The world’s biggest emitter and second biggest economy announced this week plans to massively expand its already massive renewables base, according to reporting from Reuters. The plans include new offshore wind farms — once again, China already has a huge lead over the UK and other countries here — and “energy bases” that would likely include solar and battery storage across various desert areas. They also plan to move forward with a controversial hydroelectric dam on the Yarlung Tsangpo river in Tibet — a project so massive it will offer three times the electrical output of the Three Gorges Dam, which is currently the world’s largest; as with any major hydro project, there are profound concerns about environmental impact as well as downstream water flows in India.
The announcement, as part of a publicly released report, is targeted toward China achieving peak emissions before 2030 on its way to net zero in 2060. Though estimates vary, some experts think the 2030 goal is well within reach, and the peak may actually occur as soon as 2025. Still, the country’s carbon intensity, a measure of emissions per unit of economic growth, fell only 3.4 percent year, which fell short of expectations — and the new report says China will actually expand coal production in 2025, as other large economies start sunsetting their coal power fleet entirely.
But the continued focus on renewable energy expansion does at least suggest China won’t abandon climate goals alongside Trump and his oil industry buddies. And Trump’s attempts to hamstring the solar and wind power industries, along with batteries, electric vehicles, and other clean tech, surely seem like an opening to China. Former Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm wrote recently that China would be “thrilled” to watch Trump roll back policies like the Inflation Reduction Act that helped spur hundreds of billions in new domestic manufacturing investment. There is an energy world of the future, and China seems mostly interested in moving toward it while Trump wants to run back into the dirty, dangerous past.
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