This is the best summary I could come up with:
Emissions from the world’s most polluting country have rebounded this year after the Chinese government dropped its Covid restrictions in January, according to analysis undertaken for Carbon Brief.
However, this rebound in fossil fuel demand emerged alongside a historic expansion of the country’s low-carbon energy sources, which was far in excess of policymakers’ targets and expectations.
“These record additions are all but guaranteed to push fossil-fuel electricity generation and CO2 emissions into decline in 2024,” Lauri Myllyvirta, a lead analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air and the author of the report.
Myllyvirta said the boom in clean energy generation could trigger a decline in China’s emissions from next year despite a wave of new coal plants across the country.
“This is because – for the first time – the rate of low-carbon energy expansion is now sufficient to not only meet, but exceed the average annual increase in China’s demand for electricity overall,” he said.
Another 25GW has been permitted since then, according to the research, which would breach a policy pledge made by the country’s president, Xi Jinping, to “strictly control new coal-fired power generation projects”.
The original article contains 576 words, the summary contains 192 words. Saved 67%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Spectacular news!
But at what cost???
Wait… Did China just hit peak carbon?
I presume “decline” is used in the percentage sense and not the absolute sense. If the total power amount of carbon-based fuel generation plants is increasing, and the fuel is coal ©, then the carbon emissions must go up in an absolute sense. But the rapid deployment of non-carbon fuel power sources are increasing faster than the the carbon based, so percentage will go down. Am I reading this wrong?
Also, in a linked article: "And, as Myllyvirta highlights, numbers in the communique stating that coal consumption rose 4.3% in 2022 and total energy use rising 2.9% “appear to contradict weak or falling industrial output”
So consumption of coal - the most carbon-producing fuel - rose in 2022, and according to this article their energy consumption jumped again after Covid restrictions were lifted this year. Renewable installation is rising faster than carbon installation (280GW installed this year vs 136GW of coal “under construction”). The data given in these articles seems intentionally inconsistent, from annual installation (only given for renewable) to total capacity (only given for future Coal). One has to wonder if The Guardian is running their articles through some kind of Donald Trump AI filter to ensure that no verifiable content gets printed.
China to guarantee payments to coal power producers based on capacity
More capacity, less utilization leads to net negative emissions. This isn’t rocket science.
That says nothing about reducing total energy output, though. They’re only talking about paying back installation costs for additional capacity. Adding 50% more capacity and then running everything at 80%, for example, still means burning more coal and making more power. And, often, running a plant at below optimal will decrease it’s efficiency, leading to a higher CO2 load for every kWh. It’s an incentive for growth and surplus capacity, not an incentive to lower carbon emissions.
China has already decreased their coal power plant utilization from about 70% to about 50%. There’s no reason to expect that trend to stop.
You’re projecting without evidence based on what you think your country would do.
China has increased their coal generation in terms of absolute GW, and increase the coal usage per GW this year. I’m not sure where your data is from. Here’s mine:
“China’s CO2 emissions have seen explosive growth over recent decades, pausing only for brief periods due to cyclical shocks.” and “…CO2 is rebounding in 2023 from zero-Covid lows (see: Why emissions grew in Q3 of 2023)…”
both from a link in the original posted article, https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-emissions-set-to-fall-in-2024-after-record-growth-in-clean-energy/
“Domestic coal output tonnage has continued to grow in 2023, following the steep increase in 2022 resulting from government efforts to boost output. However, coal quality has declined, resulting in a much smaller increase in energy supply from domestic coal. Poor quality of coal supplied has also pushed users to shift to imported coal for blending, the result being a record surge in imports.”
https://energyandcleanair.org/china-energy-and-emissions-trends-june-snapshot
The analysis points to a reduction in 2024, but that is speculation. What is clear is that 2023 is higher. And if the Chinese economy should pick back up and steel and concrete production come back up to recent historic levels, the CO2 is definitely going go continue to go up for a while. They’re bringing renewables online, yes, but if we look at what is actually happening the CO2 is currently increasing. Both of us would be speculating beyond that.
And even though many plants were producing more last year to compensate for the decline in hydropower output, the average utilisation rate inched down to 52.4%
This past year, China couldn’t run their hydro at peak capacity because of a drought. That’s why fossil fuel consumption went up. It’s not exactly rocket science. China will deploy more solar capacity this year than the entire US has done… Ever. Because of that (and the massive EV transition), China is expected to hit peak oil this year and peak coal next year.
Meanwhile, US fossil fuel-based energy production is growing YoY at a faster rate than China’s coal consumption is - it’s just that the US is replacing coal with natural gas… And it’s very VERY iffy as to whether natural gas is actually better than coal.
his past year, China couldn’t run their hydro at peak capacity because of a drought.
Well, yes. The simple facts we have are that fossil fuel use is up. What happens next year will be speculation, but what we know is that they are using more coal this year, and they are hedging their future bets by building out their coal generation capacity. So if climate change means a further drop in hydro output, or more cloud cover where they install solar, or they need to make more power than they’re installing because the world wants more steel (I’m in the building industry and steel supply is still a bit tight) - they can start belching out a massive amount of CO2.
Only time will tell - and I hope you turn out to be the one who is right :-)
China building out future coal capacity is more or less independent from expected future coal consumption.
That sounds like a crazy claim, so let me clarify: China is actively shrinking coal power plant utilization. The only reason, then, to build more capacity is to better manage peak loads. If you were following the rolling blackouts, you’d know that these are a huge problem in China in the summers.
So… Yeah, the first-order data itself isn’t great, but the second-order data tells us that coal isn’t a first class citizen anymore.
how does this stack up against other countries?
India: fucking MIA
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