Page 7 - AsiaElec Week 10 2022

AsiaElec COAL AsiaElec

China’s Xi calls

for “realistic”

role for coal

CHINA CHINESE President Xi Jinping has called for a Coal’s share of the energy mix has fallen 68%
“realistic” approach to achieving the country’s to 56.8%. But the fossil fuel still plays a major
carbon neutrality goals, stressing coal’s domi- role in the power sector, generating 64% of its
nance was unlikely to change fundamentally in electricity.
the short term. In 2021, China’s coal output hit a record
Xi told officials from Inner Mongolia at the 4.07bn, up 4.7% year on year.
National People’s Congress that China’s green Chinese power and steel companies are
transition could not be achieved overnight. continuing to invest in coal-based production
“We can’t be detached from reality … We capacity at alarming rates, with 33 GW of new
can’t toss away what’s feeding us now while what projects started in 2021, exceeding the rest of the
will feed us next is still not in our pocket,” Xi was world several-fold.
quoted as saying by state-run People’s Daily. Indeed, despite Beijing’s plans to boost
“To achieve the ‘dual carbon’ targets, [we] renewables, grids and energy conservation,
must proceed from national conditions and seek China alone is home to almost 53% of coal
steady progress.” capacity under construction and 55% of the
However, he did say that China would “work pre-construction pipeline, recent research by
harder” to make coal use cleaner and more effi- green think-tank E3G found.
cient, update coal-fired power plants to make China said in October 2021 ahead of the
them more efficient, and enhance the capacity COP26 conference in Glasgow that to achieve
of grids to absorb power produced by renewable its 2030 and 2060 targets, it aimed to lower CO2
sources, Reuters reported. emissions per unit of GDP by over 65% from the
In September 2020, the government set a 2005 level, to raise the share of non-fossil fuels
target of peak emissions before 2030 and carbon in primary energy consumption to around 25%
neutral by 2060. and to increase the forest stock volume by 6bn
However, green expansion is continuing, cubic metres from the 2005 level.
with China adding 100.54 GW of new wind and Around half of 2021’s global growth in
solar capacity in 2021, according to official data, electricity demand took place in China, where
way above the government’s target of 90GW. demand grew by an estimated 10%.it™

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