The world’s biggest coal producer and consumer mined 384.67 million tonnes of the fossil fuel last month, easily topping its previous record of 370.84 million tonnes set in November last year, after the government called for miners to work at maximum capacity to help fuel the country’s economic growth.
Official government figures show that China’s coal binge also spurred the country to record-high coal output over the year as a whole. Chinese coal production climbed to an all-time high of 4.07 billion tonnes, up 4.7 percent on the previous year, in a blow to climate campaigners months after the UN’s COP26 climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) predicted that global consumption of coal power, which is the world’s single biggest source of climate emissions, would reach record levels last year driven by a surge in demand for energy to kick-start global economies following the COVID-19 pandemic.
Photo: Reuters
Coal power fell by 4 percent in 2020 as the pandemic caused a global economic slowdown, but the IEA found that the surge in demand for electricity during last year outpaced the growth in low-carbon sources, leading many wealthy economies to rely more heavily on fossil-fuel power plants.
The IEA’s most recent report, published last week, found that the steepest-ever increase in global electricity demand last year was stoked by a 9 percent increase in coal use compared with the year before, or more than half of the global increase in power demand, to reach an all-time peak.
China’s record coal consumption comes weeks after the conclusion of the COP26 climate talks, which ended in a fierce disagreement over a pledge to abandon coal.
A last-minute intervention by India watered down the language of the pact from “phasing out” to “phasing down.”
After the talks, held last month, COP26 president Alok Sharma said India and China would “have to explain themselves to poor nations” after watering down the Glasgow climate pact, adding that their actions had left him “deeply frustrated.”
The IEA found that coal plants in the US and the EU produced 20 percent more electricity last year, from low levels in 2020, but their use remained below the levels recorded in 2019.
The reliance on coal plants is expected to decline again next year as electricity demand slows and the expansion of renewable energy alternatives continues.
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
TURNAROUND: The Liberal Party had trailed the Conservatives by a wide margin, but that was before Trump threatened to make Canada the US’ 51st state Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls. An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed that the left-leaning Liberals have 38 percent public support and the official opposition center-right Conservatives have 36 percent. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing the Conservative leader to Trump. The Conservative strategy had long been to attack unpopular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but last month he
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
RSS