China’s Energy Demand Sees Coal and Renewables Soar

In yesterday’s release of Ember’s Global Electricity Review, the fact that more than half of the world’s coal-powered electricity in 2020 was produced in China stood out. But this is only half the story. Dramatically rising energy demand in the country has also seen renewable electricity production soar. Between the years 2000 and 2020, the amount of electricity generated by burning coal increased more than four-fold in China, hitting around 4,600 terrawatt hours in the past year. At the same time, generation from renewable sources increased ten-fold, but only reached around 2,200 terrawatt hours, highlighting China’s continued dependence on coal despite gains in renewables.

China’s huge investment in coal power gave the technology a significant boost over the last two decades despite the fact that other parts of the world have been dismantling coal-burning capacities. While Europe has been in the process of moving away from coal and other fossil fuels for generating electricity, the case is less clear cut in the U.S. While the country has significantly reduced coal-burning, dependence on oil and gas – which are slightly cleaner ways to produce electricity from fossil fuels – has risen.

China has been less keen to use other fossil fuels to generate electricity, instead investing in coal and renewables at the same time. As renewables are currently growing at a faster rate than coal in the country, the share of China’s electricity that comes from coal is actually decreasing – and the rate at which is does so is faster than the world average.

All in all, renewables are the second largest and fastest growing source of electricity in the world today, more than doubling capacity in the last two decades. Coal burning for power increased by around 50 percent, while oil and gas grew at the slowest rate of only around 25 percent. Other than in the United States, using oil and gas for generating electricity is most common in Russia, Japan, Iran and Mexico.

90 percent of the world’s electricity was generated by using coal, oil, gas and renewable sources in 2020.