I like it. They have common sense vs England, Britain's efforts are all for naught. Meanwhile their citizens suffer for sake of climate nonsense.
Ed Miliband may be agonizing over the success of net zero, but Xi Jinping has no such scruples.
In a bid to meet soaring electricity demand, the Chinese premier is overseeing plans to burn more coal than ever before – increasing the country’s annual usage by an extra 75m tonnes.
The planned increase in coal production will undoubtedly strengthen China’s position as the world’s biggest source of greenhouse gases, with the country already emitting the equivalent of 15bn tonnes of carbon a year – almost a quarter of the world’s total.
Britain, by contrast, is a climate minnow, emitting around 400m tonnes a year. This is down from 817m in 1990, with Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, attempting to drive this number as low as 155m by 2035.
According to a speech in the Commons last year, Miliband said his green energy ambitions demonstrate how the UK “is back in the business of climate leadership – resetting at home and reconnecting abroad”.
China, however, shows no signs of following the UK. Instead, Beijing has put its coal-burning blitz into overdrive, riding roughshod over a pledge in 2021 to “strictly control” its use of the dirtiest fossil fuel.
Commodity reporting agency Argus says that in 2024, China’s coal consumption rose by about 6pc to a record 4.9bn tonnes, accounting for 56pc of the world’s global total.
This meant China burnt more than 300m tonnes of extra coal in 2024, which is equivalent to an extra 800m tonnes of carbon.
That one-year increase is practically double the 400m tonnes of CO2 that Britain has stripped from its energy system since 1990, an achievement often hailed by Sir Keir Starmer and Mr Miliband.
Joseph Clarke, of Argus’s Coal Daily International newsletter, says: “China consumes, by a long way, the most coal in the global market and has been growing for most of the last 20 years.
“The majority of this consumption is domestically produced coal, but this is still not enough to satiate Chinese demand.
“It means China is also the biggest importer of coal in the seaborne market, where it imported 359m tons of seaborne thermal coal in 2024, a record high for any country.”
China’s coal production and consumption are both set to increase in the coming years, raising concerns over the world’s ability to achieve net zero by 2050.
Last month, the China Coal Transportation and Distribution Association predicted that coal demand would consistently rise by 1-2pc a year for the foreseeable future.
That accounts for around 75m tonnes of coal per year – equating to an extra 150m tonnes of CO2.
It means the UK’s plans to cut around 250m tonnes of emissions by 2035 will have been all for nothing when compared to China’s coal expansion.
China’s top coal-producing region of Inner Mongolia produced 1.3bn tonnes in 2024, much of it from the Haerwusu open-pit coal mine, the world’s largest, owned by Shenhua Group.
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Ed Miliband may be agonizing over the success of net zero, but Xi Jinping has no such scruples.
In a bid to meet soaring electricity demand, the Chinese premier is overseeing plans to burn more coal than ever before – increasing the country’s annual usage by an extra 75m tonnes.
The planned increase in coal production will undoubtedly strengthen China’s position as the world’s biggest source of greenhouse gases, with the country already emitting the equivalent of 15bn tonnes of carbon a year – almost a quarter of the world’s total.
Britain, by contrast, is a climate minnow, emitting around 400m tonnes a year. This is down from 817m in 1990, with Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, attempting to drive this number as low as 155m by 2035.
According to a speech in the Commons last year, Miliband said his green energy ambitions demonstrate how the UK “is back in the business of climate leadership – resetting at home and reconnecting abroad”.
China, however, shows no signs of following the UK. Instead, Beijing has put its coal-burning blitz into overdrive, riding roughshod over a pledge in 2021 to “strictly control” its use of the dirtiest fossil fuel.
Commodity reporting agency Argus says that in 2024, China’s coal consumption rose by about 6pc to a record 4.9bn tonnes, accounting for 56pc of the world’s global total.
This meant China burnt more than 300m tonnes of extra coal in 2024, which is equivalent to an extra 800m tonnes of carbon.
That one-year increase is practically double the 400m tonnes of CO2 that Britain has stripped from its energy system since 1990, an achievement often hailed by Sir Keir Starmer and Mr Miliband.
Joseph Clarke, of Argus’s Coal Daily International newsletter, says: “China consumes, by a long way, the most coal in the global market and has been growing for most of the last 20 years.
“The majority of this consumption is domestically produced coal, but this is still not enough to satiate Chinese demand.
“It means China is also the biggest importer of coal in the seaborne market, where it imported 359m tons of seaborne thermal coal in 2024, a record high for any country.”
China’s coal production and consumption are both set to increase in the coming years, raising concerns over the world’s ability to achieve net zero by 2050.
Last month, the China Coal Transportation and Distribution Association predicted that coal demand would consistently rise by 1-2pc a year for the foreseeable future.
That accounts for around 75m tonnes of coal per year – equating to an extra 150m tonnes of CO2.
It means the UK’s plans to cut around 250m tonnes of emissions by 2035 will have been all for nothing when compared to China’s coal expansion.
China’s top coal-producing region of Inner Mongolia produced 1.3bn tonnes in 2024, much of it from the Haerwusu open-pit coal mine, the world’s largest, owned by Shenhua Group.
