Vietnam targets higher coal imports as domestic demand climbs www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insights/latest…
Vietnam has forecast a substantial increase in coal imports over the next 12-15 years, particularly from the power sector, on rising domestic demand, according to a draft strategy for the coal industry from the Ministry of Industry and Trade, or MoIT.
Under the proposed strategy posted Aug. 15, Vietnam will import 50 million-83 million mt/year coal over 2025 to 2035. The volume will gradually decline to about 32 million-35 million mt/year by 2045 to meet the government’s 2050 net-zero pledge announced at the UN Climate Change Conference.
Vietnam has forecast a substantial increase in coal imports over the next 12-15 years…
Plans for new coal plants in China rebound, with 8.63 GW approved in the first quarter of 2022 www.greenpeace.org/eastasia/press/7488/plans-for-new-coal-pl…
The rate at which China approved new coal capacity dipped in mid-2021, after Chairman Xi Jinping’s 2021 announcement that the government would “strictly control the expansion of coal power.” After a series of power outages across the country in the fall, however, the government began to signal a renewed focus on “energy security” and “energy supply.” By Q4 2021, new-approved coal capacity surged back, particularly in state-owned enterprises (SOEs).
Coal-fired power plants remain the largest source of power for Vietnam. In the past two weeks alone, they accounted for more than half of its electricity output.
Vietnam’s coal imports in the first five months of this year rose 39.9% from a year earlier to 17 million tonnes, according to government customs data.
Coal consumption is also up in China for the first 5 months of this year. China burns more coal than any other single nation, by a wide margin. A decrease in hydropower due to drought is blamed for the coal increase, but it really has more to do with the energy needs of the growing Chinese economy.
From the link: China’s generation increased by +173 billion kilowatt-hours (+5.3%) in the first five months of the year compared with the same period in 2022, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed.
Big increases from mostly coal-fired thermal generators (+149 billion kWh), wind farms (+79 billion kWh) and solar generators (+19 billion kWh) offset a fall in hydro production (-82 billion kWh).
And: Coal mine production increased by +98 million tonnes (+5.4%) to a record 1,912 million tonnes in the first five months of 2023, roughly in line with the rise in thermal generation (+6.6%).
Coal imports increased by +86 million tonnes (+90%) in the first five months as generators and steelmakers took advantage of lower international prices to rebuild inventories.
^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^
The following pdf contains several graphs showing the trends in China’s electricity sector for the January - May period.
^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^
It doesn’t matter how many Tesla superchargers are installed on US highways, or how many solar panels are erected in the EU. What matters more to affect the atmospheric CO2 concentration is how many millions of tons of coal are burned in China’s power plants every year. China burns more than half of the world’s mined coal, and that trend doesn’t look like it will change any time soon.