China toasts a major achievement: for the first time, coal has dropped below 50% of its electricity production. But it's a blunder. What's more, the Asian giant's ambitious promises on decarbonization are almost a disaster. Driven by consumption, electricity generation continues to grow at rates exceeding 10% per year. Renewables are making rapid progress, but they're not enough. And so is coal. continues to grow At a furious pace: 95 gigawatts (GW) in 2025 alone, compared to nearly 4.000 GW of installed electricity generation capacity. More will arrive this year, while other projects are underway for a further 500 GW. There's little consolation: according to Chinese authorities, overall emissions are showing a slight decline. Coal technologies are also showing some progress in terms of efficiency and (modest) pollution reduction.
The paradox is evident, for a country that has made renewables a categorical commitment to solve its deadly problems environmental problems, especially in large cities. And in any case, to grab a dominant share of major global business related to the challenges of the energy transition. Without neglecting the benefits—which the People's Republic regime makes no secret of—of liberation from the challenging geopolitical landscape associated with the use of fossil fuels.
Greens and environmentalists. The flaws of parallelism
The fact is that China's ambitions in renewables are truly high, and the results are evident: just 10 years ago, coal met over 70% of national energy demand, but that was half the 10.500 terawatt-hours (TWh) the country requested last year. Meanwhile, renewables have gradually covered half of the demand: over a quarter from photovoltaic and wind power, 16% from hydroelectric power, a modest 5% from nuclear power, and some from gas (which in countries like Italy takes the lion's share) and biomass. And China has also become a outpost in the controversial solution of carbon capture and storage, inaugurating last year the largest CCS (Carbon Capture and Storage) plant in the world, the Huaneng Longdong Energy Base.
But why isn't more done? How can we make it credible? promise of the regime China to cover its electricity demand with at least 65% renewable energy by 2060? Why, then, does the use of coal in absolute terms (and not just percentage) continue to grow, far exceeding the monstrous figure of approximately 3 billion tons consumed each year? Why is China's coal greed not decreasing rapidly, as logic would dictate, despite the marginal costs in production from renewable sources are now lower?
The reasons for a supremacy that cannot be undermined
Analysts attribute the persistent hegemony of the black mineral to three factors. The first: the rapid growth of renewables is creating obvious continuity problems in electricity supplies, due to the well-known problems (even the West knows something about them) of programmability of these sources. So much so that five years ago China found itself facing not a few Blackout widespread, with significant economic damage. Hence the decision to continue relying on the only programmable and widely available source, as an alternative to a more decisive development of nuclear power.
Second factor: the gigantic availability of coal in China with infrastructures and industrial chains that are neither easy to dismantle nor reconvert, because the problems of industrial lobbying and labor management have their weight even in a country outside the normal democratic parametersAnd here's the third factor: the remuneration mechanisms for Chinese electricity production continue to favor coal, with some corrections introduced only recently. This is the case for battery storage, which has long been mandatory for large renewable energy projects but enjoys a remuneration bonus very small, only recently given some value.
Good advice, even for us Westerners
It must be said that the denunciation of all this also comes from within the limping system of discussion and debate of the Asian giant. A diagnosis of great interest even for us Westerners comes from the prestigious (and splendid, even in the facilities available to students) Tsinghua University in Beijing. A mixed team of British and Chinese researchers led by Professor Ying Zhou, who commutes between Tsinghua University and the University of Surrey in Britain, where Zhou directs the Future of Work Research Centre, has published a paper in Energy and Climate Management. Research in which he denounces and suggests.
He warns that by doing so, China will certainly not be able to significantly reduce its use of coal. And he suggests, for reverse the trend, to adopt the system in use in England where the remuneration of electricity generation capacity occurs with a system of competitive auctions based substantially on technological neutralityA system that will, however, need to be gradually adjusted to favor batteries. Or rather, battery storage solutions capable of storing electricity for a sufficiently long time, warns Ying Zhou.
“The more the percentage of intermittent renewables increases in the energy mix, the more there will be a need – explains the Professor – for medium and long-term storage, capable of covering the prolonged absences of sun and wind, and subsequently of moving theaccumulated energy from one season to the next.” Solutions that inevitably require higher remuneration due to their less frequent use” but which “with the English system risk being cut off from the market.” A warning and a good suggestion also for our country, which finds itself facing the exact same challenges.
