Coal: boom in Chinese purchases in Australia. A “Transition” to the Pekingese
Chinese imports of coal from Australia jumped 75% in April, with Beijing rediscovering a taste for high-quality thermal coal, Bloomberg reported, citing data from China's customs.
China halted imports of Australian coal three years ago due to a diplomatic rift between the two countries. Since then, China has been importing more from other sources, such as Russia, and from its own supplies of coal, but these are of lower quality.
In April, Australian coal imports accounted for a tenth of the total, which may not be much, but it was double the portion it accounted for in the previous month, the Bloomberg report noted.
Partly due to the suspension of Australian coal imports and partly due to rising energy demand, China's coal production hit a record high last year. At 4.496 billion tonnes, the 2022 total is up 9% from 2021.
Although China is the most ambitious investor and developer of wind and solar energy to replace fossil fuels, coal continues to account for a large share of its energy production, accounting for 57% of the total in 2020.
“We don't want to be like Europe and transform ourselves at the cost of energy security. Now they are claiming to take one step back to take two steps forward later,” Li Zheng, a professor of climate change and energy at Tsinghua University, said in November last year.
China's coal generation capacity expansion could reach 270 GW by 2025 , more than the total coal generation capacity of the United States, according to estimates. So Beijing is carrying out an energy transition based on security and the use of fossil fuels.
At present, China is building or preparing to start building approximately 366 GW of new coal-fired capacity. This represents about 68% of the new global capacity planned last year.
Thanks to our Telegram channel you can stay updated on the publication of new articles from Economic Scenarios.
The article Carbone: boom in Chinese purchases in Australia. A Pekingese “Transition” comes from Scenari Economici .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/carbone-boom-degli-acquisti-cinesi-in-asutralia-una-transizione-alla-pechinese/ on Tue, 23 May 2023 13:00:58 +0000.