China has stepped up spending on coal in the face of extreme weather, a domestic energy crunch and rising global fuel prices — raising concernsThe country is the world’s biggest emitter of the greenhouse gases driving global warming, and President Xi Jinping has vowed to reduce coal use from 2026 as part of a broad set of climate promises.
In just the first quarter of 2022, regulators endorsed the equivalent of half the entire coal-fired power plant capacity approved in 2021, according to Greenpeace.Authorities have also burned and mined more coal in recent weeks in order to meet increased air conditioning demand and make up for shrunken hydropower dams during China’s hottest-ever summer.
To meet that goal, it said, China would “need to reduce emissions as early as possible and well before 2030” — as well as “decrease coal and other fossil fuel consumption at a much faster rate than currently planned”. The current operating solar capacity in the country accounts for nearly half the global total, according to San Francisco-based non-governmental organisation Global Energy Monitor .
At the same time, the central government wants to “avoid large-scale blackouts, which we witnessed last winter in the northeastern provinces, in this politically crucial year for Xi”, Byford Tsang, senior policy adviser at climate think-tank E3G, told AFP. Expanding coal capacity as a quick fix, however, goes against “immediate annual cuts in coal use that the UN and leading research organisations have called for”, GEM analysts said.
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