Climate change: China’s coal reliance raises alarms as UN IPCC moves net-zero deadlines ahead 10 years for 1.5-degree goal

China’s reluctance to ditch coal due to energy-security concerns will make the country’s decarbonisation even harder, climate experts say
UN’s new goals require ‘much faster emissions reductions than China is currently prepared to target’, an analyst says

Business of climate change

Yujie Xuein Shenzhen

Published: 2:30pm, 22 Mar 2023

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The United Nations’ call for a “quantum leap” on climate action has heightened concern about China’s coal reliance among climate analysts, as the UN moves the global deadline for net-zero emissions forward by a decade to 2050 – 10 years ahead of China’s 2060 carbon-neutral goal.

China’s reluctance to ditch coal due to energy-security concerns, as evidenced by Beijing’s recent greenlighting of more coal-fired power plants, will make the country’s decarbonisation progress even harder, climate experts said.

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s leading climate-science body, on Monday released a landmark report summarising the panel’s findings in the past five years and giving a comprehensive assessment of how the global climate crisis is unfolding.

“The climate time-bomb is ticking,” said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in a statement to mark the launch of the IPCC report on Monday. “Humanity is on thin ice – and that ice is melting fast.”

Workers unload coal at a storage site along a railway station in Hefei, Anhui province in October 2009. Photo: Reuters

According to the report, the hurdles to keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by 2100 have become even higher due to a continued increase in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This has left the current plans and pace of climate actions insufficient to tackle climate change, the report said.

Only an “everything, everywhere, all at once” approach to climate efforts can make the 1.5-degree limit achievable, Guterres said. For the first time, he mentioned that developed countries must reach net-zero emissions as close to 2040 as possible, a decade earlier than the 2050 targets proposed by countries like the US and UK. Leaders in emerging economies must commit to reaching net zero as close as possible to 2050, he added.

An “Acceleration Agenda” announced on Monday includes more specific decarbonisation targets, such as phasing out coal by 2030 in OECD countries and 2040 in all other countries, and ensuring net-zero electricity generation by 2035 in all developed countries and 2040 for the rest of the world.

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The newly announced decarbonisation deadlines put a spotlight on China, which is the world’s largest GHG emitter, accounting for a third of global GHG emissions, as well as the largest producer and consumer of coal, relying on the fuel to generate over 60 per cent of its electricity last year.

“It’s clear that meeting the global emissions goals outlined by Secretary General Guterres requires much faster emissions reductions than China is currently prepared to target,” said Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at climate think tank the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA).

Chinese president Xi Jinping pledged in 2021 that the country would peak carbon emissions by 2030, reach carbon neutrality by 2060 and start to “phase down” coal use from 2026. But the Chinese government implied in its annual government work report this month that coal is likely to remain at the core of China’s energy infrastructure to ensure its energy security.

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The country embarked on a massive expansion of coal-fired power capacity last year in response to a summertime power crisis in central China, giving permission for 106 gigawatts (GW) of new coal power capacity, four times the amount a year earlier, according to CREA last month.

“We’re concerned that if the momentum of vigorous coal development continues in the near future, it may cause great difficulties for China to realise its long-term net-zero goals,” said Li Shuo, global policy adviser at environmental group Greenpeace. “The imperative now is to control the incremental growth of coal power capacity and not to make the task of decarbonisation any more difficult.”

It is still possible for China to get on track to net-zero emissions by 2050, thanks to its impressive adoption of clean energy, according to analysts.

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“This would require continuing the rapid growth in clean-energy investments seen since the carbon-neutrality pledge in 2020, and a successful economic shift away from the most carbon-intensive economic sectors – construction and heavy industry,” said Myllyvirta.

China is a world leader in developing solar, wind and hydro power. The country aims to have 1,200 gigawatts of wind and solar power capacity online by 2030, which would account for around 25 per cent of the country’s energy mix. According to the five-year plans released by at least 30 Chinese provinces earlier this year, China is expected to achieve that 2030 target about five years early, according to estimates from data provider Refinitiv.

Other measures such as increasing the energy efficiency of renewable resources, as well as further reform of China’s power market, are also economically and environmentally efficient ways to achieve both climate-change goals and energy security, said Li from Greenpeace.

“Carbon neutrality and energy security are not mutually exclusive, so it is better to change the perspective and look at how to solve the energy-security problem in a cleaner and more effective way,” Li said.