Image - China's flag against green bokeh background
Past Event

Will China Meet its Goal of Net Zero Emissions of Greenhouse Gases by 2060?

On September 22, 2020, in a talk at the United Nations, Chinese President Xi Jinping surprised the world—including China—with an announcement that China would achieve carbon neutrality by 2060. This includes reducing annual CO2 emissions from more than 10 billion tons today to zero in less than 40 years.

What is the global significance of this goal? How feasible is it? What can be done in the near term to advance the goal? What role could co-operation between the United States and China play?

About the Speakers

Dr. Mark D. Levine retired after a 35-year career at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). LBNL, founded in 1931, is a world-renowned, preeminent, scientific research institute in the U.S. national laboratory system, located above UC Berkeley. At LBNL, he created the China Energy Group in 1988; co-authored the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that was awarded the Nobel Prize; led numerous major national and international studies of energy efficiency and reduction of CO2 emissions; served on the boards of nine leading institutions and editorial boards of three leading journals; and led the largest division at LBNL for 10 years. He was the founder or co-founder of three independent institutions: a nonprofit that works on renewable energy in the United States; a government-organized non-governmental organization (GONGO) performing analyses of energy efficiency in China; and a foundation program that funds clean energy policy studies in China. He received his B.A. from Princeton University (summa cum laude) and Ph.D. from UC Berkeley.

Dr. Nan Zhou is a senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, serving as group leader of the China Energy Group. In this capacity, Dr. Zhou is also the director of the presidential program U.S.-China Clean Energy Center—Building Energy Efficiency (CERC-BEE). She is an Advisory Board member of the Asia Pacific Energy Research Centre under APEC, and a Council member for the Energy Transition Council of the Global Future Council for the World Economic Forum. She serves as a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report.

Dr. Fredrich (Fritz) Kahrl is an independent consultant and a research affiliate at UC Berkeley’s California-China Climate Institute (CCCI). CCCI is led by former Governor Jerry Brown and Xie Zhenhua, China’s special representative for climate change, and partners with the Institute of Climate Change and Sustainable Development at Tsinghua University in China. He is also a lecturer in UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy and the University of San Francisco’s Energy Systems Management Program. He works primarily on energy markets, regulation and policy in the United States, China and India. He has nearly 20 years of perspective on energy and environmental issues in China, including two stints in the U.S.-China Climate Change Working Group. Kahrl received his Ph.D. from the Energy and Resources Group at UC Berkeley and his B.A. in philosophy from the College of William & Mary.

MLF Organizer
Lillian Nakagawa
Notes

MLF: Asia-Pacific Affairs

Zhou and Levine photos copyright © 2010 The Regents of the University of California, through the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Kahrl photo courtesy of Fredrich Kahrl.

January 11, 2022

The Commonwealth Club of California
110 The Embarcadero
Taube Family Auditorium
San Francisco, CA 94105
United States

Speakers
Image - Mark D. Levine

Dr. Mark D. Levine

Senior Advisor, China Energy, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Image - Nan Zhou

Dr. Nan Zhou

Senior Scientist, Group Leader, China Energy Group, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Image - Fredrich (Fritz) Kahrl

Dr. Fredrich (Fritz) Kahrl

Research Affiliate, University of California at Berkeley’s California-China Research Institute; Lecturer, UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy