The Dirty Secret Behind China's Rising Emission Levels: Pollution from State-Run Companies

'The world's top five polluters were responsible for 60% of global emissions in 2019,' reports Bloomberg — but China alone 'generated about the same amount of CO2 as the next four countries combined.' That's despite having a smaller population than those four countries combined — and even then, China's carbon output 'is still rising every year.'

But then Bloomberg notes that a big part of that problem may be dozens of state-owned companies. (Just one subsidiary of China's oil company Sinopec contributed more to global warming last year than Canada, while China Baowu, the world's top steelmaker, 'put more CO2 into the atmosphere last year than Pakistan,' and more than Austria and Belgium combined.)

The article concludes that any attempt to affect climate change will have to include China's state-run companies.

There are several factors in China's favor as it works to decarbonize. Solar and wind power are now often cheaper than fossil fuels. Electric vehicle and battery technology has matured, and China is a leader in both. Investment in green technologies such as hydrogen and carbon capture is at an all-time high, increasing the likelihood of deployment on a large scale....

China's biggest task is to green its electricity sector. That means shutting down thousands of coal-fired power plants and dramatically increasing clean energy. The nation already leads the world in renewables and just kicked off a massive 100 gigawatt project in the desert that will be bigger than all the wind and solar installed in India today. Known as the Big Five, China's top utilities — Huaneng Group Co., Huadian Corp., China Energy Investment Corp., State Power Investment Corp, and Datang Co. — are some of the world's largest polluters... In 2020, emissions from those operations alone added up to 960 million tons of COâ, more than double that of Russia's entire coal fleet.

The Big Five have pledged to reach peak emissions by 2025, but power demand is still increasing and coal has been promoted by government officials as a way to maintain energy security — especially as the world grapples with a shortage heading into winter. In the first half of this year, state-owned firms proposed 43 new coal-fired generators and construction began on 15GW of new coal-power capacity...

More than half of China's oil is used for transportation. So far the government has focused on shrinking those emissions by boosting a nationwide electric vehicle fleet that's already by far the biggest in the world. Planners want one in every five new cars sold to be a new EV by 2025, up from 5% now. Combined with ever-greener power generation, that's the best bet to reduce carbon while still moving people and goods around.

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