China leads way despite new coal power stations Renewables will be good news for the UK

PEOPLE are rightly critical of

China for building coal power stations, but that’s not the full story as the country is also working hard so that it’ll be able to use less and import less coal.

China is facing challenges that means it will sometimes need coal – for example when extreme heat and drought simultaneously increase electricity demand and reduce supply.

What people often aren’t aware of is that China is investing far more in clean energy than fossil fuels.

In 2023 alone, it installed more solar panel capacity than the USA has ever installed and 65% of the world’s new wind power.

China is also manufacturing the equipment to allow other countries to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels and is a world leader in research and development in cleanenergy technologies.

China wouldn’t be doing this if it didn’t make economic sense.

In contrast, the UK government has just been defeated in a court case for not doing enough to meet its targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions because it had something more akin to a wish list than a plan.

In response, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said what amounted to “haven’t we done well”.

In fact, until recently we had done well but that’s not the point. If we don’t want to miss out, we need to keep doing well.

Given the available technology, just think what could be achieved if we had a government that knew what a strategy looks like .

SOME good news that you may have missed.

Government energy data released at the end of March show that in the last three months of 2023, a record 51.5% of electricity generation came from renewables.

Over the whole of 2023, the share from low-carbon sources (renewables and nuclear) was 56% of total generation. This came as fossil fuel electricity generation saw its lowest ever share. In other words, electricity generated in 2023 was the cleanest ever.

It’s not just the UK either. Worldwide, 40 countries generated at least 50% of their electricity from renewables, including 11 European countries.

I imagine this comes as a disappointment to the correspondents who regularly write in to rubbish renewables and complain about its intermittency.

They miss the point; more renewables means that less gas and coal is needed to meet the remaining demand.

We are in the middle of a oneoff transformation in the energy industry away from fossil fuels and this gives the UK a chance to develop industries to support this transformation, such as offshore wind, battery storage and recycling and flexible electricity grids.

There is no future in continuing to dig up fossil fuels and burn them, not least because we have little left to burn.

Gas production in the UK will decline by two-thirds within 10 years, making the UK almost completely reliant on imported gas.

Renewables are not only cleaner, they’re also improving the UK’s energy security.