China accounted for two-thirds of new global coal plant capacity in 2023, report finds
Chinese flag on a background of coal.
Andrzej Rostek | Istock | Getty Images
The world added more coal power capacity last year than any year since 2016, with China driving most growth and future planned capacity, according to new research.
A report by Global Energy Monitor released Thursday found that net annual coal capacity grew by 48.4 GW, representing a 2% year-over-year increase. China alone accounted for about two-thirds of new coal plant capacity.
Other countries that brought new coal plants online included Indonesia, India, Vietnam, Japan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, South Korea, Greece and Zimbabwe.
Meanwhile, other countries such as the U.S. and U.K., slowed their rate of plant closures, with only about 22.1 GW retired last year — the smallest amount since 2011.
The authors of the GEM report recommended countries commit to shutting down coal plants at a faster pace, and for nations like China to adopt stricter controls on the development and usage of new plants.
“Otherwise we can forget about meeting our goals in the Paris agreement and reaping the benefits that a swift transition to clean energy will bring,” said Flora Champenois, a Global Energy Monitor analyst.
The Paris Climate agreement, signed by most global governments in 2015, set long-term goals for substantially reducing greenhouse gas emissions, caused by fossil fuels like coal. Coal power capacity, however, continues to steadily grow.
China has separately set a goal of reaching net-zero by 2060. President Xi Jinping said in 2021 that China would “strictly control coal consumption” up to 2025 and “phase down coal consumption” thereafter.
Yet, according to data from GEM, China started construction on 70.2 GW of new coal-power capacity last year, nearly 20 times as much as the rest of the world’s 3.7 GW. The country also only retired about 3.7 GW of its coal capacity in 2023.
Despite this, GEM said that with “immediate and determined action,” China can still meet its climate targets, including a goal set by the National Energy Administration in 2022 to retire 30 GW of coal power by 2025.
While low retirement rates contributed to coal’s blockbuster 2023, they are expected to accelerate in the U.S. and Europe, according to the report. That could offset some of the new capacity in China.
“Coal’s fortunes this year are an anomaly, as all signs point to reversing course from this accelerated expansion,” said Champenois.
Green energy addition, not transition?
While China has been a major coal user, accounting for more than half of consumption since 2011, it also helped expand global renewable energy capacity.
According to a report from the IEA, global renewable capacity additions increased by almost 50% to nearly 510 GW in 2023, the fastest growth rate in two decades.
“While the increases in renewable capacity in Europe, the United States and Brazil hit all-time highs, China’s acceleration was extraordinary,” the report said.
China commissioned as much solar capacity as the entire world did in 2022, while wind additions also soared 66% year-on-year, the IEA said.
However, experts have argued that China’s rapid economic growth, combined with the unreliable and intermittent nature of renewable energy sources has kept coal as a critical fallback option for the manufacturing focused economy.
China also ranks among the top five countries in terms of global coal reserves, but not other, less pollutant options like oil and natural gas, according to Rob Thummel, managing director at energy value chain investment company Tortoise.
“In China, coal is the largest domestic energy resource, so China continues to tap it in order to maintain energy security,” Thummel added.
The IEA estimates that all global coal generation needs to cease by 2040 to limit temperature rises within the key threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius.
According to GEM, meeting this 2040 phase-out goal would require an average of 126 GW in coal plant capacity to be shutdown annually for the next 17 years — equivalent to about two coal plants per week.
The required cuts are even deeper when accounting for the 578 GW of coal capacity under construction and in pre-construction, it added. As per GEM’s data, global coal capacity retirements still have not ever outpaced additions.
The EU’s climate change monitoring service said on Tuesday that the world experienced its warmest March on record, marking the tenth month in a row of new temperature records.
Environment
Trump says India has ‘largely stopped’ buying Russian oil, hints at visiting the country next year
Tesla will continue to extend its “one-time” FSD transfer scheme for at least another quarter, according to CEO Elon Musk at today’s Tesla shareholder meeting.
Tesla’s shareholder meeting is underway, and the big headline is that shareholders have enthusiastically voted against their own interests, diluting their own voting rights and handing more control of the company to the one person on Earth currently negatively affecting its business the most, CEO Elon Musk.
At the end of the meeting, Tesla hosted a Q&A session with shareholders in attendance, and one of them asked a question we’ve heard before: whether Tesla owners who purchased Tesla’s Full Self-Driving software, which still has not been delivered despite the first purchases happening almost a decade ago at this point, would be able to transfer the licenses to that undelivered software if they choose to buy a new Tesla vehicle.
So far, Tesla’s official policy has been that owners must purchase FSD with each new vehicle they buy, and can’t transfer the licenses between them. However, it did offer a “one-time” exception to that rule for a two month period in 2023. After that, Tesla owners would never be allowed to transfer their FSD license again.
Well, except for the next time that Tesla allowed it. Then the next time. Then Tesla saying no, it won’t come back. Then it came back.
And now, it’s still active, having started in April.
So, the question was perhaps a little out of date. The program hasn’t just been active for a single quarter this time, but for the last half-year. There is no listed end date on Tesla’s website.
Nevertheless, Musk answered the question thusly:
We have done that a few times. I guess we could extend it again. Alright, we’ll extend it for at least another quarter, and then play it by ear after that.
This in fact seems like a limitation as compared to the current status of the program, since it is active with no end date at the moment. Musk mentioning that it might only last for another quarter suggests it may end earlier than Tesla’s website language currently suggests.
However, it’s been apparent all along that this is more of a way to stoke demand, hoping to get current owners to purchase FSD on new cars, so Tesla can hold on to the up to $15,000 it charged those owners for undelivered software.
