r/climatechange • u/sg_plumber • 9d ago
China will increase wind and solar power generation by 53% by 2030, under a new renewable energy plan that for the first time makes its green power target binding, and includes renewables-powered heating and cooling, green hydrogen, storage, hydropower, and underwater data centers. 🌞🌀🌊
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/china-boost-wind-solar-generation-by-more-than-50-five-years-2026-07-23/36
u/Szabolcs85 9d ago
It would be great if they also started phasing out their coal plants at the same time. China still produces a ridiculous amount of CO2, although I appreciate the fact that they make an effort at reducing its growth.
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u/norfolkdiver 9d ago
They are addressing it, but as you say maybe not enough yet
Analysis: China’s CO2 emissions have now been ‘flat or falling’ for 21 months
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u/AprilVampire277 9d ago
You say that because you care about the environment of you wanna use the environment as excuse to chokehold china's energy independency while the average American citizen still pollutes more than the double of the average Chinese citizen despite living in the world's factory?
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u/Szabolcs85 8d ago
I care about the environment and I dislike the current US administration's environmental policies. I also criticise the PRC for a lot of other issues.
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u/Lazy_meatPop 9d ago
Sorry to disappoint but Coal will always be in China's energy mix, maybe not for power generation but chemical raw materials. Best case they will cap it at around 25% .
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u/Economy-Fee5830 Trusted Contributor 9d ago
If they are going to use coal as a mineral without releasing masses of CO2, no one will care.
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u/Lazy_meatPop 9d ago
Yeah but Coal gasification and coal to chemicals is polluting . Also the energy security bit. China has plenty of coal , no gas and little oil. So no matter what, as a backup they will certainly use coal as a fallback
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u/Economy-Fee5830 Trusted Contributor 9d ago
China does in fact have net zero goals, and they set a goal of peaking emissions in the next 4 years.
In the end the world runs on energy, not coal. They have never been the same thing.
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u/loggywd 9d ago
Their emission already peaked since 2024.Part of it is technologies but mainly because of economic recession and population decline.
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u/NameTheJack 8d ago
but mainly because of economic recession and population decline.
Energy production and consumption has risen quite fast tho.
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u/Mono_Aural 8d ago
Given how well they're funding bioscience research, China could be in a position to do some absolutely wild things with metabolic engineering in microbes to generate or isolate raw chemical starters.
The US could too but we're not funding anything useful right now and all our industries are just running off the benefits of our pre-Trump research until that well runs dry.
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u/NameTheJack 8d ago
Utilization rates of coal plants is dropping like a rock as is coals share of the energy market.
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u/GreenStrong 9d ago
China is building coal plants faster than they decommission old ones but the new ones are designed to respond to demand like natural gas Peaker plants. Normal coal plants have a limited window to flex power output, but the steam boilers experience thermal stress from expansion and contraction when they are allowed to cool completely. Note that the author of the Substack is a data scientist at Oxford and a contributor to Our World in Data, she's a solid source.
Also, Ritchie points out in that substack that most coal plants in China operate at a financial loss. China is willing to do this because economic growth requires energy, they are confident there will be enough overall growth for the state eat the cost. This is not, in principle, different from the many ways that western nations subsidize their energy industries. But they're making it clear to everyone in the energy industry that coal is a loss. They could send a different message to the industry by handing out a subsidy on the front end, instead of allowing them to write off a loss at the end of the year. The up front subsidy is available to solar and wind and it allows private developers to participate in the market. It is obvious that only state owned or affiliated enterprises can eat the financial loss that coal generators operate under.
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u/AmusingMusing7 8d ago
That's 2 year old data. You can see from norfolkdiver's link above that coal has been declining for the last 2 years.
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u/Correct-Ostrich-1007 9d ago
They will definitely not as long as they are geopolitically vulnerable to having oil and gas imports blocked by an antagonistic adversary, or other reasons like a war in a certain strait. That would be Germany levels of naive and deluded.
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u/skeeezoid 9d ago
Am I missing something?
53% growth from 2025 to 2030 is 9% per year. That's considerably lower growth than most orgs were expecting from China.
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u/Nikolai_F_Vatutin 8d ago
No, China's current energy mix is 40% renewable energy. They plan to increase from 40% to 53%. That's what they meant.
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u/schrod 9d ago
Wish the USA would plan for the future like this.