China’s vow to cut carbon emissions clashes with plans to expand coal power plants, report says

China’s pledge to become carbon neutral by 2060 implies that plans to expand the nation’s coal power cannot proceed, two environmental research groups contended on Friday.

A report by the Draworld Environment Research Centre of Beijing and the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air in Finland notes that the power industry’s plan to expand China’s coal-power capacity to 1,300 gigawatts (GW) or more by 2030 contradicts the nation’s 2060 carbon-neutral target, which President Xi Jinping announced at the United Nations biodiversity summit in September.

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China vows carbon neutrality by 2060 during one-day UN biodiversity summit

China vows carbon neutrality by 2060 during one-day UN biodiversity summit

China already has around 130GW excess coal-power capacity among a total coal-fired capacity of more than 1,000GW. However, the China Electricity Council, a federation of state-owned electricity companies, urged the expansion to 1,300GW or even higher by 2030 in a report last year.

China is scheduled to finalise its 14th economic, energy and electric power Five Year Plan (2021–2025) around the end of 2021, but the environmental organisations are calling for a policy process to phase out coal-fired power plants and double the expansion of wind and solar power over the next decade.

The five-year plan must align with China’s environmental commitments at the UN, and that objective should not be swayed by industry heavyweights, according to the report.

“The proposed expansion of total installed capacity in a sector already riddled with overcapacity and low returns on assets will result in more than 2 trillion yuan [US$304 billion] of stranded assets during the entire life cycle,” Dr Zhang Shuwei, the report’s lead author and Draworld’s chief economist, said.