China is burning far more coal than previously declared

Environment · Andrea Barolini · 2015-11-04

China has revised its coal consumption figures upward. CO2 emissions are higher by 1 billion tonnes per year – as much as Germany produces.

China, the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases, has significantly underestimated its use of coal as an energy source on its own territory. The revelation comes from an investigation by the New York Times, which cites data published by the Beijing government itself in a statistical yearbook.

According to what the Asian economic giant has acknowledged, the amount of coal burned every year since 2000 has been considerably higher than previously estimated: at least 17 per cent more, on average. Translating that figure into terms of increased harmful emissions, this means China has produced roughly one billion tonnes more CO2 per year. "It's a massive revision, even for a country as enormous as this one," the American newspaper commented. To put this into perspective, the miscalculation is roughly equivalent to what Germany – the largest economy in Europe – emits every year.

Un lavoratore cinese all'interno dell'acciaieria Chongqing Steel Company. Proprio le emissioni industrie pesanti come questa sono state sottostimate negli anni scorsi dal governo cinese ©China Photos/Getty Images — A Chinese worker inside the Chongqing Steel Company steelworks. It is precisely the emissions from heavy industries such as this one that the Chinese government has underestimated in recent years ©China Photos/Getty Images

The revision of the statistics was made necessary by the "economic census" carried out by the Chinese government in 2013, which revealed a number of gaps in data collection. In particular, according to Ayaka Jones, an analyst at the American Energy Information Administration, what was recalculated was the contribution of heavy industry, above all in relation to cement plants and steelworks. As a result, for 2012 alone, approximately 600 million tonnes of coal burned had to be added to the total (equivalent to around 70 per cent of the coal used in the United States in an entire year).

Numerose città cinesi sono alle prese ciclicamente con gravi problemi di inquinamento. Secondo un esperto ascoltato dal New York Times, i calcoli sbagliati sull'uso di carbone potrebbero spiegare almeno in parte il fenomeno ©Kevin Frayer/Getty Images — Many Chinese cities are cyclically grappling with serious pollution problems. According to an expert interviewed by the New York Times, the miscalculations on coal use could at least partly explain the phenomenon ©Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

The New York Times adds that the announcement could further complicate the negotiations to be held at the upcoming world climate conference, Cop 21. Ahead of the event, the Beijing government has not pledged a reduction in polluting emissions, but rather a "peak", which is expected to be reached by 2030.

According to Yang Fuquiang, a former Chinese official specialising in the energy sector, reducing his country's dependence on coal now appears "more complicated than expected. We have discovered that the system uses far more coal than we had imagined up to now. This helps to explain why air quality in China is so poor." Furthermore, according to Lin Boqiang of China's Xiamen University, "now international agencies will also have to revise their analyses, because many of them were based on the old data."