China’s love for coal is insatiable. That was the simple, despairing message Monday from climate alarmists Greenpeace as the world’s single largest polluter rushed to embrace fossil fuels in the first quarter of 2023 while ignoring calls (and its own pledges) to reduce emissions.
AFP reports Greenpeace lamented the second-largest economy on the planet is also its biggest emitter of the greenhouse gases driving “climate change,” such as carbon dioxide (CO2), and Beijing’s emissions pledges are seen as essential to keeping global temperature rise well below two degrees Celsius.
Trouble is China says one thing and then does the other.
Local governments in energy-hungry Chinese provinces drive the nation’s hunger for coal and approved at least 20.45 gigawatts (GW) of coal-fired power in the first three months of 2023, Greenpeace said.
Freighters unload thermal coal for use in domestic power stations at the port coal terminal in Lianyungang, East China’s Jiangsu Province, July 18, 2022. (Future Publishing via Getty)
That is more than double the 8.63 GW Greenpeace reported for the same period last year, and greater than the 18.55 GW that got the green light for the whole of 2021.
The jump in approvals for coal-fired power plants, however, has fuelled concerns China will backtrack on its promise to curb emissions between 2026 and 2030 and become carbon-neutral by 2060.
It also continues a trend of China ignoring green renewable alternatives such as wind, solar, and hydro while simply building more coal power stations as the rest of the world tries to seek alternatives.
China relied on coal for nearly 60 percent of its electricity last year, the AFP report continued.
The push for more coal plants “risks climate disasters… and locking us into a high-carbon pathway,” Greenpeace campaigner Xie Wenwen told the outlet.
“The 2022 coal boom has clearly continued into this year.”
New of China’s embrace of traditional coal-fired power production came on the same day nine European countries gathered with the collective aim of scaling up wind power generation in the North Sea.
Hosted by Belgium in the coastal town of Ostend, the meeting will gather the leaders from France, Germany, Ireland, Denmark, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, with European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen also attending.
Norway and Britain will participate, too.
All the European nations have pledged to turn away from coal, oil and nuclear power generation to embrace “green” alternatives as they look to a zero emissions future.
The U.S. is also looking to dump coal and oil fired energy production under President Joe Biden.
WATCH: Van Jones on Biden’s ‘Dumb’ Vow to Kill Coal Plants
Biden promised during the presidential debates in 2020 that, under his administration, the country will not build any more coal or oil plants, as Breitbart News reported.
“Nobody’s going to build another coal-fired plant in America. No one’s going to build another oil-fired power plant in America. They’re going to move to renewable energy,” the future president vowed.
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