China has doubled down on refusing to stick to its climate pledges by announcing Monday it will be expanding operations of coal-fired power plants across the country.In a Chinese State Council meeting chaired by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, China reaffirmed its position to increase its use of coal powered energy to “safeguard power usage in both production and daily life”, the official Chinese state press agency Xinhua reports.
China is the world’s largest polluter emitting an estimated 27 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gases in 2019, with the next largest emitter America only releasing 11 per cent of the world’s pollution – less than 50 per cent of China’s total emissions.
Despite initially signing up to the U.N.’s Paris Climate Agreement in 2016 which aims to keep global temperature rises under 2 °C and reaffirming this commitment to reduce its emissions at eco-conference COP 26 in a joint declaration with the United States in 2021, over the course of the pandemic, China has increased coal output – hitting a ten-year-high of using over four billion metric tons of coal in 2021.
