NEW from me: Clean energy generated a record-high 44% of China’s electricity in May 2024, pushing coal’s share down to a record low of 53%. Coal lost seven percentage points compared with May 2023, when it accounted for 60% of generation in China. China’s electricity demand in May 2024 grew by 49TWh (7.2%) from a year earlier.

Clean power generation grew by a record 78TWh, including 41TWh (78%) from solar, a recovery from earlier drought-driven lows for hydro of 34TWh (39%) and a modest rise for wind of 4TWh (5%).

BREAKING: China's CO2 emissions fell by 3% in March, after a surge lasting 14 months that followed the lifting of zero-Covid controls, showing the country has the ability to peak emissions imminently.
carbonbrief.org/analysis-month…
This is just one month of data, but it's based on structural drivers - I predicted six months ago that emissions would begin falling in March due to last year's record clean energy capacity additions:
carbonbrief.org/analysis-china…

Why did China's CO2 emissions surge during the Covid-19 pandemic? The emission increase has put the badly country off track to its climate targets but understanding of the causes is weak even among experts. I break the drivers down in a new article. China’s energy-consumption growth almost doubled to 4% per year, from 2.4% per year during the preceding five years. CO2-emissions growth accelerated from 0.1% per year to 3% per year, and electricity-consumption growth increased slightly from 5.5% to 6.3%.

New from our China steel analyst @ShenXinyi313 on China's lack of progress in shifting to electric arc steelmaking. This is one of the biggest climate opportunities in China, with potential to cut steelmaking emissions by 30% by 2030.

https://x.com/CREACleanAir/status/1686165185407369217?t=ECnKetfuR7ymz1I_txZqzg&s=19

The crazy thing is that coal-based steel furnaces are simply cheaper to run in China so most scrap steel gets thrown into them! Building coal-based blast furnace - basic oxygen furnace plants and the coal to run them are too cheap compared with electricity.

NEW from me: China's CO2 emissions increased 5% and coal consumption 4% in 2023. The country is badly off track to meet several climate targets the country set for 2025 and will have to cut coal use and CO2 in absolute terms in the next two years.
carbonbrief.org/analysis-recor…
In 2021, China committed to cutting energy intensity and CO2 intensity of GDP, and strictly limiting growth of coal use and new coal power by 2025. The country also set targets for increasing non-fossil and renewable energy use. All these targets are now severely off track.

NEW: China’s unprecedented clean energy investment boom was the main driver of the country's economic growth in 2023. Without clean energy sectors, the country’s GDP would have grown by only 3% instead of 5.2%, missing the government’s target by a wide margin. China’s investment in clean energy increased 40% on year, and rose to 5% of the country’s GDP, at 6.3tn yuan ($890bn). The investment spending is roughly equal to the GDP of Switzerland or Turkey. Investment in clean energy was responsible for all net growth in investment.

Big new environmental policy document from China's top decision-making bodies dropped while I was on my bourgeois Christmas vacation. Party Central Committee and State Council “Opinions on Comprehensively Promoting the Construction of a Beautiful China”. Highlights in a thread. The document sets 2027 as a new, high-level milestone by which "green and low-carbon development will be further promoted". There are some meaningful targets for 2027 in this document and it is significant in speeding things up as it can provide a deadline for a lot of things.

2024 is the last year that we have a chance to avert a Russian attack against the European Union.

After 2024 we might still luck out, but it's going to be out of our hands.

THREAD. If we don't demonstrate decisively that we're going to match and outdo Russia on military production, and Kremlin's preferred candidate wins the U.S. election, Ukraine will be left with grossly inadequate supplies to win.

Guangdong, the province that led China's coal plant permitting boom last year, published new power capacity targets for 2025. Changes from the early 2022 plan:
coal +19GW
gas -9GW
renewables +4GW
electricity storage +8GW

Huge increase in coal: from 68 GW now to ~95 GW in 2025.

https://twitter.com/YanQinyq/status/1663500277981356032

The new plan shows how the panic about meeting peak loads, concerns about reliance on hydropower imports given risk of droughts, and the gas shortage / price surge is what drove the boom in new coal. Major acceleration of electricity storage as well.

NEW REPORT: Permitting of new coal plants surged in China, even as clean energy installations made new records. If China's going to meet its climate commitments these new coal power plants are going to end up as short-lived & under-utilized malinvestments.
energyandcleanair.org/publication/ch… Chinese local governments permitted a staggering 106 gigawatts of new coal power capacity in 2022, equivalent to 100 large coal-fired power plants and the most since 2015. The amount of newly permitted capacity quadrupled from 2021.

