Beijing’s coal-fired energy nationalism is a major global challenge, and suggests that climate competition is the only realistic path forward over the next few years.
The latest data releases from China emphasize that, unfortunately, coal isn’t leaving the scene nearly as fast as it should or could. China’s March 2023 raw coal production was 420 million tonnes–an all time historical record for China. It is also, as far as I can tell, the highest monthly coal production ever recorded in human history.
Against that carbonaceous backdrop, here’s some context from our work last summer, for which we received criticism at the time. The intervening 9 months have provided substantial empirical validation and the arguments remain highly relevant today. We’re apolitical on the issue but are not apathetic about the need to find a better, more sustainable energy path–our generation, our kids, and future earthlings depend on decisions made now.
Gabriel B. Collins and Andrew S. Erickson, “China’s Energy Nationalism Means Coal Is Sticking Around,” Foreign Policy, 6 June 2022.
China is touting its renewable energy investments and has vowed to “accelerate the pace of coal reduction” in coming years. Yet in practice the country continues doubling down on coal on the back of blackouts, energy security fears, great-power competition, and Europe’s biggest land war in nearly 80 years. Fear and risk aversion both favor coal entrenchment, and both are in ample supply in Beijing these days.
As a result, millions of metric tons per day of additional greenhouse gases surge into the atmosphere. And the coal hopper is being loaded higher. Chinese policymakers recently greenlighted a coal mine capacity expansion of an additional 300 million metric tons in 2022—almost the annual production of the entire European Union. That’s enough coal to fill a train of standard rail hopper cars that would wrap around the entire equator, plus enough left to stretch from Washington, D.C., to Los Angeles.
China’s internal discourse has for years reflected broad and deep feelings of energy insecurity. Worries are now shifting into overdrive as domestic and international events hammer home the risks in unsettlingly specific ways. Chinese relations with the United States and its partners—which possess the ability to cut off maritime oil and liquefied natural gas shipments—have markedly worsened. And now, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has simultaneously spiked international coal, gas, and oil prices and shown how rapidly a coalition of industrialized democracies can unleash damaging economic warfare in response to revisionist aggression.
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Despite green rhetoric in recent years, Beijing has never been serious about abandoning coal. Chinese diplomats sought a “phasedown” rather than “phaseout” of coal at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, while China added about 25 gigawatts of net coal-fired power generation capacity in 2021. If operated for their full 40-year service life, these new plants alone could burn 1.4 billion tons of coal (almost three times what the entire United States consumed in 2020).
The 2022 coal mining boomlet comes atop a steady coal output expansion between 2017 and 2021 that added nearly 700 million metric tons of supply (more than 1.5 times Russia’s annual production). Power plants, boilers, and chemical plants in China already consume more than half of all coal used globally. China’s current coal-fired plant fleet, the world’s largest, only runs at about 50 percent capacity, due primarily to an “equal shares dispatch” system that grants power stations of a given technology type similar operational time regardless of production costs. As such, even without building a single new power plant, coal use could still increase significantly just by running existing facilities harder.
Displacing coal from China’s energy system is a Herculean task, but it’s a critical one, given the country’s size and climate impact. China’s sheer heft means coal-fueled energy nationalism can roll back years of emissions reduction contributions other countries have made. For instance, if half of China’s expected additional coal production in 2022 were used for power generation and half to fuel industrial boilers, the resulting carbon dioxide emissions would nearly offset the emissions reduction otherwise created by China’s wind sector (the world’s largest) in 2021.
The arithmetic of an actual coal phaseout is even tougher. For China to cut coal use by a third by 2035—while holding oil and hydropower usage at today’s level and slightly reducing total primary energy use through efficiency improvements and electrification—the following would be required:
- expansion of natural gas use equal to what Japan and South Korea combined used in 2020, the addition of nuclear generation on a par with what France (the world’s second-largest producer) generated in 2020, the addition of wind power equivalent to about 2.5 times what the United States (the world’s second-largest producer) generated in 2020, and expansion of solar power to the tune of 3.5 times what the United States (again the world’s second-largest producer) generated in 2020.
Each additional expansion of coal production and use only increases the challenge, which already requires an energy transformation moonshot to attain China’s 2060 net-zero emissions target.
China has embraced the literal Moonshot, even to the point of putting a lander on the Moon’s far side. But can it muster similar political will to pursue real energy and emissions progress here on Earth? The initial signals in 2023 are not reassuring.
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