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Workers sort coal near a mine in China’s northern Shanxi Province in 2015. Credit: Greg Baker / AFP / Getty
China’s pledge to end funding new coal-fired power plants abroad made by President Xi Jinping last week announced at the United Nations summit has raised hopes that the world could soon wean itself from its most carbon-intensive fossil fuel. But although this is a positive step by the world’s largest emitter of CO2, researchers say China is far from ending its massive domestic coal consumption.
« China’s economy is still heavily dependent on coal, » says Ottmar Edenhofer , Director of the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change in Berlin. « Stopping coal financing abroad is an important step, but China is still a long way from completely phasing out coal. »
Despite the country’s plans to become climate neutral by 2060, domestic coal production has almost tripled since 2001. In contrast, coal production in the US and Europe has halved during this time. China accounted for more than half of the 7.7 billion tons of coal extracted worldwide in 2020, which dwarfs the contributions of the next largest producers (see “World’s largest coal producers”).
But China also finances in many other countries the construction of coal-fired power plants to help Chinese energy companies take advantage of overseas markets. Overall, China finances enough coal power abroad to produce 42 gigawatts of electricity – enough to supply at least 30 million households.
Most of this money goes to Bangladesh, Vietnam, Mongolia and Indonesia, but also many African countries and some European nations receive substantial amounts (see “Financiers and Recipients of Coal Power Plants”).
According to the non-profit organization Global Energy Monitor, China put 38.4 GW of new coal-fired power plants into operation last year, 76% of the world’s total Total number of new coal-fired power plants.
Experts say stopping funding these coal-fired power plants is a good start, but add that the emissions they cause are different from those generated by the 1,000 GW of coal-fired power that China generates domestically will be dwarfed. This is more than four times the capacity of India or the United States, which are the second largest coal-fired power plants. « China’s current and future domestic coal power is more important to the climate than anything that will be built overseas in the future, » says Jan Ivar Korsbakken, energy policy specialist at the Center for International Climate Research in Oslo.
In Europe and the USA, coal-fired power generation has declined noticeably in recent decades. Despite former US President Donald Trump’s promise to revitalize the industry, very little capacity was added during his four-year tenure, while 52.4 GW of coal-fired power plants were shut down.
The coal phase-out has been slower in Europe, but EU countries have shut down more than 17 GW of capacity since 2019 – led by Spain, which closed half of its coal-fired power plants in 2020.
The leaders of the G7 advanced economies group – consisting of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States – agreed in May to end international funding for coal projects.
But the almost 2,500 coal-fired power plants around the world today could still emit more than 200 billion tons of carbon dioxide over the course of their lifetime, making it difficult to contain global warming to 1.5 ° C above pre-industrial temperatures.
« The 1.5-degree target is unattainable unless coal-fired power plants are soon replaced by cleaner energy technologies, » says Edenhofer. « Unfortunately, there is still no end in sight to coal. »
Update September 29, 2021: This story now includes when and how China made its commitment to finance coal-fired power plants abroad.
Clarification September 29, 2021: The graphic « Coal financiers and recipients » has been updated to make it clear that the list only includes public coal financiers.
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