China Tells COP27: We Need More Coal
China’s plans to add to its world-leading fleet of coal power plants are a short-term Band-Aid to address energy security concerns and don’t represent a shift in emissions policies, according to members of the team representing the nation at the COP27 summit.
New plants are being planned to address a spate of high-profile electricity shortages in recent years while providing a buffer to global energy markets that have become more volatile following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to interviews with three of China’s delegates at the climate meeting in Egypt.
In the long run, electricity market reforms and massive investments in renewable power and energy storage will eventually curb and curtail coal use, allowing the country to hit its targets of peaking emissions by 2030 and zeroing them out by 2060, they said.
The strategy underscores China’s desire to avoid the kind of energy crisis facing Europe, but it has set off alarm bells for climate scientists who say the fuel needs to be phased out by 2040 to avoid the worst effects of climate change.
“We need an energy transition that’s high-quality and secure so it can be sustained,” said Li Zheng, a ‘climate change’ and energy professor at Tsinghua University.
“We don’t want to be like Europe and transform at the cost of energy security. They are now declaring that they are taking a step back in order to take two steps forward later.”
The climate researchers downplayed the size of the expansion, saying the country’s total coal capacity wouldn’t change much because of simultaneous retirements of older plants.
Earlier this year, an executive from China’s top energy engineering firm said he expects the nation to approve 270 gigawatts worth of new plants through 2025, more than the entire fleet in the US.
Coal has long been China’s mainstay fuel and still accounts for about 60 percent of the country’s power generation.
See more here climatechangedispatch
Header image: Yale Environment 360
Please Donate Below To Support Our Ongoing Work To Defend The Scientific Method
PRINCIPIA SCIENTIFIC INTERNATIONAL, legally registered in the UK as a company 
incorporated for charitable purposes. Head Office: 27 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX.
Trackback from your site.
Tom
| #
I bet the global warmers went home with sad faces after hearing that.
Reply
Paula
| #
WOW, needs more coal – China!!
Reply
VOWG
| #
The world needs to use more coal.
Reply
VOWG
| #
The emissions being talked about are always CO2. CO2 is not a climate driver and we could use at least 500 more ppm of the stuff in the atmosphere.
Reply
Roger Higgs
| #
I agree.
My current belief (pending further data) is that CO2 is a beneficial by-product of global warming by man-made soot emissions (mainly by burning coal, largely by China) …
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/362103181
Reply
Len Winokur
| #
👍
Reply
Len Winokur
| #
👍
Reply
Jerry Krause
| #
Hi PSI Readers and Saeed,
(https://principia-scientific.com/china-tells-cop27-we-need-more-coal)
(https://principia-scientific.com/new-scientific-law-greenhouse-effect)
(https://principia-scientific.com/?s=Solar+Radiation+)
Do you suppose that the Chinese know what I have seen and therefore know???
Have a good day, Jerry
Reply
Tom Anderson
| #
How long (if ever) will it be, do you suppose, before the eco-fools stop quaking and get a grip on themselves?
Reply
Geraint Hughes
| #
Tom,. never. They are dependent upon the income from green fees, funds and grants. The corruption is so deep it will take total turmoil to overthrow it all.
Reply