Hsu's work mentioned in article on latest Five-Year Plan to address climate change in China

The world is watching how the United States and China, the two biggest carbon emitters and economies in the world, have committed to implementing the Paris Agreement on climate change. The United States faces uncertainty over its ability to deliver on its commitment, given that the Obama Administration’s Clean Power Plan is still pending in court. What exactly is China’s plan, and will it work?

China’s National Congress recently passed its 13th Five-Year Plan, an overarching social and economic roadmap that includes climate change issues. For the first time, the Five-Year Plan adopts “green development” as one of the major visions and lays out specific agendas to promote clean energy and reduce carbon emissions.   ...   Deborah Seligsohn, a researcher at the University of California, San Diego, and Angel Hsu, an Assistant Professor at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, argue that the Chinese government’s targets in its Five-Year Plan are too “easily manageable” given China’s success with surpassing energy and carbon targets in the 12th Five-Year Plan. Diego and Hsu provide evidence that the coal consumption has been evidently declining in the past five years, suggesting that the annual cap of 5 billion metric tons of energy would naturally overlap with this existing trend.   Read more