China's ongoing efforts to stimulate its economy are showing up as a significant increase in the pace of CO₂ accumulation in the Earth's atmosphere. The latest data covering the month of April 2023 is consistent with a surge of economic activity during the preceding month.

That's not much of a surprise. Last month, we observed early indications the Chinese economy was finally gaining traction after the Chinese government lifted its zero-COVID lockdowns at the end of 2022. What is surprising is how rapidly the rate at which carbon dioxide accumulates in the Earth's atmosphere is increasing following the turn in direction for China's economic momentum.

The latest evidence of that upward momentum can be seen in the following chart. It shows a significant increase over last month for the change in the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide measured by the remote Mauna Loa Observatory.

But how long might that surge continue?

Reports indicate China's economic activity unexpectedly cooled during April 2023, the effects of which would be expected to show up in atmospheric CO₂ data during the next two months.

For its part, China's government is still going gangbusters in trying to stimulate its economy. During the first three months of 2023, local governments in China approved more new coal-fired power plants than they did in all of 2021.

That matters because China is, by a very wide and increasing margin, the world's biggest national producer of carbon dioxide emissions. And since China's export-oriented economy supplies much of the world with consumer goods, changes in the rate at which those emissions accumulate in the air tell us quite a lot about the relative health of the global economy.

References

National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. Earth System Research Laboratory. Mauna Loa Observatory CO2 Data. [Text File]. Updated 9 May 2023.

Image source: Photo by Cajeo Zhang on Unsplash. The same power station is identified and depicted at closer range in Paul Sonders' photograph at FineArtAmerica/Getty Images.

As expected, March 2023 saw an uptick in the pace at which carbon dioxide is accumulating in the Earth's atmosphere. While small, that change could mark the beginning of an improvement in global economic activity. Particularly in China, which ranks as the world's largest producer of carbon dioxide emissions by a very wide margin.

The country, which is on track to surpass the United States' total CO₂ historical emissions around 2050 has been struggling to gain economic traction since it lifted its zero-COVID lockdowns at the end of 2022. In March 2023, the country appears to have succeeded.

With greater economic output, the country's carbon dioxide emissions would have increased, which ultimately shows up in the Earth's atmosphere. The following chart shows that change as a small uptick that may mark the reversal of the downtrend of recent months should the planet's CO₂ accumulation rate continue increasing.

Much of China's role in becoming the planet's primary producer of carbon dioxide emissions has come as the result of its government's industrial policy. More remarkably, the Chinese government accelerated its production of coal-fired power plants during the past year, which may accelerate that achievement.

China permitted more coal power plants last year than any time in the last seven years, according to a new report released this week. It's the equivalent of about two new coal power plants per week. The report by energy data organizations Global Energy Monitor and the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air finds the country quadrupled the amount of new coal power approvals in 2022 compared to 2021.

That's despite the fact that much of the world is getting off coal, says Flora Champenois, coal research analyst at Global Energy Monitor and one of the co-authors of the report.

"Everybody else is moving away from coal and China seems to be stepping on the gas," she says. "We saw that China has six times as much plants starting construction as the rest of the world combined."

China's government is also expanding the country's output of coal and boosting its imports to fuel its growing count of coal-fired plants to power its factories as the country's economy recovers from its zero-COVID lockdowns.

References

National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. Earth System Research Laboratory. Mauna Loa Observatory CO2 Data. [Text File]. Updated 5 April 2023.

Image source: WikiMedia Commons. Beijing Air Pollution by Kentaro IEMOTO@Tokyo (2014). Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

China is, by a very wide margin, the world's leading producer of carbon dioxide emissions. No other nation has ever put as much carbon dioxide into the Earth's atmosphere in a single year as China. That includes the United States, the world's second largest producer of carbon dioxide emissions.

These statements are based upon data provided by Global Carbon Project for 2022, which reports historical data for national fossil fuel-based emissions of carbon dioxide from 1850 through 2021. In that most recent year, China added some 3,131 metric tonnes of carbon (MtC) to the Earth's atmosphere, while the U.S. added 43% of that amount. U.S. carbon dioxide output peaked in 2005 at 1,675 MtC and has generally fallen in the years since, while China surpassed that level in 2006 and has continued to increase its CO₂ emissions each year.

We're making a point of highlighting China's outsized role in contributing to global carbon dioxide emissions because its shows up in measurements of the concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere, which increasingly tells us quite a lot about the state of China's economy. In February 2023, those measurements provide more evidence that the Chinese government's zero-COVID lockdowns during the final three months of 2022 negatively impacted its economy.

Changes in China's economic growth drive changes in the country's CO₂ emissions, which are typically reflected in atmospheric concentration data measured at high-elevation observatories on the big island of Hawaii some 4-6 weeks later after they've fully diffused into the Earth's air. What that data indicates is that China's zero-COVID lockdowns, which were ramped up during the fourth quarter of 2022, effectively reversed much of the third-quarter's rebound.

Looking forward, we should see the pace at which CO₂ accumulates in the atmosphere reverse once again and start to increase. That change will coincide with increased economic output in China following its government's complete reversal of its zero-COVID policy and its lifting of lockdowns at the end of December 2022.

References

National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. Earth System Research Laboratory. Mauna Loa Observatory CO2 Data. [Text File]. Updated 6 February 2023. Accessed 6 February 2023.

Global Carbon Project. (2022). Supplemental data of Global Carbon Budget 2022 (Version 1.0) [Data set]. Global Carbon Project. DOI: 10.18160/gcp-2022.