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The EU’s ambassador to China has urged Beijing to stop building coal-fired power plants, saying that its rapid approval of new projects was increasingly at odds with its green ambitions.
Speaking at an EU-hosted event in Beijing, Jorge Toledo said the war in Ukraine had underlined the need for energy security, but that the EU had managed to navigate the issue without reverting to fossil fuels.
Toledo lamented the increase in China’s in coal approvals in the second half of last year. Beijing approved 66.7GW of new coal-fired power capacity in 2024, the majority in the final months of the year. One gigawatt is the equivalent of a large coal power plant.
There was also strong momentum in building new coal power. A report published last month by the Global Energy Monitor and the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air said China accounted for 93% of global construction starts for coal power in 2024. The report also noted that long-term power purchase agreements, which set minimum quotas for coal power bought by local governments, were slowing the integration of renewable energy into the power grid.
Toledo said such trends were unnecessary and that China could quit coal while safeguarding its energy security. “Commentators outside China are increasingly puzzled at the continued containment of domestic renewable generation in future stranded coal assets,” he said.
Experts say China’s rapid development of renewable energy while still building new coal-fired power plants is pitting clean and dirty energy against each other in the country’s economy.
China is the global leader in renewable energy, and solar and wind installations soared to record levels last year. Solar capacity increased by 45% to 887GW and wind capacity by 18% to 521GW.
China has pledged to peak emissions by 2030 and many experts predict it will reach that target ahead of schedule.
Zhang Xiaoye, a scholar from the Chinese Academy of Engineering and co-chair of one of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s working groups, said on Wednesday that the total amount of electricity produced by renewable energy in China last year was equal to the total amount of electricity produced in the US. He stressed the need for the EU and China to cooperate to achieve “blue skies and clean water”.
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But there is increasing concern, and sensitivity, about China’s commitment to coal, which Beijing sees as an economic and energy security bulwark. Campaigners say in private that phasing out coal is difficult to talk about publicly.
Official announcements make it clear that China is unwilling to fully decarbonise in the near future. A government report published on Wednesday for the first day of China’s annual parliamentary session said the country would “continue to increase coal production and supply capacity, and consolidate the basic supporting role of coal”.
