China is on track to meet a goal to bring its climate-warming carbon dioxide emissions to a peak before 2030, according to a poll of 89 experts from industry and academia published on Tuesday, though questions remain over how high the top will be.

More than 70% of respondents said China, the world's biggest carbon dioxide emitter, will be able to meet the target, with two saying its emissions had already peaked, in a poll compiled by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), a Helsinki-based think tank.

Still, "experts remain concerned about how high the peak emissions would reach compared to previous levels," CREA said, with a majority of respondents expecting the total to be at least 15% higher than the 2020 level.

Doubts have been cast on China's ability to meet its 2030 pledge, as authorities continue to approve dozens of new coal-fired power stations to meet rising energy demand and avoid a repeat of the disruptive power outages that hit the country in 2021.

But CREA said respondents, including 64 based in China, were more optimistic about the country's ability to meet its goal compared to last year, with the majority believing post-pandemic economic conditions were accelerating the energy transition.

Half of the experts surveyed by CREA said they believed China would reach peak primary energy consumption before the end of this decade, though nearly a quarter still forecast it would continue to rise even after 2035.

China's reluctance to agree to a phasing-out of fossil fuels is expected to be a major sticking point at COP28 climate talks in Dubai starting next week, though Beijing is willing to agree to a new global plan to triple renewable energy capacity.

China also said in an agreement with the U.S. that it would "accelerate the substitution for coal, oil and gas generation" in order to secure "meaningful absolute power sector emission reductions" this decade.

CREA's lead analyst Lauri Myllyvirta said last week it was likely China's emissions would go into a "structural decline" from next year, with renewable sources capable of meeting new energy demand.

California's greenhouse gas emissions are rising — and we're not even counting them all.

California has committed to substantially reducing its greenhouse gas emissions, aiming for carbon neutrality by 2045. The pledge is key to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s claims of climate leadership, which featured prominently in his recent visits to China and the United Nations.

Smoke rises from a wildfire near Yucaipa in 2020.

But the California Air Resources Board recently released a preliminary greenhouse gas inventory suggesting the state’s emissions increased slightly last year compared with the previous year. This is of course bad news, since addressing climate change requires deep and swift emissions reductions.

What I’m even more concerned about, however, is that the state’s greenhouse gas inventory undercounts emissions in the first place. Although the issue seldom gets attention, California’s inventory excludes emissions from a variety of sources, including wildfires and industrial sectors such as shipping, aviation and biofuels.

Imagine a smoker who promises to quit but continues to make broad exceptions for smoking at work and social events. Regardless of what the smoker tells the doctor, their lungs will reflect the truth.

California’s greenhouse gas inventory is likewise not just going in the wrong direction but also ignoring a lot of harmful sources of emissions. Indeed, the state even measures and lists some of these emissions in its reports. But they’re not counted toward its overall greenhouse gas footprint, which it uses to attest to its efforts to combat climate change.

These omitted emissions have serious consequences: Relying on CARB’s estimates alone, the state’s reported greenhouse gas footprint would be about 20% greater if it included its omitted emissions. And that doesn’t include the emissions the agency doesn’t even list in its inventory, such as those from wildfires, which are largely human-caused, measurable and manageable.

The omissions also have repercussions for California communities. Many of the industries whose greenhouse gas emissions are excluded from the official inventory — including shipping, aviation, refineries and biofuels — produce additional pollutants that affect nearby communities. People living near these facilities are harmed by that pollution regardless of whether officials choose to count those facilities’ emissions. Particularly in communities with historical and continuing environmental injustices, these omissions compound the problem.

The city of Stockton, for example, agreed to produce a greenhouse gas inventory as part of a settlement of a lawsuit alleging that its general plan did not adequately consider environmental impacts. Yet its greenhouse gas inventory excludes emissions from the very industries that contribute to local air pollution and environmental injustices. In fact, the emissions excluded by the city are four times greater than those it reported.

These emissions omissions are not unique to California. Indeed, national governments exclude international shipping and aviation emissions from reports to the United Nations required by the Paris agreement, relying partly on outdated and politicized methodologies.

While the Paris agreement allows for such omissions, it doesn't prevent countries from improving their accounting methods. What’s more, subnational governments such as California’s are not parties to the agreement and therefore not bound to its methodologies. In fact, unlike its national counterparts, California once counted transportation emissions from biofuels such as ethanol but reclassified them in 2016.

