China's new climate goals mean it must completely phase out coal by 2050

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s surprise announcement last week that China aims to hit peak carbon emissions before 2030 and become carbon neutral by 2060 led environmental analysts to question how China would pull off the feats given its heavy reliance on coal power.

On Sunday, the Energy Environment Economy Research Institute at Tsinghua University in Beijing offered a partial answer. China, which currently consumes half the world’s coal, must phase out coal-fired power by around 2050 in order to achieve Xi’s climate targets, according to a report from the university.

The coal reduction figure was one of several steps outlined in the report that China could take to reach its new climate goals, which analysts noted were ambitious but vague.

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The report, which was presented in a webinar by Zhang Xiliang, director of the Energy Environment Economy Research Institute, also projected that China’s annual carbon emissions will rise slightly between 2025 and 2030 before dropping sharply from 9 billion tons in 2035 to 3 billion tons by 2050 and 200 million by 2060. China is currently the world’s No. 1 carbon emitter.

Nonfossil fuels as a share of total energy demand in China will jump from 20% in 2025 to 84% in 2060. In 2018, nonfossil fuels made up around 15% of energy consumption in China, and coal made up 58%, according to a review of China’s energy market by the energy multinational BP. Zhang said China needs to increase the use of wind, solar, and nuclear power to offset the decreasing use of fossil fuels, since electricity demand in China will continue to increase, but he didn’t say exactly how to achieve that tradeoff.

Coal’s share of total energy consumption in China has been gradually decreasing over the past 10 years, but provincial governments continue to approve new coal plant construction projects. And an analysis by researchers at the Finland-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air found that China’s COVID-19 stimulus plans allotted three times as much money to fossil fuel projects as they did to low-carbon energy projects.

The Energy Environment Economy Research Institute works with the Chinese government’s ecology and environment ministry to project long-term climate goals, according to Bloomberg, but it’s not an official government organization. China’s government has not yet released an official plan for achieving Xi’s climate targets.

Environmental analysts are awaiting the publication of China’s upcoming five-year plan, the government’s regular set of reforms and economic targets, to see whether it will include more details on how China plans to curb emissions and fossil fuel use and boost renewable energy projects.

Bloomberg reported earlier this month—before Xi’s announcement—that the five-year plan may include a goal to cut the share of coal as an energy source from around 58% this year to 52% by 2025 and increase nonfossil fuels’ share to 20% by 2025.