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“Coal’s dominant role is unlikely to change in the next 10 to 15 years,” Zhang Hong, deputy general secretary of the China National Coal Association, told a briefing on Wednesday.
China, which produces more than half the world’s coal, has said consumption won’t peak until 2025. By that time, annual demand will have risen 4% to 4.3 billion tons, according to Zhang. I
n 2030, the nation will still be burning some 4 billion tons of the fuel, scarcely less than is being used now. And as the government opens up even more mines, capacity is likely to be kept well above projected demand at 5 billion tons, he said.
At the same briefing, Wang Zhixuan, an official with the China Electricity Council, called the inherent intermittency of renewables a “gray rhino,” or an obvious but neglected risk, that could topple the grid if coal isn’t there as a backstop. “Safely switching energy is the basis to phasing out coal,” he said, and the country’s climate goals can’t be achieved by “one-time fixes.”