Nor is this issue confined to governments: Corporate emitters are also part of the problem. One study found that technology companies’ greenhouse gas declarations undercounted their emissions, sometimes by orders of magnitude. And corporate “net zero” pledges often arbitrarily count emissions in ways that don’t amount to actual reductions.

What’s the solution? Only a full account of greenhouse gas emissions can allow us to appropriately attribute responsibility to each emitter and determine its progress in reducing its contributions to climate change. We need greenhouse gas accounting systems that are rigorous, complete and interoperable.

This is a daunting task but not a hopeless one. Senate Bill 253, which Newsom recently signed into law, requires large corporations operating in California to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions and include emissions throughout their supply chains. That’s critical: Disclosing emissions across supply chains will help hold emitters responsible for their complete greenhouse gas footprints.

While SB 253 is a very good first step, the Air Resources Board should apply the same standard to the state’s greenhouse gas inventory. Measuring California’s complete footprint requires including upstream and downstream refinery emissions as well as those from aviation, shipping, biofuels and wildfires.

Getting greenhouse gas accounting right is ultimately crucial to dealing with climate change. Until governments and corporations completely and accurately account for their contributions to the problem, their promised solutions will fall short.

World on pace to blow past Paris climate targets, UN says

Earth is on track for 3 degrees Celsius of warming, and humanity needs to make deep emission cuts this decade to have a chance of fulfilling the goals of the Paris climate agreement, the United Nations said in a report released Monday.

The findings come amid record setting global temperatures and as the amount of planet warming pollution in the atmosphere reaches new heights. It also underscores the enormity of the task facing climate negotiators as they prepare for talks in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, later this month.

The U.N. found global emissions need to fall 42 percent by 2030 to put the world on track to limit temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2050 or by 28 percent to hold temperature increases to the 2 C targeted by the Paris Agreement. Doing so would require a sudden reversal in global emission trends, which have risen steadily in recent decades. The longer it takes the world to meaningfully cut emissions, the more carbon dioxide removal technology will be needed to stabilize global temperatures, the U.N. said.

“There is no person or economy left on the planet untouched by climate change, so we need to stop setting unwanted records on greenhouse gas emissions, global temperature highs and extreme weather,” said Inger Andersen, executive director of the U.N. Environmental Programme. “We must instead lift the needle out of the same old groove of insufficient ambition and not enough action, and start setting other records: on cutting emissions, on green and just transitions and on climate finance.”

The annual emissions gap report highlighted both the progress and challenges facing global climate efforts.

A growing number of nations have pledged to slash greenhouse gas emissions, and fulfilling those pledges would limit global temperature rise to 2.5 C. Yet few of those pledges "are currently considered credible," the U.N. said.

The lifetime emissions of current and planned oil and gas fields and coal mines is three and a half times greater that the carbon budget needed to hold temperature increase to 1.5 C. It would exhaust almost all the budget needed for 2 C, the U.N. said.

"The only way to close the yawning emissions gap and curtail this spiraling crisis — which is already causing unprecedented climate disasters — is through wholesale changes to the global energy system," said Rachel Cleetus, policy director for the Union of Concerned Scientists' climate and energy program.

The U.N. estimated global CO2 emissions reached 57.4 gigatons in 2022, a new record. That puts the world on track for 3 C of warming if policies continue on their current course.

"Most countries and major emitters have set net-zero targets for 2050 or a little later," said Taryn Fransen, director of science, research and data at the World Resources Institute and a contributor to the report. The problem is that near-term policy is "not putting countries on track to achieve those net-zero targets."

Nevertheless, there are signs that the gap between countries' climate ambitions and the policies they are pursuing is closing. At the time of the Paris Agreement, global emissions were expected to grow 16 percent by 2030. Now, emissions are expected to increase by 3 percent, by the end of the decade, the U.N. said. Fransen said she was encouraged by progress in the United States and Europe, where governments are pushing forward with plans to deploy clean energy technologies and cut emissions.

This year's reports reflects some methodological changes. The finding that the world is on track for 3 C of warming is higher than the 2.8 C anticipated in last year's report. The U.N. findings draw on a series of modeling studies. This year's edition drew on a larger collection of studies, which prompted an increase in the headline temperature finding.

Greenhouse gas levels have climbed steadily this century, falling briefly only for a global recession in 2008 and the Covid-19 pandemic before resuming their climb. Many analysts believe the world is on course for an emissions plateau, with reductions in the United States and Europe offset by rising pollution in Asia. Carbon Monitor, an academic emissions tracker, estimates that global emissions were 0.4 percent higher through the first nine months of 2023, compared to the same time last year.