By Gavin Maguire
LITTLETON, Colorado – Emissions from China’s power sector are set to hit new highs over the coming summer as rising temperatures spur increased air conditioner use just as factories and heavy industry continue to expand output from last year’s pandemic-hit levels.
Consecutive record months of thermal coal imports in March and April also indicate that utilities are bracing to crank coal-fired power generation as they look to keep pace with the anticipated climb in overall power demand.
As China accounts for roughly 40 percent of worldwide power sector emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other gases, data from Ember shows, any sustained climb in discharge from the world’s top polluter stands to potentially undermine efforts to cap global emissions totals.
China’s average temperatures in 2022 were 1.5 -2.0 degrees Celsius above the 1971-2000 average, according to data compiled by the Institute for Environmental Analytics.
Long-range weather forecasts for central and southern China call for temperatures to average around 3.0-3.5 percent above the long-term average this July and August, data from Refinitiv shows, and may trend higher as the peak summer period nears.
The combination of the long-term rise in average temperatures alongside above-normal forecasts for the upcoming summer look set to trigger record demand for airconditioning this year, especially across the populous east and south which are among the warmest parts of the country.
Those areas are also home to China’s largest manufacturing hubs, which have started to rapidly revive output from the stunted levels in 2022 when zero-COVID-19 policies restricted the movement of people and goods and clipped economic growth.
The southern and eastern parts of China are also among the most coal-dependent parts of the country in terms of power production, and so will likely be a major source of coal-power emissions growth as power demand levels climb.
To feed the country’s ongoing industrial revival, China’s power producers have stepped up imports of thermal coal, and imports through April are roughly 77 percent more than a year earlier, according to data from ship-tracking firm Kpler.
Additional increases in coal imports are likely if power producers expect demand from air conditioner use to rise alongside further gains in industrial power consumption.
In turn, higher coal imports and use look set to yield higher power sector emissions, which scaled record highs of nearly 4.6 billion tonnes last year despite the stop-start nature of industrial activity in 2022. – Reuters
