Coal news and updates

The global battle against climate change has passed a historic turning point with China’s huge coal burning finally having peaked, according to senior economists.

 

They say the moment may well be a significant milestone in the course of the Anthropocene, the current era in which human activity dominates the world’s environment.

 

China is the world’s biggest polluter and more than tripled its coal burning from 2000 to 2013, emitting billions of tonnes of climate-warming carbon dioxide. But its coal consumption peaked in 2014, much earlier than expected, and then began falling.

 

The economists argue in a new paper on Monday that this can now be seen as permanent trend, not a blip, due to major shifts in the Chinese economy and a crackdown on pollution.

“I think it is a real turning point,” said Lord Nicholas Stern, an eminent climate economist at the London School of Economics, who wrote the analysis with colleagues from Tsinghua University in Beijing. “I think historians really will see [the coal peak of] 2014 as a very important event in the history of the climate and economy of the world.”

 

The team’s analysis, published in the Nature Geoscience journal, concludes that China’s coal peak “may well be an important milestone in the Anthropocene and a turning point in international efforts to [cut] the emissions of climate-altering greenhouse gases”.

 

The struggle to tame climate change and avoid the “severe, widespread, and irreversible” damage predicted by scientists is often seen as too difficult. Even the successful global climate deal signed in Paris in December is not yet enough to hold world temperatures below a 2°C rise, which is seen as the danger limit, and will need to be ratcheted up.

 

But Stern said he thought the breakthrough in China would drive further action by other nations: “Given the international political and economic structures we now have to manage climate change, I think it will be very influential on others.”

 

The UN’s climate chief, who oversees the global climate negotiations, welcomed the analysis. “This assessment of the possible peaking of China’s coal use is a very positive development in international efforts to address climate change,” said Patricia Espinosa, the incoming executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

 

She added: “It underlines how ambitious and deliberate policies to shift away from highly polluting fuels to cleaner energy sources can deliver global climate benefits and national improvements in health and indeed in people’s lives.”

 

To enter into force, the Paris climate deal requires the majority of large emitting nations to ratify it. Espinosa said: “I hope these positive developments reported today will encourage more countries to step forward so that Paris enters into force sooner rather than later.”

 

Stern said that China’s progress indicates its total carbon emissions will start falling before 2025, well ahead of its official target date of 2030. Prof John Schellnhuber, at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and a former adviser to German premier Angela Merkel and Pope Francis, said it could even happen by 2020, which would represent stunning progress.

 

The peaking of China’s coal use is very significant, Schellnhuber said: “It is a turning point and very good news.” But he argues that another, steeper, downturn in coal burning will be needed in future to stabilise the global climate.

 

“If we take the 2°C target seriously, coal really has to disappear,” he said. “I think coal will have to be phased out completely in all countries of the world by about 2035.” Schellnhuber, one of the world’s most influential climate scientists, said in 2015 that an “induced implosion” of the fossil fuel industry was required to beat climate change.