Will China save the planet or destroy it?
nuclear-power stations faster than any other country. It has also invested heavily in renewable energy (see chart 2), such that it now has around 750 gigawatts of wind and solar generating capacity, about a third of the world’s total. By the end of the decade the government aims to have 1,200GW of such capacity, more than the total power capacity of the European Union at the moment.
China will probably well exceed that target. But it is not just China’s embrace of renewable energy that is helping it curb emissions. Its production of carbon-intensive steel and cement has been dropping.
After decades of building roads and railways, the government is splurging less on big infrastructure projects. A long expansion of the property sector has ended in a meltdown that has shaken the economy—but led to fewer emissions. Going forward, few analysts expect China’s GDP to grow as fast as it did at the end of the last century and the beginning of this one.
Put another way, China’s dirtiest phase of development is probably behind it. More important than the peak, though, is what happens next. China has pledged to eliminate net emissions of greenhouse gases (or to become “carbon neutral") by 2060.
This will be a much harder target to hit. Even after that massive injection of renewables, dirty coal still supplies well over half of China’s energy. That is down from around 70% in 2011, but the amount of coal China burns continues to increase, as demand for electricity rises.
Last year China mined a record 4.5bn tonnes of the black rock and approved around two new coal-fired power plants for construction every week on average. Many of these may never be built. Declining utilisation rates of existing coal plants undermine the case for
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