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The Wujing Power Station in Shanghai. Last year, the Chinese energy sector’s carbon dioxide emissions increased 5.2 per cent, highlighting a failure to rein in energy-intensive growth, the report said. Photo: Bloomberg
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Climate change: China at risk of missing its goals unless it takes drastic action to rein in coal expansion, new research finds

  • China ‘way off track against its target of cutting carbon intensity by 18 per cent between 2021 and 2025,’ says Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air
  • Approaching deadline for peak emissions by 2030 has led many developers to pursue carbon-intensive projects while the window is still open, says report
Business of climate change
Eric Ng
Eric Ng
Why you can trust SCMP
China is at heightened risk of missing its climate targets and suffering major economic losses unless it takes decisive actions to put a halt to runaway coal power plant expansion and reform outdated power grid management, new research has found.
To fix challenges posed by an unchecked boom in construction of coal power plants initiated in the name of preventing periodic power shortages, Beijing must scrap policies that support coal power generation, according to climate analysts.
Last year, the Chinese energy sector’s carbon dioxide emissions increased 5.2 per cent, the same as gross domestic product, highlighting a failure to rein in energy-intensive growth, they estimated.

“Another year of rapidly rising emissions in 2023 leaves China way off track against its target of cutting carbon intensity by 18 per cent between 2021 and 2025,” said Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA). “As a result, carbon dioxide emissions would now need to fall by 4 to 6 per cent by 2025 to hit the goal.”

The approaching deadline for achieving peak carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 appeared to have led many developers to pursue a wave of carbon-intensive projects while the window is still open, said a joint report by CREA and Global Energy Monitor published on Thursday.

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The surprising hurdle slowing China’s switch to green energy

The surprising hurdle slowing China’s switch to green energy

In April 2021, President Xi Jinping said China would “strictly control” coal-fired power generation projects, reach peak consumption next year and start phasing it down in 2026, as part of the nation’s goals for carbon emissions to peak before 2030 and to reach net-zero by 2060.

A policy document followed in October that year, in which China committed to raise the share of non-fossil energy consumption to 20 per cent by 2025 from 15.9 per cent in 2020, while slashing carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP by 18 per cent and energy usage intensity by 13.5 per cent from 2020 levels.

These targets are at risk of going “severely” off track, given approvals of new coal power plants increased fourfold in 2022-23, compared with the previous five-year period of 2016-20, the analysts said.

They pointed out that the nation’s carbon emissions intensity only fell 5 per cent between 2020 and last year. Meanwhile, energy usage intensity increased 0.5 per cent last year, the first time it has risen since at least 2005.

In particular, the growth rate of coal power generation accelerated to 4 per cent annually between 2021 and last year, from 3.5 per cent between 2016 and 2020, while growth in total coal consumption – in the power and non-power sectors – accelerated eight-fold to 3.8 per cent a year from 0.5 per cent.

New coal power projects with 114 gigawatts of generating capacity received government approval last year, up from 104GW in 2022. The total volume of 218GW in the past two years came close to the record of 233GW permitted in 2014-15.

Construction started on another 70GW of capacity, a sharp rise from 54GW in 2022. Some 47GW was commissioned, up from 28GW.

Building and maintaining this vast power capacity is a “major economic drag”, the analysts said, noting a Renmin University study cited by the People’s Daily in 2023 that estimated the national coal power assets to be at risk of losing 120 billion (US$16.69 billion) to 350 billion yuan in value if they are forced to run at low capacity or shut down in the future.

To reach the carbon intensity reduction target for next year, China’s coal consumption and carbon emissions must fall in absolute terms between last year and next year, which is a tall order, the analysts said.

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