Surprise! Chinese Coal Output has Risen to 2015 Levels, Undermining Climate Pledges

Guest essay by Eric Worrall

h/t Viv Forbes; Who could have imagined the possibility Chinese President Xi Jinping’s climate rhetoric does not exactly accord with what is happening on the ground?

China’s 2020 coal output rises to highest since 2015, undermining climate pledges

CONTRIBUTORS
Muyu Xu  Reuters
Shivani Singh  Reuters
PUBLISHED JAN 17, 2021 11:22PM EST

BEIJING, Jan 18 (Reuters) – China’s coal output rose last year to its highest since 2015, despite Beijing’s climate change pledge to reduce consumption of the dirty fossil fuel and months of disruption at major coal mining hubs.

The world’s biggest coal miner and consumer produced 3.84 billion tonnes of coal in 2020, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed on Monday.

China’s coal output dropped after reaching a peak of 3.97 billion tonnes in 2013, as Beijing axed excessive mining capacity and promoted clean energy consumption. But production is rising amid surging industrial demand and an unofficial restriction on coal imports aimed at shoring up the domestic mining industry. 

Read more: https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/chinas-2020-coal-output-rises-to-highest-since-2015-undermining-climate-pledges-2021-01-17

No doubt this is a temporary aberration, right? I’m sure once global warming clears the ice hanging off China’s wind turbines, they’ll be able to cut back on their coal use.

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ResourceGuy
January 19, 2021 12:56 pm

China burns coal to make stuff for the world and since the West cannot compete they use coal and renewable power to mine bitcoin.

Kemaris
January 19, 2021 4:25 pm

Whaddaya talking about? Chiang’s Paris commitment was to grow its economy as much as possible until about 2030 when it thought it would be rich enough to start buying a cleaner environment, so what’s the problem?

*sarc*

WXcycles
January 20, 2021 12:01 am

You’d think that blowing up the coral reefs of the South China Sea and burying them under sediment would be a bit of a give-away they all’s not what it seems with Beijing’s commitment to environmental policy. *Shock!* … Wow! They did the opposite of what they said they would! But now that they know for sure it was all a con, do the greens condemn China for it? Well of course not! The greens are pure hypocrites with no principles they would not shamelessly abandon with fluid alacrity.

SteveScAZ
January 20, 2021 3:38 pm

Surprising only people on the left……