China Shuts Down Speculation That It Has Reached Peak Emissions

By Charles Kennedy of OilPrice.com

China has yet to see its carbon dioxide emissions peak as it is a developing nation and has a massive population.

The message comes from the country’s National Energy Administration in response to speculation that China had achieved peak emissions before its own deadline.

“We should not forget that China is still a developing country, pursuing modernization for a huge population,” the head of law and institutional reform at the NEA, Song Wen, told media. “Great efforts are still needed to achieve the goals of peak carbon and carbon neutrality,” Song also said, as quoted by Bloomberg.

China has been at the forefront of the energy transition, accounting for most of the world’s total spending on things such as wind, solar, and EVs, and turning into the biggest producer of all three. However, this has not changed its status as one of the biggest emitters of carbon dioxide either.

Beijing is working to change this, however. Earlier this month media reported that the country planned to build 11 new nuclear reactors to boost the share of the zero-emission electricity source in its energy mix.

China is building more nuclear power plants than any other country in the world—just like its coal power plants—and based on those record approvals, it plans to build even more, becoming the world’s biggest nuclear generator by 2030, according to BloombergNEF.

There are 26 nuclear reactors under construction in the country, set to add over 30 GW in generation capacity to the country’s total when completed.

At the same time, Chinese authorities reduced significantly the number of approvals for new coal capacity. The total approved during the first half of the year was as much as 80% lower than the new coal capacity approved during the same period in 2023.

The question here, however, is whether the approvals are down because after last year’s push the country will have all the coal capacity it needs or because of efforts to reduce the dominance of coal in the energy mix.