Opinion | The problem with China’s ‘clean coal’ push is that there is no such thing as ‘clean coal’

China is a global technological leader in renewable energy and is the world's largest consumer of solar power. Both of these accomplishments came after Chinese policy leaders realised that coal-fired power generation stood in the way of cleaner skies and lower cost power.

Yet in October, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang renewed the focus on what the global public relations arm of the mining industry calls “clean coal” with comments on China’s potential for development of new coal and coal bed methane technologies.

As China knows, “clean coal” simply does not exist. “Clean coal” describes a hope that new technology like emissions abatement or carbon capture and sequestration might one day solve the coal problem. To date, both technologies have proven uneconomic and unsuccessful in reducing emissions.

This apparent conflict between China’s track record of leadership in clean energy technologies and its troubled relationship with coal will leave China watchers parsing Li’s comments for insight into China’s upcoming 14th five-year plan, which will cover 2021 to 2025. They may have to dig a little deeper to unpack this saga, however.