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In article <ud3g4c$19c8r$
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governor.swill@gmail.com> wrote:
Joe Biden helped them fund the coal plants.
China permitted more coal power plants last year than any time
in the last seven years, according to a new report released this
week. It's the equivalent of about two new coal power plants per
week. The report by energy data organizations Global Energy
Monitor and the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air
finds the country quadrupled the amount of new coal power
approvals in 2022 compared to 2021.
That's despite the fact that much of the world is getting off
coal, says Flora Champenois, coal research analyst at Global
Energy Monitor and one of the co-authors of the report.
"Everybody else is moving away from coal and China seems to be
stepping on the gas," she says. "We saw that China has six times
as much plants starting construction as the rest of the world
combined."
What's driving the new permitting of Chinese coal plants?
The report authors found the growth of new coal plant permitting
appears to be a response to ongoing drought and last summer's
historic heat wave, which scientists say was made more likely
because of climate change. The heat wave increased demand for
air conditioning and led to problems with the grid. The heat and
drought led rivers to dry up, including some parts of the
Yangtze, and meant less hydropower.
"We're seeing sort of this knee-jerk response of building a lot
more coal plants to address that," says Champenois.
High prices for liquified natural gas due to the war in Ukraine
also led at least one province to turn to coal, says Aiqun Yu,
co-author of the report and senior researcher at Global Energy
Monitor.
Why is China building new coal plants while also increasing
renewables?
China leads the world in constructing new solar and new wind,
while also building more coal plants than any other country, the
report finds.
There are government and industry arguments that the coal plants
will be used as backup support for renewables and during periods
of intense electricity demand, like heat waves, says Ryna Cui,
the assistant research director at the Center for Global
Sustainability at the University of Maryland School of Public
Policy. "That's being used as an excuse for new projects," Cui
says.
Last year's boom in new coal didn't come out of nowhere, says
Yu, who notes that the domestic coal industry has long pushed
the message that coal is a reliable form of energy security.
"When the energy crisis happened, when energy security is a big
concern, the country just seeks solutions from coal by default,"
Yu says.
Champenois says the surge in permits last year could be China's
coal industry seizing upon a last chance to get financing for
new coal plants, which are increasingly uneconomical compared to
renewables.
"We see it as a door opening, maybe one for one last time," she
says. "If you're a power company, you're gonna try to put your
foot in that door."
How does permitting new coal plants affect China's goals to
reduce emissions?
China is the world's biggest emitter of fossil fuels and has
pledged for its emissions to peak by 2030. But there are
questions over how high that peak will get and how soon that
peak will come, says Champenois.
The International Energy Agency recently reaffirmed there must
be "no new development of unabated coal-fired power plants" to
keep temperatures less than 1.5 degrees Celsius and avoid the
worst effects of climate change.
It's too early to know how much the plants will run and how they
will impact China's emissions, says Lauri Myllyvirta, lead
analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air and
one of the report's co-authors.
"The challenge though is going to be that all of these power
plants have owners that are interested in making as much money
as possible out of running them," he says.
What possible solutions may help speed China's green transition?
Myllyvirta says a lot of solutions come down to fixing the
country's electric grid, including making the grid more
efficient, and making it easier to share energy across China's
regions if there are power shortages.
Champenois says shifting coal investments into renewables and
storage would be the smart decision for China. That way they
won't have "stranded assets" she says, investments that will end
up losing money.
<
https://www.npr.org/2023/03/02/1160441919/china-is-building-six- times-more-new-coal-plants-than-other-countries-report-fin>
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