Bloomberg: China and India produce 14 million tons of coal annually from the most harmful fossil fuels to the atmosphere. Bloomberg analysts named the coal projects of China and India, which prove the inability of these countries to stop harming the planet in the coming decades, as a possible reason.
Collectively, researchers estimate that the world's top pollutants produce 14 million tonnes of coal annually, accounting for the largest share of both countries' energy mix, despite efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and expand solar and wind projects.
However, both China and India continue to build coal-fired power plants – from 2011 to 2020, these countries accounted for 95 percent of new capacity. The Global Energy Monitor noted that in 2020, for the first time since 2015, so many new coal plants appeared, and most of them in the PRC. In India, according to forecasts by the local government, the capacity of power plants on fossil fuels by 2030 will grow from the current 208 gigawatts to 267 gigawatts. The projects are expected to last at least 30 years, making it impossible to phase out coal by mid-century and strengthening its role in the global energy portfolio.
“The power outage in September shows that we are still not sufficiently prepared,” said Yang Weimin, deputy head of the Economic Affairs Committee of the People's Political Consultative Council of China. He believes that using coal to compensate for power outages from renewable sources will only work with additional funding.
According to Bloomberg analysts, in 2020, coal accounted for 34 percent of the world's energy consumption – the minimum amount for more than than 20 years. Nevertheless, in the energy balances of China and India, this type of fuel amounted to 62 and 72 percent, respectively. Analysts predict that by 2050 the share of energy from coal in both countries will remain at the level of 20 percent.
Environmentalists oppose the production of energy from fossil fuels – the operation of coal-fired power plants is incompatible with humanity's desire to limit the rise in global temperatures at around 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels. For a chance to successfully contain the global catastrophe, scientists have called for the closure of three thousand coal projects around the world.