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Carbon statistics

China should come clean on emissions

Nature volume 523, page 158 (2015)Cite this article

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Uncertainties surrounding China's data on carbon emissions threaten to undermine its pledge for a 2030 emissions peak (see Z. Liu et al. Nature 522, 279–281; 2015) and to confuse global strategies for preventing catastrophic climate change. The stakes are high: even small upward tweaks in China's coal consumption could generate more carbon dioxide than many countries emit in an entire year.

Emissions data are a sensitive issue in China, with official government statistical reports focusing more on energy production and consumption than on the country's binding carbon goals. China's carbon data are available for only 1994 and 2005 (through the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change) and are now outdated. Despite high-level policies in 2007 mandating a national greenhouse-gas statistical monitoring system, this has yet to materialize.

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  1. Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, New Haven, Connecticut, USA

    Angel Hsu, Kaiyang Xu & Andrew Moffat

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  1. Angel Hsu
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  2. Kaiyang Xu
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  3. Andrew Moffat
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Correspondence to Angel Hsu.

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Hsu, A., Xu, K. & Moffat, A. China should come clean on emissions. Nature 523, 158 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/523158d

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