(RepublicanInformer.com)- China’s massive economic growth appears to be powered largely by fossil fuels, even as the West shifts to greener energy, with a new global data study revealing on Monday that the communist nation generated some 53% of the total coal-fired power last year.
That’s almost 10% higher than last year’s figure, suggesting that China could be making up for the reduction in carbon emissions in the West.
As Europe and America spend untold sums of money on going green, China appears to be going down the route of embracing all technologies at once. The study showed how the country increased its wind power output by a record amount, hitting 71.7 gigawatts last year, and 48.2 gigawatts of solar energy.
The report comes from Ember, a climate research organizations from London, England.
Global #coal power saw a record decline in 2020, including in top coal-generating countries 🇮🇳🇺🇸🇯🇵🇰🇷.
China was the only G20 country that saw a large increase in coal generation as electricity demand increased sharply.
— Ember (@EmberClimate) March 29, 2021
Despite the communist nation promising to reduce how much it depends on coal in the coming years, China is showing no signs of slowing down on the coal front, with coal-fired generation increasing by 1.7%. China still insists that it plans on becoming carbon neutral by 2060 and reaching its peak in greenhouse gas emissions before 2030.
So coal-fired power could become much bigger in China in the next nine years.
Dave Jones, the Global Programme Lead at Ember, said that “progress is nowhere near fast enough.”
“Despite coal’s record drop during the pandemic, it still fell short of what is needed,” he said. “Coal power needs to collapse by 80% by 2030 to avoid dangerous levels of warming above 1.5 degrees. We need to build enough clean electricity to simultaneously replace coal and electrify the global economy.”
Interestingly, China managed to decrease its share of coal in its total energy consumption – thanks to an increase in alternative energy sources – but still increased its overall reliance on coal.
Where are the Democrats on this?
