Climate Crisis, Biosphere & Societal Collapse

Archived

• China's proposed coal mine developments risk creating an oversupply and derailing climate goals, according to Global Energy Monitor.
• The scale of China's coal ambitions threatens to overwhelm its own, and global, climate goals, with the country accounting for 60% of all proposed mine capacity worldwide.
• Without drastically scaling back plans for new mine capacity, the world could see a massive rise in potent methane emissions that would make it all but impossible to reach the goals of the Paris Agreement, said Dorothy Mei, project manager of the Global Coal Mine Tracker at GEM.

[...]

More than 450 sites are in development across China, with nearly 40% under construction or in test operation, according to the California-based researcher, which promotes clean energy use. If they are all built, their combined capacity of 1.35 billion tons a year would surpass that operating in Indonesia and Australia, the biggest exporters of the fuel for power generation and steelmaking.

The scale of China’s coal ambitions threatens to overwhelm its own, and global, climate goals. The country accounts for 60% of all proposed mine capacity worldwide, and its buildout alone would generate 80% of the methane emissions tied to planned projects, GEM said. Methane is more than 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period.

“Without drastically scaling back plans for new mine capacity, the world could see a massive rise in potent methane emissions that would make it all but impossible to reach the goals of the Paris Agreement,” said Dorothy Mei, project manager of the Global Coal Mine Tracker at GEM.

[...]