China ‘cheating’ over ozone emissions deal

China has been caught cheating on a global agreement to phase out ozone-depleting greenhouse gases.

High pollution in Beijing in 2015. Picture: Getty Images

China has been caught cheating on a global agreement to phase out ozone-depleting greenhouse gases.

Rogue suppliers of building ­insulation products in China’s eastern industrial ­regions have been blamed for the spike in CFC emissions, which have been banned in developing countries since 2010. China and other ­developing nations have received funding from the developed world to stop using the chemicals that are known to have caused a breakdown of the ozone layer over Antarctica.

The alarm was raised last year that CFC emissions were back on the rise. Scientists had suspected Chinese production was responsible for a reverse in what had been a downward trend in atmospheric concentrations of trichloro­fluromethane (CFC-11).

A report in Nature journal says scientists have measured an unexpected spike in emissions and found China accounts for at least 40 per cent of it.

Research group leader Paul Krummel from CSIRO said concern about the leap in CFCs had arisen last year and the latest ­research had proven China was responsible.

“It is up to the international community to decide what to do about it,” Mr Krummel said.

The world agreed to phase out CFCs by 2010 under the Montreal Protocol because of concern over their impact on the ozone layer.

But emissions from eastern mainland China were approximately seven million kilograms a year higher between 2014 and 2017 than in 2008 to 2012.

The authors of the study said the increased emissions were probably the result of unreport­ed production and use in Shandong and Hebei.

The Nature report said changes in atmospheric transport may have contributed about half of the slowdown in the rate of ­decline previously ­recorded.

“Given that our increase in global emissions may be over­estimated by up to a factor of two, owing to unaccounted for changes in atmospheric ­dynamics, the fraction of the global emission increase accounted for by eastern mainland China may actually be substantially higher,” the paper says.

“Hence, these results demonstrate that increased emissions from eastern mainland China since 2012 can account for a large fraction of the concurrent rise in global emissions.”

Study author Paul Fraser, from the CSIRO, said the rise in emissions in China was likely due to the new production of insulating foams used in buildings, which is not permitted under the Montreal Protocol.

“If emissions do not decline, it will delay the recovery of the Antarctic ozone hole, possibly for decades,” Dr Fraser said.

Ian Rae, from the School of Chemistry at the University of Melbourne, said rogue operators were flouting international agreements that their governments had signed up to.