Climate: China increases daily coal production amid COP26

To increase daily production coal by one million tonnes went on China, against the backdrop of power problems, at a time when world leaders are negotiating hard on COP26 to reach an agreement to save the planet from “catastrophic” overheating.

With the global economy recovering, China is being hit by rising cost of raw materials, especially coal, which contributes 60% to the country’s energy mix, according to the APE-MPE. This situation forced many power plants to idle, despite high demand, forcing them to proceed with controlled power outages and skyrocketing production costs for businesses.

Climate: China, the country with the highest carbon dioxide emissions on the planet

To ease the pressure, authorities last week approved the reopening of coal mines. This move is recorded against the background of the promise of the Chinese president Xi Jinping that carbon dioxide emissions will start to decrease from his country before 2030. As of mid-October, daily coal production had exceeded 11.5 million tonnes, the strong central planning agency, the NDRC, said on Sunday. This is an increase of 1.1 million tons since the end of September.

Last month, the NDRC did not rule out intervening to reduce the price of coal. The service “will resort to all the necessary means (…) to return coal prices to a reasonable range,” he said, without specifying which measures he was considering.

At the same time, COP26 is holding talks to agree on more ambitious targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and global warming. The Chinese president is among the big absentees of this international appointment, to which he limited himself to simply sending a written statement.

It is his country that he mines so much the largest amount of carbon in the world, as well as the one that makes the largest emissions of carbon dioxide on the planet. However, China is also the country that has made the largest investments in clean energy in recent years.