Aiming low

ONCE an environmental sluggard, China now pursues green policies with gusto. Last September it announced plans to launch a national carbon-trading scheme in 2017 aimed at reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. It also played an important role in December in securing a global deal in Paris on combating climate change. On March 5th China announced that its new five-year economic plan would include a target to cap annual energy consumption at a tough-sounding 5 billion tonnes of coal equivalent by 2020, up from 4.3 billion now. It is beginning to make greenness sound all too easy.

A study by two researchers in Britain—Lord Nicholas Stern, a prominent environmental economist, and Fergus Green, an expert on climate policy—suggests it may indeed be relatively easy for China, because of the modest targets that it is setting for itself. The country says its emissions of carbon dioxide (CO²) will peak by 2030. But the academics’ paper, due to be published on the website of the journal Climate Policy later this month, shows that achieving this will pose little challenge.