Sonal Patel reports that the new administration has officially announced that the U.S. will exit the Paris Agreement, this leaves China, an economic powerhouse with a population of 1.3 billion people and a colossal demand for electricity, at the helm of the world efforts to mitigate climate change. But while China has been criticized for its historical reliance on coal (as has the U.S.), it remains the worlds largest producer, consumer, and importer of coal today. Over the past five years, the country has embarked on a remarkable transition to ramp up environmental measures, driven largely by a desperate effort to tamp down rampant air pollution in some of its major cities. Through considerable progress to implement ambitious programs to increase the energy efficiency of power generation and a rapid scale-up of renewables and nuclear power, the country has transformed its power industry into one of the cleanest in the world at a fast pace.
Today, the Chinese new, highly efficient coal fleet is equipped with domestically developed and imported technologies that seek to meet some of the strictest emission limits for sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen oxides (NOx), particulate matter (PM), and mercury, and which make U.S. much smaller but highly beleaguered coal fleet look like a relic from the past. All of the above is a stopgap until nuclear power supersedes the burning of coal in China and the U.S. to produce electricity cheaply and safely. Read on about the coal industry is trying to stay relevant.
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