From renewables to electric cars, Beijing makes push for global green dominance

Recent energy shortages have, however, slowed down efforts to move away from coal

A pledge to “advance the energy revolution” at China’s ongoing Communist Party Congress (CPC) has underlined Beijing’s growing global ambitions to position itself as a dominant player in emerging renewable industries.

“China is now the world’s largest producer and consumer of renewable energy and new energy vehicles,” Vice Minister for Environment Zhai Qing told reporters on October 22, 2022 on the sidelines of the Congress.

At the opening on Sunday where Party General Secretary and President Xi Jinping outlined China’s plans for the next five years, Mr. Xi said the country “will thoroughly advance the energy revolution”.

Mr. Xi earlier announced that China would reach carbon neutrality in 2060 while emissions would peak by 2030. He said initiatives would be advanced to reach peak emissions “in a well-planned and phased way in line with the principle of building the new before discarding the old” and with “better control over the amount and intensity of energy consumption, particularly of fossil fuels”.

The move away from coal has, however, taken a recent hit on account of energy shortages in China, although experts expect the broad longer-term trend to continue. Mr. Zhai said installed capacity of wind, solar, water and biomass also ranked first in the world, as did the size of the carbon trading market. Since 2005, he noted, proportion of coal in energy consumption had dropped from 72.4% in 2005 to 56% last year, when the proportion of non-fossil fuel energy consumption reached 16.6%.

The rapid growth of China’s electric vehicle market, now the world’s biggest, has perhaps been the clearest indicator of its green ambitions, with domestic brands now occupying four of the top five positions in sales and eyeing global markets. The only foreign brand in the top five in domestic sales is Tesla, while home-grown BYD is the biggest.

Last year, according to the International Energy Agency, electric car sales in China tripled to 3.3 million, accounting for half the global total, a rise that the agency attributed to the median price of an electric car in China being only 10% more than that of conventional offerings compared with 45% to 50% in other markets, mostly due to state policy support.