China to increase coal production, but increasing wind, solar

China's searing heat is drying up the critical Yangtze River, with water flow on its main trunk about 51 percent lower than the average over the last five years, state media outlet China News Service reported - Copyright AFP STR

An official says that China plans to boost coal production through 2025 to avoid a repeat of last year’s power shortages.

While the increase in coal mining is a setback to the country’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, China is still a big investor in wind and solar, however, party leaders are not wanting a repeat of last winter’s energy crisis, reports ABC News.

The economic slump caused by the energy crisis is not something party officials want to be repeated this year, and there is still the attitude that China will see a drop in greenhouse gases by 2030.

Economic growth slid to 2.2 percent over a year earlier in the first six months of this year, less than half the official target of 5.5 percent.

The ruling party aims for annual coal production to rise to 4.6 billion tons in 2025, a deputy director of the Cabinet’s National Energy Administration, Ren Jingdong, said at a news conference held during a ruling party congress, according to the Associated Press. That would be a 12 percent increase over last year’s 4.1 billion tons.

According to the Newcastle Herald, the challenges of relying on renewable sources were highlighted by a dry summer that left reservoirs in China’s southwest too low to generate hydropower. That forced power cuts in Sichuan province and the major city of Chongqing.

Beijing will “give full play to the ‘ballast role’ of coal and the basic regulating role of coal power,” Ren said. He said the country will “vigorously enhance oil and gas exploration and development.”