" 'The single most important step now is to reduce coal consumption in China,' state the authors of the 2018 CREO, which has been published today on the sidelines of COP 24 in Katowice, Poland. Its key recommendations are simple: rapidly phase out coal while equally rapidly ramping up renewables; and introduce an efficient CO2 pricing system.

The goal of CREO is to set out in detail the development guidelines in the Chinese Government’s 13th five year plan. While previous plans have placed coal and oil at the forefront of the country’s energy strategy with renewables a mere “add-on”, this time it is different...

...While this is heartening, advocacy and research group, Coalswarm, which claims to have information on 13,000 existing and proposed coal plants worldwide via its Global Coal Plant Tracker, said in September that satellite imagery shows China is on track to add 259 GW of new coal-fired capacity to its grid. When fully commissioned, they will reportedly represent the equivalent of the total coal-fired capacity in the United States..."