The decline of coal in China

Investment Analysis Clubs Macro Economic Trends and Risks
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China has cut new coal power plant permits by nearly 80% in the first half of 2024 compared to 2023. Since 2023, China has added over 400 GW of new solar and wind power, driving down China’s coal power generation by 7% from June 2023 to June 2024. https://energyandcleanair.org/publication/china-puts-coal-on-back-burner-as-renewables-soar/#Footnotes

Chinese coal companies show sharply declining profits from coal mining in 2024. China’s Top Coal Firms Lean Into Power as Mining Profits Slip

China is likely to show reduced greenhouse gas emissions in 2024 from the past year. China Appears On Track to See Emissions Fall This Year - Yale E360

Although China is building more coal plants, they are being run at lower capacity and less often. China is increasingly only using coal plants in a peaker capacity or as insurance against unforeseen declines in renewable energy as occurred in 2023 with a drought that significantly curtailed hydropower. China is building more coal plants but might burn less coal

China recently brought online the world’s biggest solar farm (3.5 GW). https://www.reuters.com/world/china/worlds-biggest-solar-farm-comes-online-chinas-xinjiang-2024-06-03/

China also just completed the world’s biggest offshore solar farm (1 GW). That’s pretty good engineering. China powers up the world's largest open-sea offshore solar farm | Electrek

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Industrial slowdowns will do that, especially after a surge in coal plants the previous two years.

A review of project documents by Greenpeace East Asia found that 14 new coal plants were approved from January to June with a total capacity of 10.3 gigawatts, down 80% from 50.4 gigawatts in the first half of last year.

Authorities approved 90.7 gigawatts in 2022 and 106.4 gigawatts in 2023, a surge that raised alarm among climate experts.

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The question is to what capacity are all these coal plants being used? Word is that these new coal plants are increasingly only being used to back up cheaper and cleaner renewable energy generation. As the amount of renewable energy increases, the use of all that coal plant capacity declines. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-new-coal-plants-set-become-costly-second-fiddle-renewables-2023-03-22/

Clean energy generated a record-high 44% of China’s electricity in May 2024, pushing coal’s share down to a record low of 53%, despite continued growth in demand. Analysis: China’s clean energy pushes coal to record-low 53% share of power in May 2024 - Carbon Brief

China’s coal plants are much like China’s housing. These are make-work projects, designed to create jobs. How much they will be used is a separate question.

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Good point, although unlike housing there are ongoing jobs supported in the mining industry.

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China might be slowing its construction of coal-fired power plants, but China already burns so much more coal than any other country, it doesn’t really matter much.

Below is a ranked list of the top coal consuming countries, from the largest to the tenth largest, as of 2023. The numbers given are the energy produced from the burning of coal for each nation, given in exajoules. These numbers come from the Statistical Review of World Energy.

Top Coal Consuming Countries, 2023
 1. China     91.94 exajoules
 2. India     21.98
 3. USA        8.20
 4. Japan      4.54
 5. Indonesia  4.32
 6. Russia     3.83
 7  S. Africa  3.33
 8. S. Korea   2.69
 9. Vietnam    2.32
10. Germany    1.83

Note: These numbers are actual energy produced, not power plant capacity or some other metric. The actual energy is more closely related to the amount of CO2 produced from the burning of the coal.

China burns the most coal, by far. If we add together numbers 2 through #10, that sum is still only 58% of China’s current coal energy. The rest of the world put together burns less coal than China does alone.

The atmospheric CO2 concentration will continue to rise, even if China currently slows down a bit on its coal-fired power plant construction.

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-sept-coal-output-rises-44-safety-improvements-chemical-industry-demand-2024-10-18/

Output for the first nine months of the year was 3.48 billion tons, up 0.6% on the year, according to the revised government data.

Driving up coal use, thermal power generation, which in China is mostly fuelled with coal, rose 8.9% in September from a year earlier to 545.1 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh), statistics bureau data showed on Friday.

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_ Pete

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