China’s surprise pledge to slash its carbon footprint to zero by 2060 was met with cautious applause, but fresh spending on coal to rev up a virus-hit economy threatens to nullify its audacious bid to lead the world into a low carbon future.
The fossil fuel has powered China’s economic surge over the past 30 years, and the nation burns about half the coal used globally each year.
Between 2000 and 2018, its annual carbon emissions nearly tripled, and it now accounts for nearly one-third of the world’s total greenhouse gases linked to global warming.
Photo: AFP
Despite pledges to wean the economy off coal with the world’s most ambitious investment in renewables, China’s coal consumption climbed back in June to near the peak levels seen in 2013.
That was in part due to a pivot back to coal after geopolitical uncertainty in the Saudi peninsula, China’s main oil supplier.
However, the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw the Chinese economy contract for the first time in 30 years, also opened the taps from government lenders to build new coal plants to revive flatlining provincial economies.
Photo: AFP
There is a “tension at the heart of China’s energy planning,” Greenpeace East Asia senior climate and energy officer Li Shuo (李碩) said.
It “pits Beijing’s strategic interests against the immediate goals of cash-strapped provincial governments, makes it difficult to walk the talk” on a cleaner future, he said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Tuesday unveiled Beijing’s bold pitch for leadership on global warming at the UN’s virtual General Assembly, vowing his nation will reach peak emissions before 2030 and go carbon neutral 30 years later.
It is the first time China has announced any plans to become carbon neutral, but so far there have been no details on how it would rebalance away from fossil fuels.
In the first half of this year, China approved 23 gigawatts worth of new coal power projects, more than the previous two years combined, said Global Energy Monitor (GEM), a San Francisco-based environmental non-governmental organization.
“A new fleet of coal plants is in direct contradiction with China’s pledge to peak emissions before 2030,” said Lauri Myllyvirta, China analyst at the Helskinki-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.
China is also positioning itself as the global leader in renewables. It is already the top global producer and consumer of wind turbines, solar panels and electric vehicles, and Chinese factories make two-thirds of all solar cells installed used worldwide.
“China’s energy policy is like a two-headed beast, with each head trying to run in the opposite direction,” Li said.
However, the new coal surge is running renewables out of the market because China’s energy distribution system uses Soviet-style quotas, where power suppliers are allocated a monthly supply limit.
The grid quotas pushed local governments to increase the allocation for coal-based power over recent years, and it leave less room on the grid for renewable energy use.
“Local governments prefer to buy more coal-generated power to protect mining jobs,” Li said.
Wind and solar farms have been forced to idle and dozens of new renewable projects have been canceled since late last year.
The country already has 400GW more coal-fired capacity than what is needed to meet peak demand, GEM said.
“China’s coal fleet is running at about 50 percent capacity,” Myllyvirta said. “Many facilities are white elephants. Adding new ones would only make them less efficient.”
Policymakers said new plants with lower emissions standards would be replace the old dirty chimneys, but the savings are modest. The direction of travel for now still points to an energy future dominated by coal.
“Our energy policy needs a serious overhaul — a surgery — because the growth in renewables has hit a glass ceiling,” Li said. “But reforms have stalled for nearly a decade, because the coal lobby is too powerful.”
A string of rape and assault allegations against the son of Norway’s future queen have plunged the royal family into its “biggest scandal” ever, wrapping up an annus horribilis for the monarchy. The legal troubles surrounding Marius Borg Hoiby, the 27-year-old son born of a relationship before Norwegian Crown Princess Mette-Marit’s marriage to Norwegian Crown Prince Haakon, have dominated the Scandinavian country’s headlines since August. The tall strapping blond with a “bad boy” look — often photographed in tuxedos, slicked back hair, earrings and tattoos — was arrested in Oslo on Aug. 4 suspected of assaulting his girlfriend the previous night. A photograph
‘GOOD POLITICS’: He is a ‘pragmatic radical’ and has moderated his rhetoric since the height of his radicalism in 2014, a lecturer in contemporary Islam said Abu Mohammed al-Jolani is the leader of the Islamist alliance that spearheaded an offensive that rebels say brought down Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and ended five decades of Baath Party rule in Syria. Al-Jolani heads Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is rooted in Syria’s branch of al-Qaeda. He is a former extremist who adopted a more moderate posture in order to achieve his goals. Yesterday, as the rebels entered Damascus, he ordered all military forces in the capital not to approach public institutions. Last week, he said the objective of his offensive, which saw city after city fall from government control, was to
The US deployed a reconnaissance aircraft while Japan and the Philippines sent navy ships in a joint patrol in the disputed South China Sea yesterday, two days after the allied forces condemned actions by China Coast Guard vessels against Philippine patrol ships. The US Indo-Pacific Command said the joint patrol was conducted in the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone by allies and partners to “uphold the right to freedom of navigation and overflight “ and “other lawful uses of the sea and international airspace.” Those phrases are used by the US, Japan and the Philippines to oppose China’s increasingly aggressive actions in the
‘KAMPAI’: It is said that people in Japan began brewing rice about 2,000 years ago, with a third-century Chinese chronicle describing the Japanese as fond of alcohol Traditional Japanese knowledge and skills used in the production of sake and shochu distilled spirits were approved on Wednesday for addition to UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list, a committee of the UN cultural body said It is believed people in the archipelago began brewing rice in a simple way about two millennia ago, with a third-century Chinese chronicle describing the Japanese as fond of alcohol. By about 1000 AD, the imperial palace had a department to supervise the manufacturing of sake and its use in rituals, the Japan Sake and Shochu Makers Association said. The multi-staged brewing techniques still used today are
RSS