There could be unexpected relief from the climate crisis in 2024: China's emissions are likely to decline, according to a new study.
There is also good news in these turbulent times: China's greenhouse gas emissions could fall as early as this year – despite continued high coal consumption. That resulted in the end of 2023 published study the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) in Helsinki, which has been monitoring China's energy policy for years. According to the study supported by the Heinrich Böll Foundation, China's record renewable energy installations from last year will now gradually come online and deliver large amounts of climate-neutral electricity in 2024. This significantly brings forward the peak of Chinese emissions, possibly as early as this year. China's official climate target actually calls for increasing emissions until 2030. However, the increase curve has already flattened for a few years.
As the world's largest CO₂ emitter, China is crucial to the success and failure of global climate protection. But although Beijing is reluctant to be held accountable internationally, it is investing more in renewable energy and building more wind and solar power plants than any other country in the world. Hydropower has also long contributed to the energy mix, as has nuclear power, which is one of the climate-neutral energies in China. The problem: At the same time, Beijing continues to approve new coal-fired power plants. According to calculations by the International Energy Agency (IEA), in 2023 it consumed another 4.9 percent more coal than in the previous year.
China is massively building up photovoltaic systems
Nevertheless, according to the study authors based on various assumptions, China's emissions will begin to fall in 2024. The continued growth in energy consumption, especially in industry, buildings and transport, speaks against this. But this suggests that increasingly larger parts of the electricity demand can be covered by the huge new renewable capacities from this year onwards.
China is particularly rapidly expanding solar systems. The 2023 photovoltaic installations of around 210 gigawatts were “twice as high as the total installed solar capacity in the USA – and four times as high as that in China itself in 2020,” calculates Lauri Myllyvirta, senior CREA analyst and China expert at the institute. Wind power is also increasing. “The new solar, wind, hydro and nuclear power capacity installed in 2023 alone will generate an estimated 423 terawatt hours per year. This corresponds to the entire electricity consumption of France.”
According to Myllyvirta, about half of the newly added solar systems were installed on roofs – primarily based on a program called “Solar Across the Country,” in which a single auction awards contracts for solar systems on a certain proportion of roofs in an entire district.
Xi Jinping: Emissions peak before 2030, climate neutral by 2060
head of state Xi Jinping wants to build a total of 455 gigawatts of new solar and wind capacity in the deserts of northwest China by 2030. Wind and solar systems with a total output of around 1,200 gigawatts of electricity will then be generated throughout the country. For comparison: In Germany we had a solar system at the end of Julyn with a total capacity of a good 75 gigawadt.
Xi announced at the United Nations in September 2021 that China wanted to be climate neutral from 2060. That's ten years later than the developed countries – but was still considered a milestone at the time. Since then, pressure has been growing on the People's Republic to set more ambitious goals. So far without success. “China is still a developing country. Controlling emissions of methane and other greenhouse gases remains hugely difficult and challenging,” said chief climate negotiator Xie Zhenhua at COP28 in November 2023. China “remains technologica
lly weak; our statistics are unclear and our metrics are insufficient.”
China: decarbonization according to its own timetable
Beijing will always push for every state to be allowed to implement decarbonization according to its own national circumstanceset Klima expert Nis Grünberg from the Merics Institute for Chinese Studies. “China says: 'We'll exit as quickly as we possibly can,'” said Grünberg to IPPEN.MEDIA. And, as is often the case in socialist systems, Beijing prefers to set the target targets low – so that they can be exceeded if in doubt. The whole world would then benefit from climate protection.
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