China plans to build more coal-fired power plants and has hinted that it will rethink its timetable to slash emissions, in a significant blow to the UK’s ambitions for securing a global agreement on phasing out coal at the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow.

In a statement after a meeting of Beijing’s National Energy Commission, the Chinese premier, Li Keqiang, stressed the importance of regular energy supply, after swathes of the country were plunged into darkness by rolling blackouts that hit factories and homes.

While China has published plans to reach peak carbon emissions by 2030, the statement hinted that the energy crisis had led the Communist party to rethink the timing of this ambition, with a new “phased timetable and roadmap for peaking carbon emissions”.

China has previously set out plans to be carbon neutral by 2060, with emissions peaking by 2030, a goal analysts say would involve shutting 600 coal-fired power plants. President Xi Jinping has also pledged to stop building coal plants abroad.

“Energy security should be the premise on which a modern energy system is built and and the capacity for energy self-supply should be enhanced,” the statement said.

“Given the predominant place of coal in the country’s energy and resource endowment, it is important to optimise the layout for the coal production capacity, build advanced coal-fired power plants as appropriate in line with development needs, and continue to phase out outdated coal plants in an orderly fashion. Domestic oil and gas exploration will be intensified.”

Beijing’s ambitions for carbon dioxide output are seen as critical in the push to achieve global net zero carbon emissions by 2050 and fulfil the 2015 Paris agreement to limit average temperature rises to 1.5C. But Li said Beijing wanted to gather new evidence on when its peak emissions would be reached.

The statement said he had commissioned “in-depth studies and calculations in light of the recent handling of electricity and coal supply strains, to put forward a phased timetable and roadmap for peaking carbon emissions”.

Li’s rhetoric follows reports that China has ordered its two top coal-producing regions, Shanxi and Inner Mongolia, to combat the country’s power supply crisis.

Beijing’s renewed embrace of coal – apparently at odds with Xi’s state climate ambitions – are likely to cause alarm in the run-up to Cop26.

Alok Sharma, the UK’s president-designate of Cop26, has said an agreement to phase out coal power is a key aim of the summit.

George Magnus, a research associate at Oxford University’s China Centre and the author of Red Flags: Why Xi’s China Is in Jeopardy, said Beijing had been forced to revise its plans in the face of the reality of economic problems and power outages.

“China has stumbled into an energy crisis in much the same way the rest of us have done but it is exacerbated by the fact that the grid and the electricity companies are subject to price controls and cannot pass the prices on,” he said. “Many have decided to shut down production and they have had a lot of power outages for households and companies. This has come at a very bad moment in China, on top of [collapsed property giant] Evergrande and the property bust.

“They have basically cycled back on their coal policy. With Cop26 coming up, there is a lot of talk about how committed the Chinese are to net zero goals by 2050 but this is another setback. It has happened before, when the economy was weaker during the pandemic, that they relaxed restrictions on coal capacity. Now they are doing it again.

“If the new relaxations last a few weeks, it might not matter so much. If it lasts into 2022 as China strives to avoid bad economic outcomes ahead of its key CCP 20th party congress in November 2022, climate policy optimists might have to rethink for sure.”

Concern about China’s coal ambitions come on the eve of the publication of the International Energy Agency’s annual world energy outlook, which says much greater action is required globally if the world is to reach net zero by 2050.

The IEA said its hopes of speeding up the clean energy transition to meet the target involved a “rapid” reduction in the amount of coal burned to produce electricity.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/12/china-coal-fired-plants-uk-cop26-climate-summit-global-phase-out

Oh dear.

Without China's commitment the rest of the world may as well throw their hands in the air and start burning dogshit, what a wonderful bunch the Chinese have turned out to be in this global village killing millions of people with their biological warfare experiment answering to no one, picking fights with everyone, threatening to nuke Oz, in an arms race and now on track to choke everyone to death.

Seems like China's Thorium nuclear power stations idea
is not bearing fruit.

