For all its massive investment in renewable energy since the 2008 Olympics, China still burns half the world’s coal. And its search for post-Covid growth is likely to supersede considerations about the environment, given the risks posed by high unemployment and social discontent.
China’s seeming retreat on climate change sets up a new source of tension with the West, much of which is headed in the opposite direction. Britain hasn’t burnt a lump of coal for weeks—the longest uninterrupted period since the Industrial Revolution. Sweden and Austria have shuttered their last coal-fired power plants, and France is about to follow.
It’s a similar story in the U.S., where gas and renewables are now cheaper; many of the coal-burning power plants that closed down as the economy collapsed this spring will never reopen. Indeed, the U.S. is on track to produce more electricity this year from renewable power than from coal for the first time on record.
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