China’s coal demand has been decreasing for two years and is expected to continue that trend, Kang Wu, vice chairman for Asia and managing director of Fact Global Energy (FGE) China, said Tuesday at an event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “We have a big debate in China. One school of thought [is] that China will still reverse and will reach another peak before 2020 and then peak there. Another school is that 2013 was the peak already. We tend to buy into the second one given the overall energy status,” Wu said.
The International Energy Agency determined in December 2015 that Chinese coal demand declined in 2014. Preliminary data also suggested that the decline had continued in 2015. “Coal demand in China is sputtering as the Chinese economy gradually shifts to one based more on services and less on energy-intensive industries. New Chinese hydro, nuclear, wind and solar are also significantly curtailing coal power generation, driven not only by energy security and climate concerns but also by efforts to reduce local pollution,” the agency found at the time.
Wu noted that while coal demand is decreasing, energy demand is not. “There are still many reasons why China needs to consume more energy, so the energy consumption will continue to grow and certainly the leader is non-fossil in terms of growth rate,” he said, later adding “those non-fossil energy [sources] are really growing, and China has an official target to raise the share of non-fossil energy.”
In Paris climate change agreement, adopted in December 2015, the nation pledged to increase the share of non-fossil-fueled power generation in the country to approximately 20 percent by 2030, reduce its carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP by 60-65 percent from 2005 levels by 2030, and peak carbon emissions around 2030 or earlier.
China has made great gains in its renewable energy capacity, breaking the record in 2015 for the highest solar energy capacity installed in one single country, according to the IEA. China has roughly 43.6 gigawatts installed capacity compared to former record holder Germany with 39.7 gigawatts.
The Paris Agreement is the first international climate agreement China has been a part of, as it is the first agreement in which both developed and developing nations have been expected to contribute. The nation has been an active participant in every stage of the agreement, adopting it at the Paris climate change conference, and signing it the day it opened for signature. China has also stated that it will ratify, and thus officially join, the agreement before the next G20 Summit, scheduled for September.
