China, more than any other country, has the ability to make or break global attempts in preventing a climate disaster.
Although its emissions are comparable to many countries on a per capita basis, the world’s second-biggest economy is the world’s largest polluter.
According to the Global Carbon Budget 2022, China accounts for over 30% of total emissions, more than the United States, the European Union, and India combined.
At the same time, Beijing is establishing itself as a renewable energy leader, with more solar generating capacity than the rest of the world combined.
However, while developed economies are cutting their emissions, albeit too slowly to achieve their Paris Agreement promises, China’s emissions are rapidly increasing due to a voracious hunger for coal, which is required to power its cities and energy-intensive industries such as steel.
According to figures published by Carbon Brief, a United Kingdom-based website focused on climate policy, China’s emissions increased by 10% year on year during the second quarter of this year, putting it on track to break its previous record of 11.47 billion metric tonnes in 2021.
If left uncontrolled, the increasing carbon footprint threatens to derail worldwide efforts to address the climate issue, which scientists say are already falling well short of what is required to avert the worst effects of rising temperatures.
The Chinese economy’s significant reliance on coal is largely expected to continue for many years, while climate experts warn that even if Beijing’s objective of “peak carbon” by 2030 is met, it would still be unacceptably high.
Meanwhile, researchers believe that China’s renewable energy ambitions, while ambitious, confront significant challenges, including an aging power grid and the persistent issue of storing renewable energy.
“No one, frankly, comes close to China’s leadership in renewables, second place is quite distant,” Cory Combs, associate director of Trivium China, a policy research firm, told Al Jazeera.
“On the other hand, China is outpacing the rest of the world on coal as well.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping committed in 2020 to cut his country’s emissions by 65 percent from 2005 levels by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.
While Xi restated those goals in July, he added a caveat: energy policy would be based on the requirements of the country and would not be “swayed by others.”
Concerned about its future energy security, Beijing has gone on a building frenzy of coal-fired power stations in recent years.
According to Greenpeace, Chinese authorities approved 86 gigatonnes (GW) of new coal-fired power plants in 2022 alone, and another 50GW in the first six months of 2023.
According to a survey by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) and Global Energy Monitor, China presently has 243 GW of new coal-fired power facilities in the pipeline, enough to power Germany.
“The biggest story right now is probably the energy security perspective. China will not give up coal until it has a guarantee of effective energy security,” Combs stated.
“Specifically, we are looking at: one, the ability to provide base-load power at any given time; and two, the ability to guarantee that it can meet any particular peak load.”
Beijing’s plan to increase its reliance on coal indicates concerns about a repetition of the industry’s previous energy shortages.
During the COVID-19 epidemic in 2021, coal shortages and increased demand for factory goods caused outages in 20 Chinese towns and provinces. The next summer, a drought caused by a record-breaking heatwave limited the capacity of China’s hydropower dams, which account for 16% of the country’s power mix.
When faced with back-to-back crises, provinces such as Guangdong began to increase their coal power capacity to avoid repeating the same problems, according to David Fishman, a senior project manager at the Lantau Group, an economic consultancy specializing in Asia-Pacific’s power and gas markets.
“We could draw a pretty clear line there [that] somebody in the economic planning energy office in Guangdong was looking at the same mock-up we did and went, ‘We’re vulnerable to a serious drought in Yunnan, we need to add more backup capacity’,” Fishman told Al Jazeera.
China’s recent record emissions may actually understate the country’s trend, as carbon-intensive industries such as construction and steel have been severely disrupted owing to lockdowns in major cities and manufacturing hubs.
Nonetheless, some climate experts predict that peak carbon in China can still be reached by 2030, though the extent of the peak would depend on political issues.
According to Boyang Jin, a senior carbon analyst at the UK-based LSEG, the new coal-fired power plants are simply a stopgap measure, and province governments will still be expected to satisfy the powerful National Development and Reform Commission’s climate targets.
“With more and more renewable capacity put into operation, coal-fired plants will inevitably decrease their output or running hours,” Jin told Al Jazeera.
“These plants will be gradually transformed from base load to peak load. Therefore, it’s not at odds with carbon neutrality pledges.”
Political risks remain.
Analysts believe that China’s faltering economy may push Beijing to try to build its way back to economic growth, as it has in the past, while the powerful steel industry may reject efforts to reduce emissions.
“The peak is in sight, it’s achievable, the preconditions are there but there’s a risk for these two reasons that the peak gets delayed until very late in the decade and that could single-handedly derail the global climate effort,” Lauri Myllyvirta, the lead analyst and co-founder of the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, informed Al Jazeera.
China’s investments in renewables have been at an all-time high.
According to BloombergNEF data, Beijing led the list of clean energy investors in 2022, with $546 billion – half of the global total that year.
According to government data, China’s present wind and solar capacity is sufficient to supply approximately 30% of the country’s energy needs.
However, converting that investment into reliable electricity is not an easy challenge in practice.
Many wind and solar farms have a huge gap between how much power can be generated on paper and how much can be used.
According to Greenpeace, China’s actual renewable energy generation will expand by less than 1% per year through the 2030s.
Much of the disparity is due to China’s poor capacity to store and deliver renewable energy to areas of high demand.
While 94 percent of China’s population lives east of the “Heihe-Tengchong Line” – an imaginary line dividing the country from northeast to southwest – numerous hydroelectric dams, solar power, and wind farms are located in sparsely populated western regions.
Other concerns include government interference in the energy sector to artificially lower electricity prices, promoting excessive usage.
China’s aim for carbon neutrality, according to Fishman, will hinge on the effective adoption of emerging technologies such as carbon capture and green hydrogen over the next few decades.
“The real question is 2060, but obviously it’s far off,” he remarked. “It relies on a lot of technologies that are far from being mature and scalable and cost-effective.”
Analysts believe China’s reliance on coal will continue till then.
“Coal is not necessary in principle, but there needs to be a lot more investment and there needs to be a lot of market reform in order to make that practical,” Trivium China’s Combs said.
“And until they’re really in place, it’s coal. And so we get left in the status quo, where you have massive investments in renewables and continued investment in coal.”