China Climate Envoy Calls Transition “Irreversible”

The energy transition is irreversible and will continue despite the United States’ pullout from the Paris Agreement because everyone else remains committed to it, China’s special envoy for climate change said at an event as quoted by Bloomberg this week.

“The global energy transition is irreversible,” Liu Zhenmin said during a panel discussion at the Boao Forum. “No one country can stop this process, because the process of global energy transition is driven by the political will of member nations, market forces and technology.”

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Even so, the official acknowledged that the U.S. pivot was “the most challenging moment” for international climate negotiations since their start in 1990, Bloomberg reported. It would indeed be challenging to continue without the United States, especially financially. Wealthy countries had committed $300 billion annually in transition support for poorer nations and now they would be expected, per Liu, to cough up the money without the U.S.

China has been at the forefront of the energy transition in terms of building wind and solar generation capacity but it has remained the world’s biggest emitter of carbon dioxide and the most enthusiastic builder of coal power plants as well. Recently, the buildout of wind and solar began to turn problematic, however, with overcapacity in solar especially acute, plunging electicity prices below zero in liberalized regional markets, compromising the profitability of developers and operators. The situation casts a shadow over future expansion plans, very much as it did in Europe.

This is bad news for the “irreversibility” of the transition because even the current breakneck pace of wind and solar additions is not fast enough, according to climate change forecasters. Indeed, the AP cited the International Renewable Energy Agency as saying this week that the goal of tripling wind and solar capacity between 2023 and 2030 necessitates a much faster pace of growth.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

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