People are starting to go hungry in China now apparently, also a failed coup against Xi, not looking good for China. And did  anyone notice, the propoganda China bots havent posted for a while.

rhino wrote on Oct 19^th, 2021 at 11:15am:

People are starting to go hungry in China now apparently, also a failed coup against Xi, not looking good for China. And did  anyone notice, the propoganda China bots havent posted for a while.

Possibly the software has been infected with a CIA virus? If that rubbish is actually written by a real person their minders may have decided the criticism they’re receiving in places such as this makes them a bad investment.

Ayn Marx wrote on Oct 19^th, 2021 at 4:48pm:

rhino wrote on Oct 19th, 2021 at 11:15am: People are starting to go hungry in China now apparently, also a failed coup against Xi, not looking good for China. And did  anyone notice, the propoganda China bots havent posted for a while. Possibly the software has been infected with a CIA virus? If that rubbish is actually written by a real person their minders may have decided the criticism they’re receiving in places such as this makes them a bad investment.

Possibly a conspiracy theorist?

Coal price is up good news for coal miners.

Demand is rising for coal.

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rhino wrote on Oct 19^th, 2021 at 11:15am:

People are starting to go hungry in China now apparently, also a failed coup against Xi, not looking good for China. And did  anyone notice, the propoganda China bots havent posted for a while.

That is rubbish.

No one has switched off your posting bot yet.
....or are you an Iranian bot ?

Baronvonrort wrote on Oct 19^th, 2021 at 5:44pm:

Coal price is up good news for coal miners. Demand is rising for coal.

So much for stranded assets. The EU, UK, China and India laying in supplies as fast as possible.

In other news -

UK ministers will put nuclear power at the heart of Britain’s strategy to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050 in government documents expected as early as this week, the Financial Times reported.

Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng is to unveil an overarching “Net Zero Strategy” paper as soon as Monday, along with a “Heat and Building Strategy” and a Treasury assessment of the cost of reaching the 2050 goal, the report said.

The main UK net zero strategy will have a heavy focus on Britain’s nuclear power program. Prime Minister Boris Johnson was expected to give the go-ahead to the documents on Friday, according to the report.

The creation of a “regulated asset base” model will be key to delivering future large atomic-power stations. Under the plan, households will be charged for the cost of a plant via an energy levy long before it begins generating electricity, the report said.

Ministers are also backing smaller modular reactors, or SMRs, which are being developed by a consortium led by Rolls-Royce. Supporters of SMRs say these could be built in factories and have lower costs and risks than large atomic plants, according to the report.

A separate report by The Guardian said the consortium has secured 210 million pounds ($289 million) from private investors, a sum the newspaper said the government is expected to match or better.

Government backing will pave the way for the consortium’s multibillion-pound plan to build 16 SMRs in the UK, the first of which could be plugged into the grid by 2031, the Guardian said.

https://www.energyvoice.com/renewables-energy-transition/356733/uk-net-zero-strategy-nuclear/

Pre-paying for power. What next? Post-paying for power as well?  ::)

.

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Johnnie wrote on Oct 19^th, 2021 at 9:05am:

Without China's commitment the rest of the world may as well throw their hands in the air and start burning dogshit, what a wonderful bunch the Chinese have turned out to be in this global village killing millions of people with their biological warfare experiment answering to no one, picking fights with everyone, threatening to nuke Oz, in an arms race and now on track to choke everyone to death.

The Chinese see all this as just revenge for the Opium Wars etc etc etc.

Baronvonrort wrote on Oct 19^th, 2021 at 5:44pm:

Coal price is up good news for coal miners. Demand is rising for coal.

No, not really. Try again.

Ayn Marx wrote on Oct 21^st, 2021 at 6:44am:

The Chinese see all this as just revenge for the Opium Wars etc etc etc.

Propaganda for Han Chinese ears only.

Tibetans, Uighurs, Inner Mongolians, the majority of Hong Kongers, The Taiwanese, all other minorities, the persecuted religious, the rest of the world, et al are deaf to it.