This week, China’s Energy Administration issued a directive to cancel planning and construction on 85 coal plants in the country. An additional 18 were ordered to be canceled late last year. The 103 plants represent an astounding 120GW of capacity that would have come online for the country in the coming years. In an article published this week, the IEA wrote that China’s existing coal-powered plants represent almost 50 percent of the world’s coal electricity-related emissions, and the country’s plants are some of the youngest in the world—meaning they could keep running for several more decades before being retired. The IEA suggested that China had a “significant opportunity” to retrofit up to 310GW of its existing capacity with Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology to reduce the amount of CO2 that’s being vented into the air.
Chinese government has ordered 103 planned coal plants to be canceled
