Over the weekend,  I found the recently release World Resource Institute Report China, the United States, and the Climate Change Challenge.  As the title suggests, and as has been popular recently, it looked at the relationships and responsibilities of China and the US to address climate change:

discusses the successes and challenges to effective regulation in China, outlining the major advances made in implementing effective energy efficiency programs in the past several years. These include targeted programs for both large and small enterprises, specific goals for government officials, and the development of energy statistics infrastructure. It also addresses U.S. competitiveness concerns in relation to the introduction of U.S. cap-and-trade policies, and specific opportunities for enhanced climate change cooperation between the two countries.

So, the focus was on China’s footprint, and systemic issues, and how the US could work with China to overcome hurdles.  Not really anything new, however unlike some other recent reports, I thought that this report did do a much better job of showing the complexities of the issues faced:… and brought up a number of points in China’s favor that I found were interesting:

By 2011, China plans to close all plants of below 50 MW of capacity, and old plants below 100 MW. Between 2011 and 2020, many plants between 100 and 200 MW will also be closed. As a result, the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that by 2011, 80 percent of China’s coal-fi red power plants will be modern plants above 300 MW in capacity and this number will rise above 90 percent by 2020.

… and makes a very goot point about cap & trade:

the government has demonstrated that it can accomplish a considerable amount of carbon mitigation even as it develops better accounting. Until that accounting is developed, and until its fi nancial markets further develop, China  is not in a position to implement an effective national cap-and-trade system