China’s renewables progress comes alongside a coal power boom

China is making rapid progress in scaling up clean energy, tentatively boosting hopes that the world’s largest carbon emitter could soon start to curb greenhouse gas pollution.

A massive wave of permits for new coal-fired capacity poses a significant challenge to the country’s climate goals, with Beijing seen as “the glaring exception to the ongoing global decline in coal plant development,” according to the Global Energy Monitor.

Research from the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air and GEM published late last month showed China approved the highest number of new coal-fired plants since 2015 last year.

Beijing authorized 106 gigawatts of new coal power capacity in 2022, four times higher than a year earlier and the equivalent of 100 large-fired power plants, the research said.

The extraordinary speed at which China approved the projects was thought to have been driven by energy security considerations, namely electricity shortages following a historic drought and heatwave last summer.

The major additions of new coal-fired capacity may not necessarily mean that carbon emissions from the power sector will increase in China, CREA and GEM analysts said, particularly given the country’s rapid progress in scaling up clean energy.

China is recognized as the undisputable global leader in renewable energy expansion, adding new projects to the grid almost as fast as the rest of the world combined in 2022.

The build-out comes as part of the government’s strategy to cut its energy intensity and reach peak emissions “in a well-planned and phased way.”

“When we look around the world today, we can firmly see that the energy transition is in progress,” said Mike Hemsley, deputy director at the Energy Transitions Commission think tank.

“China is building renewables at such a staggering rate [that] it is said to outperform the targets they have set themselves,” Hemsley said at International Energy Week in London last week. He added that around 50% of all renewables built every year were built in China.

“To put that into context, we’ve heard the really admirable goal of Masdar to build 100 gigawatts of renewables by 2030 [but] China every year is building around 75 gigawatts of wind and in excess 100 gigawatts of solar every year,” Hemsley said. Masdar is the UAE’s state-owned renewables developer.

On its current trajectory, Hemsley said that Beijing is on track to reach 1,800 gigawatts of total renewables by 2030. That would be 50% higher than Chinese President Xi Jinping‘s target of 1,200 gigawatts of total renewables by the end of the decade.

“The implications of that being [that] they will outperform their Nationally…