Musk has continually stated, for more than a decade, that FSD is right around the corner. Consumers were led to believe that their FSD systems would be active soon, with Musk often stating it would be released by “next year.” Musk said that owners would be able to make money by running a robotaxi service, and that their cars would be “appreciating assets” because of it – and now Tesla is making revenue like that, but you can’t.
The years have come and went, and many cars are either out of service, getting old and reaching time for replacement, or owners have been scared away by Musk’s disgusting and high-profile political actions which have included sympathizing with Nazis.
Those owners who have moved on will seemingly never get back their investment into the false promises that Musk advanced, but it only makes sense that owners who do want to retain their license and move it to a new vehicle should be able to do so. Tesla sold software, the software still isn’t working, and people should be able to enjoy that software for a reasonable amount of time if they bought it.
And yet, Tesla continues jerking its most loyal owners around, those who have held strong through the incredible brand damage Musk is doing, and suggesting that the right thing to do is only available as a limited opportunity – trying to nickel and dime the most loyal owners into buying new cars earlier than they would have planned, with the specter of having to re-purchase FSD if they didn’t do so.
That said, there are several current cases in court covering the issue of Tesla’s false advertising regarding FSD. So this issue might be solved for the company by outside forces eventually anyway. But it would have been better if Tesla just did the right thing to begin with – which it continually resists doing.
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk pushed back the dates for a demo of the next-gen Tesla Roadster, which he has said will be able to “fly” and suggested that it might not even be a car at all.
Tesla has been teasing the existence of a future, high-performance sportscar model for years now. Originally it was unveiled in 2017 for a 2020 release, but has been repeatedly pushed back, with another delay today.
Just last week, Musk said that a demo was coming at the end of the year of the Roadster, and that it would be perhaps the most exciting demo of any product ever. Musk also stated that the Roadster will have more tech than all James Bond vehicles combined
Today, he was asked a question at Tesla’s shareholder meeting about the status of that project (including whether the “James Bond” tech would make it to other Teslas – to which Musk responded “um, no”). Here’s the full answer regarding the product’s unveiling:
The product unveil of the Roadster 2, which will be very different than what we’ve shown previously, that demo event will be April 1 of next year. I have some deniability because I can say I was just kidding. But we are actually tentatively aiming for April 1, for what I think will be the most exciting, whether it works or not, demo of any product. And then I guess production is probably about 12-18 months after that. I think production is about a year or so after that.
When the questioner seemed to respond with disbelief with that answer (who ever thought that this car could ever possibly be delayed?!), Musk answered:
Well, I can’t give away secrets, but you won’t be disappointed.
Musk also said, during the meeting, that owners of Founders’ Series reservations, which represent a $250,000 loan given to Tesla for the last 8 years, would all be invited to the demo.
This new timeline represents yet another delay for the oft–delayed vehicle. The most recent official announcement suggested it would go into production this year, though Musk has waffled on that.
So, this official announcement puts us back to a timeline of April 1 for the reveal, which is a delay of at least 3 months from when it was supposed to occur as of last week, and production starting (not cars hitting the road) at least in April 2027, or at late as potentially October 2027. If we take the higher end of that range, then the Roadster is likely to only be available in 2028, 11 years after its first unveiling and 8 years after original estimates.
That said, it’s not much of a surprise that the Roadster would be delayed again. Just last week, we saw a new job listing for the Roadster, looking for a “concept development” engineer. That’s a fairly early part of the production process, and even makes it seem like a 2027 release could be optimistic.
In the interim, several other high-performance electric cars have appeared to give the “hard-core smack down” to gas-powered cars that Musk promised.
We’ve seen records set by the Xiaomi SU7 Ultra, built by a smartphone company from concept to production in just a couple years. We’ve seen the Rimac Nevera R get to 186mph faster than a Bugatti Chiron Super Sport. We’ve seen the Lotus Evija X, which set the third-fastest Nurburgring lap ever, only beaten by two one-off, track-only, purpose-built racecars (one of which is a hybrid, the other is electric). And we’ve seen the BYD Yangwang U9 Xtreme become the fastest production car ever at 308(!!!) miles per hour.
These are milestones that the Roadster might have been able to take a shot at, but time has passed it by, and others have stepped in in the Roadster’s absence.
But maybe that doesn’t matter, because Musk’s comments today suggest the Roadster might not be what we expected.
All along, it has been assumed that the Roadster will be something like the original version unveiled in 2017. But today, Musk said it will be “very different than what we’ve shown previously.” We don’t know what those differences entail – whether it just means the car will have new tech, or if it will be a completely different style of car.
We can imagine that anyone who gave Tesla a $250,000 loan for ten years might be bothered by ending up with a totally different bill of goods than they put their money down for, though, so we hope the plan is to at least keep it a sportscar.
There are some questions about whether these technologies Musk has mentioned will be on the car, though, and if they will be helpful for anything other than a demo if so.
Recently, Tesla patented a “fan car” system which would enhance grip. It’s actually a pretty cool patent, with interesting improvements over previous implementations of the same idea.
But it is decidedly not a “flying car.” In fact, being able to fly would not actually help sportscar performance, and would actually hurt it. Sportscars are typically looking to maximize downforce in the most efficient manner, in order to enhance grip, but to fly, one must create “upforce,” which isn’t a term anyone uses because it creates no actual performance benefit.
So, while it is highly expected that the Roadster demo might be able to “fly,” we hope that doesn’t make it to production on a sportscar, as that’s more of a parlor trick and would take performance benefits away from where they would be more useful – like having a fan car system, or directional jets to increase lateral acceleration, rather than useless upwards acceleration.
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