding in China could be used as one case study (of many) for all of the above.
