China adds new clean power equivalent to UK's entire electricity production | Renewables

According to the data, China added as much new clean energy generation in the first half of this year as the UK produced from all sources combined in the same period last year, with wind and solar power surging in the world's biggest greenhouse gas emitter.

The Center for Energy and Clean Air (CREA) think tank analyzed data released by the Chinese government on Thursday and said China's electricity generation from coal and gas fell 5% in July from a year earlier.

The latest figures reinforce a clear trend: China is leading the way in renewable energy, adding record amounts of solar and wind power, outpacing the rest of the world. Analysts say it could be the world’s best hope for preventing climate catastrophe.

Li Shuo, director of the China Climate Hub at the Asia Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., said China is ahead of all its competitors in green technology. China has a real advantage and has built a huge green industry.

Last year, China installed a record 293 GW of wind and solar power capacity. Last month, solar and wind capacity surpassed coal-fired power capacity in China. According to Rystad Energy’s forecast, solar alone will overtake coal as the main energy source in China by 2026, with a capacity of over 1.38 TW, 150 GW more than coal.

A fishery-solar hybrid project in Chuzhou, China. Photo: Costfoto/NurPhoto/Rex/Shutterstock

Electric vehicle production is booming, with hybrids and fully electric cars accounting for more than half of all new models sold in July, and the steel industry is also changing. No coal-fired power plant permits were issued in the first half of this year.

The ongoing boom in clean technology has led some analysts to suggest that China’s greenhouse gas emissions may already have peaked, perhaps as early as February this year. That would be significant. If China, the world’s second-largest economy after the United States, reverses decades of near-constant, rapid growth, its carbon emissions would nearly triple from about 3.6 billion tonnes in 2000 to 11.4 billion tonnes in 2022, a seismic shift for the global climate emergency.

China is responsible for about a quarter of global carbon emissions, roughly the same amount as the entire developed world combined. Without China, there can be no effective global climate action.

China pledged in 2020 to peak its emissions before 2030, which remains its official goal. But analysts have long argued that China could peak by 2025 if the government takes sufficient action. To limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, which scientists say is still technically possible, global emissions would need to be halved by 2030, and that won’t happen unless China’s emissions peak in the first half of the decade and decline rapidly in the second half.

According to CREA, carbon dioxide emissions from energy use and cement production, which account for more than 90% of China’s total carbon emissions, began to decline in March. In the second quarter of this year, CO2 emissions fell by about 1%, the think tank said, marking the first quarterly decline since the country’s economy reopened after the COVID-19 lockdown.

Within this overall reduction range, CREA estimates that electricity sector emissions fell by around 3%, cement production emissions fell by around 7%, and oil consumption fell by 3%.

CREA analyst Chi Qin said that if renewables continue to replace coal power, emissions could continue to decline in 2024, with 2023 likely to be the peak year for China's emissions.

But to say that China’s emissions have peaked is a tentative conclusion, and some of the factors behind the shift could be reversing. Trouble in China’s property market has slowed the country’s construction sector, leading to less high-emission concrete being poured, and the carbon-intensive steel sector has faltered.

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But these markets could recover again under government stimulus, pushing emissions higher. This has happened before. China’s emissions fell after 2014, leading to early hopes of a peak, but then surged again in 2017 and continued to rise during the COVID-19 crisis.

Chin said: Uncertainty grows as energy demand grows faster than expected in the first half of 2024, and if this trend continues, emissions could remain flat.

Lauri Milivirta, CREA’s senior analyst, added: “It’s clear that the economy is not what China’s policymakers want, so the measures taken to stimulate growth will determine whether emissions declines peak or not. If growth shifts to less energy-intensive sectors and the current pace of clean energy additions continues, emissions will start to decline in the long term.

The biggest problem is coal. Even as renewables grow, coal will still provide 60% of China’s power in 2023. China built more than 40 GW of new coal-fired power plants last year, according to the Global Coal Plant Tracker. The pace of new additions is slowing, but about 8 GW was added in the first half of this year.

It is important to note that capacity is not the same as power generation. In China, for various economic and political reasons, power plants can be built even when there is no clear need to operate at full capacity, so there may be a mismatch between how much power China can produce and how much it actually produces. Nevertheless, since there is still a lot of investment in coal, this could mean a later peak.

Coal remains the backbone of China’s power sector and economy, but it will be difficult to achieve the rapid emissions reductions the world needs.

If Donald Trump wins the US presidential election, he has said he will withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement, which would throw global climate action into disarray. This year’s Cop29 UN climate summit, which begins days after the election, will focus on climate finance. After that, countries will be asked to draw up new national emissions reduction plans under the Paris Agreement, which will be submitted early next year.

If Trump loses, China will face even greater pressure from the United States to agree to stronger emissions cuts in its next national plan. With China’s economy at a crossroads, and its clean energy future pitted against entrenched coal and steel interests, the outcome of the U.S. election could be a defining factor in what happens next, along with China’s peak.

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