China will mine more coal

China plans to ramp up coal production through 2025 to avoid a repeat of last year’s power shortages, officials say, cutting climate-causing carbon emissions from the world’s biggest emitters. It spurs the retreat of efforts.

China is a big investor in wind and solar power, but after last year’s slowing economic growth and blackouts caused by power shortages, nervous CCP leaders have called for more coal power.

This has raised the alarm that carbon emissions will increase rapidly through 2030.

The ruling party aims to increase annual coal production to 4.6 billion tons in 2025, Ren Jingdong, deputy director of the cabinet’s National Energy Administration, said at a press conference held during the ruling party’s convention. Stated. This makes him a 12% increase from last year’s he 4.1 billion tonnes.

Ensuring adequate electricity supply is especially important as economic growth slowed to 2.2% year-on-year in the first half of this year, less than half of the official target of 5.5%. The ruling party had previously called for this year’s production to rise by 300 million tonnes, or about 7% of last year’s output.

The challenge of relying on renewable resources was highlighted by a dry summer when southwestern China’s reservoirs were too low to generate hydroelectric power. This caused power outages in Sichuan province and the major city of Chongqing.

Ren said Beijing “will give full play to the ‘ballasting role’ of coal and the role of basic regulation of coal-fired power.” He said the country would “vigorously strengthen oil and gas exploration and development.”

Ren said officials will work to ensure China can meet the goals of the ruling party’s latest five-year plan on non-fossil fuel sources to supply 20% of its electricity by 2025 and 25% by 2030. said they are trying to Hydropower, nuclear power, geothermal power.

China will “comprehensively build a clean energy supply system,” Ren said.

Another official, Zhao Chenxin, deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission, the cabinet’s planning agency, said the plan included installing 450 million kilowatts of “large-scale wind and wind power” in northern China’s Gobi Desert. It includes building a solar power plant.

The Chinese government has spent tens of billions of dollars on solar and wind farms to reduce its dependence on imported oil and gas and clean up its smog-covered cities. China accounted for about half of global investment in wind and solar in 2020.

Still, coal is expected to provide 60% of electricity in the near future.

Officials say they are shrinking carbon emissions per unit of economic output. The government reported a 3.8% cut last year. This is an improvement from his 1% increase in 2020, but down from his 5.1% reduction in 2017.

Total energy use rose 5.2% last year compared to 2020 after a recovery in global demand for China’s exports drove a manufacturing boom, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.