China plans to build more coal-fired power plants and has hinted that it will rethink its timetable to slash emissions, in a significant blow to the UK’s ambitions for securing a global agreement on phasing out coal at the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow.

In a statement after a meeting of Beijing’s National Energy Commission, the Chinese premier, Li Keqiang, stressed the importance of regular energy supply, after swathes of the country were plunged into darkness by rolling blackouts that hit factories and homes.

  • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆
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    32 years ago

    It’s so incredibly disingenuous to talk about emissions in China without mentioning the fact that a lot of these emissions are driven by consumption in the west. Simply moving factories to China doesn’t move responsibility. At the end of the day it doesn’t matter where things get produced, the focus needs to be on curbing demand. It’s also worth noting that China is already under 2000 watt limit per capita right now.

    • poVoq
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      2 years ago

      Yes and no… one of the reasons why the west has moved production to China is because Chinese companies offered to produce cheaper, mainly due to much laxer environmental regulations and subsidized energy costs in China. So while the west certainly has part of the blame, so does China as they very intentionally exploited the environment for a competitive advantage over western production sites.

      • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆
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        12 years ago

        It’s pretty clear that westerners didn’t care about environmental impact since they were comfortable with western companies doing manufacturing in China. Ultimately, access to cheap commodities is the only thing that matters, and nobody cares about environmental cost behind that.

        Today, China is pretty much the only major country with any serious plan for transitioning off fossils that is currently being enacted. As a result China leads in both solar and nuclear. Most of reforestation efforts in the world are also happening in China. So, it’s quite bizarre to focus there instead of looking back home.

    • @ericbuijs@lemmy.mlOP
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      12 years ago

      The source that you’re referring to is from 2008. Another source mentions almost 3000 watt per capita in 2014 and I imagine that it has increased since.

  • poVoq
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    02 years ago

    What I find a bit strange about this is that apparently the recent power outages were due to a coal supply problem. One of the main coal mining area in China had massive flooding problems (due to climate change) and the main nearby global producer, Australia, is currently unwilling to make up for that shortage in China due to political disagreements.

    Normally that would make you think that the logical solution is to reduce coal usage even faster, which is what the CCP did announce two weeks ago… so this flip-flop is a bit strange. Maybe just a message aimed at their domestic audience that doesn’t want any further power cuts…