China plans to add new coal-fired power plants equivalent to the entire EU’s generating capacity, putting the world’s biggest emitter out of sync with its commitments to combat climate change, researchers said yesterday.
China built enough new plants from January last year to June — nearly 43 gigawatts (GW) of capacity — to cancel out decreases in the rest of the world, the US-based Global Energy Monitor (GEM) said in a report.
Researchers have warned that an increase in China’s coal-power capacity is incompatible with keeping global warming “well below” 2°C, a key commitment of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, which China is a party to.
Photo: AFP
Another 147.7GW of coal plants in the country are under construction or likely to be reopened, nearly as many as the entire EU’s 150GW of existing capacity, and more than the combined 105GW under construction in the rest of the world, the report said.
The plants would take the total capacity of China’s coal-fired power plants to 1174.7GW.
The report attributed China’s coal expansion to a two-year period in which provincial governments rapidly approved projects as part of an effort to boost regional growth.
An ongoing economic slowdown could further weaken China’s resolve to switch to renewables, despite the central government’s calls over the past few years to slow the development of coal-fired power plants.
“There is a risk that Chinese leaders will feel the need to continue supporting coal-intensive industries and make climate concerns second to continued economic growth,” GEM director Christine Shearer said.
“As more countries turn away from coal and retire their plants, China’s continued pursuit of coal is increasingly out of step with the rest of the world, and is now effectively driving the ongoing expansion of the global coal fleet,” the report said.
China’s efforts against climate change are crucial, as the country is the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases.
Within China, continued expansion of coal capacity could cause a “further worsening of the coal power overcapacity problem in China, and financial distress for power companies,” said Lauri Myllyvirta, an analyst at the Australia-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.
“This will complicate China’s transition to clean energy by creating an incentive for the power industry to slow down expansion of clean energy and saddling the industry with debt at a time when they should be investing in an energy transition,” Myllyvirta said.
Although China has spent more on clean energy than any other country and is pushing to burn natural gas instead of coal to counter smog, it is still pumping money at home and abroad into coal-fired generation.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
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