From Reuters, February 2:
China put 38.4 gigawatts (GW) of new coal-fired power capacity into operation in 2020, according to new international research, more than three times the amount built elsewhere around the world and potentially undermining its short-term climate goals.
The country won praise last year after President Xi Jinping pledged to make the country “carbon neutral” by 2060. But regulators have since come under fire for failing to properly control the coal power sector, a major source of climate-warming greenhouse gas.
Including decommissions, China’s coal-fired fleet capacity rose by a net 29.8 GW in 2020, even as the rest of the world made cuts of 17.2 GW, according to research released on Wednesday by Global Energy Monitor (GEM), a U.S. think tank, and the Helsinki-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA).
“The runaway expansion of coal-fired power is driven by electricity companies’ and local governments’ interest in maximising investment spending, more than a real need for new capacity,” said Lauri Myllyvirta, CREA lead analyst.
The country’s National Energy Administration (NEA) didn’t immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment.
China approved the construction of a further 36.9 GW of coal-fired capacity last year, three times more than a year earlier, bringing the total under construction to 88.1 GW. It now has 247 GW of coal power under development, enough to supply the whole of Germany....
....MUCH MORE
China is also financing and building coal-fired power plants across Africa, a move reminiscent of their construction of HFC-23 refrigerant plants.*
And from MishTalk at TheStreet.com some numbers through 2019 i.e. not including the covid-19 related U.S. reductions of 2020, January 28, 2021:
CO2 Stats
Please note that the US reduced its carbon footprint from 6.13 billion tons in 2007 to 5.28 billion tons in 2019.
Meanwhile, China increased its footprint from 6.86 billion tons in 2007 to 10.17 billion tons in 2019.
In the same timeframe, global output rose from 31.29 billion tons to 36.44 billion tons.
In 2007, the US accounted for 19.6% of the total global carbon footprint.
In 2019, the US accounted for only 14.5% of the total global footprint.
The above stats are from Our World CO2 Emissions.
*From December 27, 2020's "Why Is China Placing Huge (Global) Bets On Coal?":
....For some reason I can't get HFC-23 out of my head. It's a refrigerant chemical that China used to rake in billions from the Kyoto treaty signatories (read German hausfraus).
HFC-23 is 12,000 times as potent a greenhouse gas as CO2.
They would build plants to make the stuff (as a byproduct of HFC-22) and then offer to shut them down for Kyoto cash. Based on the estimated lifetime production of the plants. Best guess is they netted $6 billion after construction costs.
After a while (years) the carbon credit people caught on and then we saw China's reaction:
We aren't HFC-23 Johnny-come-latelys. From September 2007:
