Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumChina Has Already Exceeded Its 2015 "Cap" On Coal Emissions - Oh, And It Did It 2 Years Ago
Shocking, huh?
China has put in place plans to cap coal consumption and production in 2020. For whatever reason, this is regularly rendered as China has plans to peak coal consumption by 2020?. This is not exactly correct. The cap itself can, and probably will, simply increase after 2020. Another case of something being lost in translation. And the same was true for Chinas plan to cap coal production and consumption in 2015. This was rendered by CleanTechnica not a reliable source of information as China to simply cap coal use within 3 years.
Likewise today, people seem to be rather confident of the ability of China to both meet its 2020 coal consumption cap and to peak its emissions before 2030. And this belief in the ability of the Chinese Communist Party to deliver must be compared with the constant questioning of the ability of democratically elected governments to do the same. But, here is a problem. China has already exceeded its 2015 cap on coal production, and it did so two years ago. You wont know this if you read the BP Statistical Review of World Energy or any other set of published statistics. They still tell you that China produced 3.68 billion tonnes of coal in 2013. However, buried in a recently published statistical communique from China is the following important note,
data have been revised based on the results of the Third National Economic Census. The output of coal in 2013 has been revised from 3.68 billion tons to 3.97 billion tons.
In other words, coal production in 2013 was revised upwards by 7.9%, and by 0.29 billion tonnes. This revision is the equivalent of 1/3 of the annual coal production of America.
EDIT
https://carboncounter.wordpress.com/2015/03/04/china-has-already-exceeded-its-2015-cap-on-coal-production/
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)We are not going to stop using fossil fuels. We're not going to "cap" our use of fossil fuels. We are not even going to slow down unless there's a global economic crash.
In trying to win the world, we have lost.
truebrit71
(20,805 posts)SHOCKED!
NickB79
(19,246 posts)It marks the first time in 40 years that annual CO2 emissions growth has remained stable, in the absence of a major economic crisis, the agency said.
Annual global emissions remained at 32 gigatonnes in 2014, unchanged from the previous year.
But the IEA warned that while the results were "encouraging", this was "no time for complacency".
If you can "lose" a quarter BILLION tons of coal consumption in ONE country, what makes their global carbon estimates reliable?
hatrack
(59,587 posts)And that's by measuring how much CO2 there is in the atmosphere.