Why did Germany increase coal consumption in 2022? It's the home stretch of Germany's nuclear phase-out, and for a couple of years, renewables growth didn't keep up with the amount of nuclear removed from the grid. Just like with the rest of Europe, coal use stayed below pre-COVID trend.

Here's how completely the "EU is going back to coal" reporting in 2022 misread the actual trends: coal consumption started rebounding in late 2020 from the COVID-19 lows. By 2022, the rebound was almost over and coal use never returned to pre-COVID trend.
chinadialogue.net/en/energy/ukra… Fossil fuel prices skyrocketing after Russia started weaponizing gas supply to Europe in summer 2021 actually helped end the rebound in CO2 emissions sooner by lowering demand for electricity and gas. Power sector CO2 emissions and coal use started to fall in September 2022.

This article by @Noahpinion asks an essential question: why is China finding it hard to quit coal&what the rest of the world can do to influence that. His suggestions are mostly valid; I have a couple more. There are pretty big gaps in his analysis though.
noahpinion.substack.com/p/china-must-s… The Chinese leadership realizes that peaking CO2 emissions means starting to cut coal consumption, and reaching carbon neutrality means reducing it dramatically, at the very least.

2022 was a terrible year for Ukraine, for Russia, for Europe, for everyone affected by the fossil fuel and food prices, and in terms of the impacts of climate change. But also a year that showed we have the capacity to solve our problems. The energy transition accelerated like never before. Clean energy is ready for prime time, and that understanding has reached the mainstream of decision-makers.

There's an enormous upswelling of anger and protest in China right now. It really seems that the public's patience with the harsh COVID-19 control policies has run out.

https://twitter.com/david__moser/status/1596519192198406144?t=NRg_oZmrmKgroHvBnqdn6Q&s=19

The breadth and intensity of online and offline protest is such that it seems to leave the government only two options: clamp down hard on the protests and make the implementation of COVID policies even more coercive, or reverse course.

The G7 and EU countries aim to decide the level of a price cap on Russian oil on Wednesday. This will be a momentous decision. 🧵 Russia is currently exporting oil for about $66 per barrel. Of this, around $50 goes to state coffers through the mineral extraction tax and export duty and can be used for the invasion of Ukraine.

Xi Jinping's lines on environment & energy in the once-in-five-years report to the Communist Party Congress. Mostly affirming earlier lines but "speed up the planning and construction of a new type of energy system" is a new phrase and a good signal. The speed & ambition of China's clean energy plans are truly impressive, when you tally up the targets set by the local and central governments. So calling for speeding up is at least a signal that this scale is desirable and not seen as excessive.

https://twitter.com/laurimyllyvirta/status/1577899095167057920?t=FGL-yOR4vwZA6U6LcON51w&s=19

In China, developers of large wind&solar parks are required to build coal plants to "support" those variable sources.

It's another symptom of the inflexible and outdated approach to grid management that results in economic waste and higher emissions.

https://twitter.com/YanQinyq/status/1580809026488918016

Building a 1000 MW coal power plant costs about 3 bln CNY in China, so capacity payments could cover about 1/3 of the capital costs at the low interest rates paid by state firms. That's a pretty significant incentive.

The ambition for solar&wind power in China continues to balloon. Early this year, we tallied up plans for 600GW of additions in 2021-25, and now we're at 870GW for the same period! This is means a surge in 2024-25 that will highly likely suffice to push emissions down.

https://twitter.com/LHongqiao/status/1577624746237329410

China is setting conditions for an emissions peak before 2025, or for emissions having already peaked, if these plans are realized and extended beyond 2025.

Great article on China's slow-motion financial crisis and/or transformation.

Lots to unpack in this sentence and its implications, including for emissions:
“The old model of relying on infrastructure and housing has essentially finished”

ft.com/content/e9e8c8… China's model of *relying on* infra and real estate to drive growth isn't that old. It was born out of the global financial crisis in 2008.

I can't even with this WSJ editorial. Not doing a point-by-point rebuttal but: "Beijing made minimal new commitments at Glasgow" - the 2060 carbon neutrality commitment is the most significant national commitment ever made, in terms of avoided emissions.
wsj.com/articles/china… There was disappointment that China didn't make more substantial further *announcements* at Glasgow, but that's only because the 2060 goal was announced in 2020. The formal commitment was made at Glasgow.

Zero fact-checking.