“China Keeps Building Coal Capacity Abroad Despite Pledge to Stop” By Irina Slav
“ China is still building coal-fired power plants abroad despite a pledge to stop financing such projects, made back in 2021. The information comes from a Finland-based climate nonprofit…”
IRINA SLAV
Irina is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing on the oil and gas industry.
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China Keeps Building Coal Capacity Abroad Despite Pledge to Stop
By Irina Slav - Oct 15, 2024, 1:31 AM CDT
China is still building coal-fired power plants abroad despite a pledge to stop financing such projects, made back in 2021. The information comes from Finland-based climate nonprofit Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.
The way that 2021 pledge appears to have worked was through cancellations of planned coal power plant construction projects abroad. The rate of those cancellations, however, has declined since the start of this year, CREA reported today.
So far in 2024, China has canceled some 5.6 GW of planned coal generation capacity abroad, versus 15.9 GW in total for 2022 and 2023. What’s more, while China canceled 5.6 GW of new coal capacity, it built another 7.9 GW of capacity overseas, which has brought the total operating coal capacity built by China in other countries to 26.2 GW.
This is a significant increase from 2023, when total operating coal capacity overseas stood at 18.3 GW, and an even more substantial increase from 2022 when total operating Chinese-built coal generation capacity abroad stood at 9.2 GW. During the same three-year period, however, China canceled 42.8 GW of coal generation projects, CREA notes although it suggests this is not enough and the Chinese government must step up project cancellations to live up to its promise.
There are currently 52 coal-fired power plant projects being built or about to be built by Chinese companies around the world. These have a combined capacity of 49.5 GW, exceeding the amount of capacity canceled since the pledge from 2021.
Separately, CREA said, China’s total overseas power generation projects include 3.4 GW in new generation capacity that had not been announced previously. That capacity has been moved straight to the construction phase, CREA said, and there is another 4.9 GW in the pre-permit phase. Not all of that is coal generation but enough is, according to the Finnish think tank. Those are three projects totaling 1.5 GW, to be built in Kyrgyzstan, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
By Irina Slav for Oilprice.