China stainless steel mogul fights to avoid a second collapse
A debt crisis is threatening the future of one of the world’s top stainless steel producers, Jiangsu Delong Nickel Industry.
Governments including the UK and Canada have signed an open letter calling for the G20 to act on its commitment to end the construction of unabated coal plants as China works to add almost 100 gigawatts of new capacity powered by the polluting fuel.
The letter, organized by the Powering Past Coal Alliance, refers to commitments made in the Glasgow Climate Pact that include ending the construction of new unabated coal power plants globally to help limit global warming to 1.5C (2.7F). Negotiations are ongoing among G20 members on those proposals.
The G20 energy ministers meeting in India on July 22 ended without a consensus on the phase-down of fossil fuels. While some countries agreed on the need to reduce unabated use of oil and gas, others argued that concerns over emissions could be addressed by carbon removal technologies, according to the meeting’s outcome document.
Countries such as Canada and the United Kingdom have been dramatically scaling back their coal plants and pivoting to renewable energy. China also is adding significant amounts of solar and wind, but still is mining record amounts of coal and building new generators in order to avoid the shortages that have plagued its electricity system in recent years.
“Coal power is the largest single source of emissions,” said Julia Skorupska, head of secretariat for the Powering Past Coal Alliance. “The IEA is clear that to limit warming to 1.5 C, no new unabated coal power plants can be built, and coal must be phased out by 2030 in the OECD and 2040 elsewhere.”
China’s new coal plants accounted for more than half of global additions last year, causing a net increase in the global coal fleet of 19.5 GW, according to a report from the Global Energy Monitor and others. The remaining additions were commissioned predominantly across South and Southeast Asia, including India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.
(By Ellie Harmsworth and Eamon Akil Farhat)
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