It’s Kyoto Protocol not Tokyo Accord. Anyhow these agreements are basically useless. In the end it’s cheap solar/wind and expensive oil/gas that drive the energy transition.

Retained carbon is not emitted carbon. I don’t see why that’s not fair.

Btw you should add the article linked by @Grail@multiverse.soulism.net’s comment below to your post. It contains a good bit more details on this new accounting.

Thanks. This is a much better source but still confusing. The first figure is saying incineration is included in the new scope but “end uses sector and waste” are not. I think this means the carbons are trapped in mostly plastic that end up in landfills. Plastic last forever so it is a way to sequester carbons lol.

A physicist would tell you that burning oil to heat up a furnace or to push a tractor is energy use. But an economist would say, that’s not energy

Powering a tractor definitely requires energy. I have never seen economists denying that. Why would they? Also heating up a furnace 100% falls under industrial use in my book.

The new rules also don’t include emissions from incinerating plastic waste.

Does it not? I looked at the page linked in the Times article but they don’t say anything concrete there. Do you have a better source?

Under the new accounting, China now includes CO₂ from industrial processes, such as cement and metals production. Crucially, it excludes the non-energy use of fossil fuels. This means that coal, oil and gas used as raw materials in the country’s growing chemical industry are no longer factored in.

The accounting change is suspicious but this new definition looks fair. If oil is used to make some chemical and the carbons remain inside the product (not released in the process) then it should not count as emission.