{"id":5972,"date":"2022-03-15T18:39:46","date_gmt":"2022-03-15T18:39:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/euromenaenergy.com\/?p=5972"},"modified":"2022-03-15T18:39:46","modified_gmt":"2022-03-15T18:39:46","slug":"faced-with-energy-turmoil-china-turns-to-its-old-reliable-coal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/?p=5972","title":{"rendered":"Faced with energy turmoil, China turns to its old reliable: Coal"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Bloomberg<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Anyone who\u2019s ever tried to make a lifestyle change knows that it\u2019s easy to start a new habit when times are good. It\u2019s sticking with it when times are tough that\u2019s the hard part.
\nThat\u2019s what\u2019s made the past few months in China, capped off by this month\u2019s National People\u2019s Congress in Beijing, so difficult for people who want to see the nation succeed in helping stave off the worst impacts of climate change.
\nGone are the heady days of late 2020, when think tanks, newspapers and state-run enterprises issued a flurry of optimistic outlooks and officials talked about completing the largest energy transition in mankind\u2019s history by zeroing out emissions in the world\u2019s biggest polluter by 2060. Now, with fears of energy shortages growing around the world and concerns that rising coronavirus cases could hinder economic growth at home, the country\u2019s leaders are doubling down on fossil fuels.
\nFaced with energy turmoil, China is returning to its old habit of coal, no matter what damage it does to climate momentum.
\n\u201cTo a country where coal has been dominant for so long, one of the biggest challenges to get to net-zero is a mindset shift,\u201d said Qin Yan, a carbon analyst at Refinitiv. \u201cGiving the power back to coal now only makes the shift, which had only just begun to slowly take off, harder to complete.\u201d
\nThe shift has been months in the making. Ever since a shortage of coal sparked widespread power curtailments in September and October, leaders have drummed home the message that the dirtiest fossil fuel is also the most important to ensuring continued growth. China has approved mining expansions that\u2019s pushed output to record levels and started construction on new generators powered by the fuel, even as such efforts are shunned in most other parts of the world.
\nRecent comments from top officials have made clear this isn\u2019t a temporary shift. In a high-level climate meeting this month, Han Zheng, China\u2019s vice-premier, called coal the country\u2019s \u201clast barrier\u201d to energy security. In the same week, President Xi Jinping told a group of lawmakers from China\u2019s coal hub of Inner Mongolia that \u201cwe can\u2019t toss away what\u2019s feeding us now while what will feed us next is not yet in our pocket.\u201d
\nThe National Development and Reform Commission, the nation\u2019s top economic planner, told officials from major mining regions at a meeting late last week that it wants to boost domestic production capacity by about 300mn tonnes, according to people familiar with the matter, Bloomberg reported on Monday. It also plans to build a 620mn-tonne stockpile of the fuel.
\n\u201cThe risks China faces now are at a high level unseen for years, and the uncertainties they bring to China\u2019s climate work are still growing,\u201d said Li Shuo, a climate analyst at Greenpeace East Asia, \u201cIn the short term, it\u2019s obvious a preference for coal is swinging back.\u201d
\nThat doesn\u2019t mean the country is turning its back on renewables, a sector dominated by Chinese manufacturers. Officials confirmed this month that a massive desert wind and solar power program will grow to at least 450 gigawatts in size, larger than most countries\u2019 total power fleets. And China\u2019s main solar industry group has already projected a record amount of new panels this year.
\nBut pushing both coal and renewables to grow at the same time carries added risks. Investments in new coal facilities could take decades to be paid off, and a growing renewable sector could make them obsolete before that\u2019s done. The government needs a long-term plan to write those coal projects off when renewables are ready to take over, which would involve another round of struggling among different interest groups.
\nAnd in the near-term, Xi\u2019s plans to secure a third term at the 20th Party Congress this November mean stability and economic growth will prioritised at any cost, including the climate. The government set a gross domestic product growth target of 5.5% for this year, higher than most estimates. That means a likely return to Beijing\u2019s old doctrine of massive infrastructure spending, which means more energy required to produce steel and concrete and move goods and materials around the country.
\n\u201cLooking forward at China\u2019s climate work in 2022, it would mark a \u2018success\u2019 if there isn\u2019t a big regression,\u201d said Li Shuo.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Bloomberg Anyone who\u2019s ever tried to make a lifestyle change knows that it\u2019s easy to start a new habit when times are good. It\u2019s sticking with it when times are tough that\u2019s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5973,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[46,48,57,68,76,77,82,86,87,90,96,99,103,107,109,111,113,137,139,146,148,160,174,183,184,201,202,209,222,230,232,233,244,246,249,256,262,263,267,277,279,280,285,288],"class_list":["post-5972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oil-gas","tag-aramco","tag-athens","tag-baroudi","tag-carbon","tag-climate","tag-climate-change","tag-co2","tag-cyprus","tag-decarbonising","tag-democracy","tag-doha","tag-eastmed","tag-egypt","tag-embargo","tag-emissions","tag-energy","tag-energy-peace","tag-gas","tag-gazprom","tag-greece","tag-greenenergy","tag-international-maritime-disputes","tag-lebanon","tag-maritime-boundaries-east-mediterranean","tag-maritime-disputes","tag-offshore","tag-oil","tag-opec","tag-pollution","tag-poverty-alleviation","tag-putin","tag-qatar","tag-rosneft","tag-roudi","tag-russia","tag-saudi","tag-solar","tag-solar-power","tag-straddling-hydrocarbons-reserves","tag-total","tag-trump","tag-turkey","tag-unclos","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5972\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}