simon zadek

China’s green growth is an imperative for us all. It is crucial to enable China to improve the economic conditions of its 1.3 billion citizens without creating the equivalent mess that today’s wealthier societies have created over the past one and a half centuries. Carbon is by no means the only piece of this challenge. Nevertheless, China’s decarbonisation is the key to securing a stable climate, which is in turn a pre-requisite of any hopeful continuity in our global society.

The not-so-secret ingredient of green growth is information and communication technology (ICT). It is the stuff that makes our energy systems, transport, electricity grids and buildings more efficient, and that underpins the technologies that enable us to make use of renewables, travel less whilst communicating more and in general reduce our environmental footprint. One recent study, Smart 2020, estimated that effective use of ICT could secure 15% of the total carbon reductions needed by 2020.

ICT-enabled growth in China is a key to ‘greening’ its development pathway, but until now there was no data-driven analysis to support this, and so no way to design the policy framework to make it happen. On 17th December, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), along with a group of ICT companies under the Digital Energy Solutions Campaign (DESC) umbrella, will host its first major event in China on the role of ICT in low carbon growth.

The key policy research input to the event, “ICT and Low Carbon Growth in China” has been prepared by myself and a combined Chinese and international team. The research core aim was to produce a headline number for the potential mitigation impacts of realising ICT potential, building on the work done internationally. Clearly with data weaknesses and indeed conceptual issues, this is a ‘fuzzy number’ at best, but we have done a lot of data mining and conceptual thinking and have come up with a number sitting of course in a range estimate.

The bottom line: overall we estimate that if China’s industries make good use of the opportunities for ICT-enabled emissions reductions they could reduce emissions in other sectors by 1.4 – 1.7 Gt CO2e between 2007 and 2020, or between 3.5 to 4 times greater than the direct emissions related to ICT over that period. This would amount to between 13% and 18 % of the national 40-45% intensity reduction target for 2020, compared to a 2005 baseline. This is the first time that serious effort has been invested in teasing out these numbers in China.

The paper will be used to debate the topic of ICT and green growth. This in turn will focus on identifying policy levers for realising the potential, and for exploring potential areas for private-public collaboration in advancing this agenda. The timing allows for a broad conversation to take place in the context of the emerging 12th National Plan, but also has a broader awareness raising role in government and elsewhere.

Based on discussions at this Beijing-based event, and inputs from others, the paper will be updated and published. So here is an opportunity to make inputs, by sending comments to me at simon[at]zadek.net.