China 2018 coal consumption rises 1 pct, but share of total energy use falls
BEIJING: China’ s coal consumption rose for a second consecutive year in 2018, but coal’s share of total energy consumption fell below 60 per cent for the first time as cleaner energy sources gained ground, official data showed yesterday.
The world’ s biggest coal consumer used 1 per cent more coal in absolute terms last year than in 2017, China’s National Bureau of Statistics said in its annual National Social and Economic Development communique. Coal consumption had risen for the first time in four years in 2017.
However, coal accounted for only 59 per cent of China’s overall energy consumption last year, down 1.4 percentage points from 2017, as China boosts the use of cleaner fuels such as natural gas and renewable energy.
The good news is that renewable energy continued to grow rapidly in 2018, and new aggressive air pollution policies were introduced.
Lauri Myllyvirta, analyst
That brings the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases closer to its target of reducing the proportion of coal in its energy mix to below 58 per cent of total energy consumption by 2020.
The share of gas, nuclear power and renewable energy sources combined increased by 1.3 percentage points to 22.1 per cent of the total in 2018, the bureau said.
“The good news is that renewable energy continued to grow rapidly in 2018, and new aggressive air pollution policies were introduced,” Lauri Myllyvirta, an analyst at environmental group Greenpeace, said in a note.
However, a rapid increase in energy consumption driven by government stimulus policies and fast growth in residential electricity usage still resulted in the biggest increase in CO2 emissions since at least 2013, Myllyvirta added.
The bureau did not provide tonnage figures for the different energy categories but said China’s total energy consumption rose by 3.3 per cent year-on-year to 4.64 billion tonnes of standard coal equivalent last year.