How much CO2 will China be producing by the year 2030?

Chinese Premier XI signed an agreement earlier this week with President Obama.  In this agreement, Xi agreed to cap (or consider capping, as the Chinese version of the agreement reads) Chinese CO2 emissions in 2030.   So how much CO2 will China be producing by 2030?

There is no way predict exactly how much CO2 China will be releasing into the atmosphere 16 years from now, but its almost certain it will be a heck of a lot more then China is releasing now.  China passed the US to become the world's largest emitter of CO2 in about 2010, and since then has almost doubled their CO2 output.   The main reason that China's CO2 emissions are growing so rapidly is China's dependence on coal-fired power plants to generate electricity.  A secondary reason is the rapid adoption of motorcycle and cars by the Chinese public.  When I first visited China in 1990, a year after the Tien Amin massacre, there were absolutely zero private vehicles anywhere China.  The roads were filled with bicyclists.  Of course all that has changed---today cars, motorcycles, and trucks are everywhere in China.

Beijing traffic jam ca 1989

The simple graph at the top of this post, borrowed from the "Climate Central" web page, shows their projection of Chinese coal use.  Today, China burns more than twice as much coal as the US does.  By 2030, they are projected to increase their coal use by 50%.  Throw in even more cars, truck, and motorcycles, and China looks to greatly increase both their annual emissions and their share of total global CO2 emissions over the next 15 years.  AND, since CO2 has a residence time of ca. 1000 years in the atmosphere, all the extra CO2 emitted by China and the US under this new agreement will further accelerate global warming.

Its discouraging that this new and much ballyhooed bilateral international agreement that is supposed to reduce CO2 emissions will actually result in huge INCREASES to CO2 emissions.   Its not a new story---global CO2 emissions also rose dramatically during the time period of the Kyoto Accords.  

One can only conclude that CO2 emissions are going to be allowed to increase until the planet is clearly being damaged by global warming.  And by then the only thing left to try to fix things will be  Planetary Geoengineering.