From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

Despite the absurd Ambrose Evans-Pritchard’s repeated assertions over the years that China is cutting back on its reliance on coal, its coal output continues to hit record highs:

BEIJING, Jan 17 (Reuters) – China’s coal output reached a record high in 2023, data from the statistics bureau showed on Wednesday, amid an ongoing focus on energy security and a rise in demand after pandemic-related restrictions eased.
The world’s biggest coal producer mined 4.66 billion metric tons of the fuel last year, up 2.9% from a year earlier, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
For December, output reached 414.31 million tons, nearly flat with November’s 414 million tons and up 1.9% from the year-earlier level.
Daily output over the month was 13.36 million tons, slipping from November’s record high daily average of 13.8 million tons.
The country’s overall power generation, which is dominated by coal-fired plants, rose 8% year-on-year in December.
Analysts are predicting another modest coal production increase in 2024. The rate of growth has slowed over the past year, following an energy security push that drove a ramp-up of output beginning in 2021.
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Meanwhile the Wall Street Journal reports:

John Kerry has announced he’ll soon step down as President Biden’s climate envoy to join the 2024 re-election campaign, and maybe he’ll fare better in that job. If he doesn’t, Mr. Biden will be a one-termer.
For three years Mr. Kerry has been preoccupied with getting China to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. But excluding emissions from land use and forestry, China’s emissions rose 13% between 2015 and 2023, according to Climate Action Tracker estimates. U.S. emissions fell by some 9% over the same period.
You can’t say Mr. Kerry hasn’t tried to persuade China, including the use of green flattery. “China has produced more renewable energy, more solar and wind than any other country,” he said last year.
But China’s CO2 emissions have still soared as demand for electricity surged. In 2022 China accounted for 53% of the world’s coal generation, the Ember think tank says, and new permits for coal power plants in 2022 reached “the highest level since 2015.” That’s the year Beijing signed the Paris climate accord Mr. Kerry negotiated, promising to reduce its emissions starting in 2030.
Global Energy Monitor tracks worldwide coal-fired power plants of 30 megawatts or more and reports that as of July 2023 China had 305 coal-fired power stations announced or in the works. Together they’ll be able to generate some 391.7 gigawatts—about 70% of the world’s total coal-fired capacity currently announced, planned, permitted or under construction.
Or take coal mining. Reuters reported Wednesday that China’s coal output reached a record high in 2023 as it mined some 4.66 billion metric tons. Global Energy Monitor says China had plans in 2022 for 217 coal mines with a capacity of at least 900,000 metric tons, which would represent nearly 57% of all new coal mine additions in the works globally.
“It is unrealistic to completely phase out fossil fuel energy,” Chinese climate envoy Xie Zhenhua said in September. That follows President Xi Jinping’s declaration in 2022 that China’s carbon goals “can’t be detached from reality,” according the state-run People’s Daily.
Mr. Kerry’s problem has been a failure to recognize reality, which is typical of America’s climate lobby.

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