Because China is such a behemoth, its energy decisions absolutely dwarf anything any other country is doing right now. Case in point: Over the weekend, the Chinese government ordered 13 provinces to cancel 104 coal-fired projects in development, amounting to a whopping 120 gigawatts of capacity in all.
To put that in perspective, the United States has about 305 gigawatts of coal capacity total. The projects that China just halted are equal in size to one-third of the US coal fleet. It’s potentially a very, very big deal for efforts to fight climate change.
This also shouldn’t come as a huge surprise. In recent years, China, the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide, has been making major efforts to restrain its coal use and shift to cleaner sources of energy. When Donald Trump and other conservatives in the United States complain that China isn’t doing anything about climate change, they simply haven’t been paying attention. [...]
On top of that, as China’s leaders start to take global warming seriously, the country has been making massive investments in clean energy. As part of the Paris climate deal, China has pledged to get 20 percent of its energy from low-carbon sources by 2030. The government is planning to install an addition 130 gigawatts of wind and solar by 2020 — equivalent to all the renewable power in France today. (China’s also make big bets on nuclear power.) Some analysts suspect this growth in clean energy could be sufficient to satisfy much of the future growth in household electricity demand.
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