‘Green’ China Runs On Dirty Coal

Authored by James Gorrie via The Epoch Times,

In 2020, China announced its plan to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060, with peak emissions expected to occur in 2030 and then decline thereafter.

According to Gao Yuhe, a Beijing-based project leader quoted by Greenpeace last month, it could be sooner than that. He said that “2025 is a critical year for China to make overall emissions from its power sector stop increasing.”

When it comes to so-called green energy, Chinese authorities talk a good game, but do they walk the walk when it comes to reducing the use of highly polluting coal?

Not really.

What’s more, the entire green argument is deeply flawed in multiple areas. More on that later.

Green Technology

China is indeed a global leader in developing, manufacturing, and installing green technology. No other nation can match its output of solar panels, wind-powered generators, batteries, and other renewable energy technology. Within the first five months of 2025, China added enough solar and wind-powered energy infrastructure to generate as much electricity as Poland, Indonesia, or Turkey. As of this year, China’s solar power generation capacity comprises about 50 percent of the world’s current solar power generation capacity.

With direction from Beijing, that trajectory is likely to continue. China is not only at the forefront of deploying renewable resources, but it also dominates the world market. No other nation can compete with China’s low pricing of renewable energy technology.

Pricing is a touchy subject for the rest of the world, though, because China’s dominance is accomplished through state subsidies and below-cost pricing in foreign markets. That’s called “dumping, and it’s against the trading rules, as it is highly destructive of other countries’ renewable energy manufacturing sectors. But that’s a different conversation for a different post.

China’s Energy Paradox

But in terms of renewable energy use and its reliance on coal for energy generation, China’s energy story is rather paradoxical. On the one hand, China is indeed the world’s leader in deploying renewable energy; on the other hand, it is also the world’s leader in coal use, dependency, and air pollution.

In short, China is not only the world’s biggest producer of renewable energy, but it’s also the world’s biggest producer and consumer of coal and carbon emissions.

How does that align with its image as a global leader in clean energy? Not very well. Furthermore, neither of those statistics is likely to change in the near future, despite official claims to the contrary regarding coal consumption.

Energy Security Is Top Priority

The reason for China’s schizophrenic energy policy is apparent: the future of China’s energy supply is anything but certain or secure. That’s a huge concern for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), because the reliability of renewable solar- and wind-powered energy is much lower than coal. Weather is a huge factor, and energy uncertainty is something that no developed nation can afford.

The CCP is painfully aware of its energy vulnerability, which explains why, in 2024, China approved 66.7 gigawatts (GW) of new coal-fired power plant capacity and began construction on 94.5 GW of new coal power plants, a 10-year high. To get an idea of the scale of China’s coal-powered plant construction plans, 93 percent of global construction starts for coal power in 2024 were in China. What’s more, 1 GW is the output of a single, large coal-power energy plant.

That fact also helps explain why China is the world’s top coal producer and importer in terms of volume. Although coal imports meet only a small fraction of its massive energy needs, in 2023, China imported 442 million tons, and in 2024, a record amount of 542.7 million tons.

Although projections for China’s coal consumption indicate a slight decrease in 2025, the trend in coal usage and energy reliance is undeniable. China is not only sprinting to build more coal-powered energy plants, but has resumed construction on 3.3 GW of suspended coal-fired power plant projects. With a global historical lifespan of coal-fired power plants of about 46 years, and the possibility of lasting up to 60 years, it’s clear that Beijing has no intention of transitioning to renewable energy sources as its main source of energy anytime soon.

The Green Delusion of ‘Renewables’

Green energy itself is a delusion.

First, the materials used in wind turbines and solar panels, and the batteries needed to store the energy, must all be mined from the earth, just like nuclear material, coal, oil, and natural gas. Once used up, more must be produced, so they’re actually non-renewable factors of production that are conveniently left out of the green calculus and are hardly carbon-neutral or environment-friendly.

Second, given the unreliability of wind and solar power, both are dependent upon the weather and other variables.

Third, the low energy density of wind and solar power (see Spain’s recent blackout, or Germany’s energy crisis in 2022), means that the amount of materials needed to be mined from the earth, such as rare earth minerals, oil for plastics, and various metals to create the infrastructure, is enormous and ongoing. And when they’re no longer viable, many of these materials can’t be recycled economically.

How green does that sound?

Fourth, a study at the University of Texas at Austin comparing renewables to natural gas concluded that “wind and solar are respectively 33 and 23 times worse than natural gas in terms of mineral resource scarcity,“ and that ”when battery storage is considered, their impact increased by orders of magnitude, making them 421 and 412 times worse, respectively.”

Fifth, even pro-renewable think tanks like the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania see a huge, unresolved problem looming ahead, stating that “the clean energy transition will require economic mobilization on a scale not seen since the industrial revolution, and will strain the global production of silicon, cobalt, lithium, manganese, and a host of other critical elements.”

In light of these facts, China’s ongoing use of coal-fired power plants makes perfect sense, the weather, the environment, and propaganda notwithstanding.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.