Coal news and updates

Gas and coal imports from Russia key to China’s economic recovery

Where does China want to be?
China, the world’s biggest emitter of carbon dioxide in 2020, pledged in September 2020 at the 75th session of the United Nations General Assembly to strive for peak CO2 emissions by 2030 and work towards carbon neutrality by 2060.

What it’s been doing to get there:

China has been updating the details on how it aims to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2060:

• Limited emissions will be implemented for new pollutants by 2025, according to the Action Plan for the Treatment of New Pollutants.

• Pledges to stop financing new coal plants overseas in March 2022.

• The State Council issued the Responding to Climate Change: China’s Policies and Actions in October 2021 confirming the targets of peak carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality before 2060, and further sets targets to:

ü Lower its carbon intensity by more than 65% (previously 60-65%) by 2030 from the 2005 level.

ü Increase the share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy consumption to around 25% (up from around 20%) by 2030.

ü Increase the forest stock volume by six billion cubic meters (up from 4.5 billion) by 2030 from the 2005 level.

ü Bring its total installed capacity of wind and solar power to more than 1.2 billion kW by 2030, which is additional to previous announcements. Investments in solar power were USD4.3 billion (CNY29 billion) from January to April 2022, up by 204% from the same period in 2021.

ü Raise the target for new energy vehicle share from 20% to 25% by 2025.

But, as stated in the Climate Action Tracker, these policies are not enough to bring the temperature down to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. More green policies are expected from China. The China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT) estimated that to achieve net zero carbon emission by 2060, China needs to invest $21.3tr.

So far, China has put policy objectives into action with the following:

• Issued $57bn (CNY382 billion) green bonds in the first half of 2022, an increase of 202% year-on-year.

• Added another $14.9bn (CNY100bn) loan to support the clean and efficient mining, processing and utilisation of coal-powered energy by China’s central bank, the People’s Bank of China.

• Increased sales of electric vehicles by 122.5% year-on-year to 2.3 million in the first half of 2022.

What’s happened since the Ukraine war
Since the start of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, China has increased its imports of coal, crude oil and natural gas from Russia.

Although one-third of China’s coal imports come from Russia, Russian coal accounts for less than 1% of total China coal supply, which includes a big portion of domestic supply.

We believe that China will at least maintain this level of coal imports from Russia in 2022, as it looks to have an adequate power supply standby for economic recovery this year.

In addition, China is going to cut import tariffs for coal to zero from 1 May 2022 to 31 March 2023, which could lead to more imports of coal from Russia.

These two measures are in line with the compromise approach of moving slowly from coal to renewable energy so that the power rationing seen in 2021 will not reoccur.