Shanghai:
China generated 53% of the world’s total coal-fired energy in 2020, nine percentage points more that 5 years earlier, in spite of climate pledges and the creating of hundreds of renewable power plants, a worldwide information study showed on Monday.
Although China added a record 71.7 gigawatts (GW) of wind energy and 48.2 GW of solar final year, it was the only G20 nation to see a substantial jump in coal-fired generation, according to study from Ember, a London-based power and climate study group.
China’s coal-fired generation rose by 1.7% or 77 terawatt-hours, sufficient to bring its share of total worldwide coal energy to 53%, up from 44% in 2015, the report showed.
The nation has promised to cut down its dependence on coal in a bid to bring emissions of climate-warming greenhouse gas to a peak ahead of 2030 and turn into “carbon neutral” by 2060.
“China is like a big ship, and it takes time to turn in another direction,” mentioned Muyi Yang, senior analyst with Ember and one of the report’s authors.
China has so far been unable to uncover sufficient clean power to meet speedy increases in electrical energy demand. Renewables met only about half of China’s energy consumption development final year.
New coal-fired energy installations reached 38.4 GW in 2020, more than 3 instances the quantity constructed by the rest of the planet, according to a February study report.
China has steadily lowered the share of coal in total power consumption from about 70% a decade ago to 56.8% final year. But absolute generation volumes nonetheless rose 19% more than the 2016-2020 period, Ember calculated.
In its 2021-2025 5-year strategy, China vowed to “rationally control the scale and pace of development in the construction of coal-fired power,” and Yang mentioned tougher measures could stick to.
“I think there will be a cap on coal consumption, and that will have a major impact on the future trajectory for coal power,” he mentioned.
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