President Xi Jinping announced to the United Nations General Assembly in September last year that his country would end overseas coal projects as part of its contribution to the global effort to cut climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions.
The projects identified by CREA, which have all been shelved or cancelled since that announcement, had already received either financial backing, equipment, or procurement and construction support from Chinese firms.
The cancellations represent a big dent in global energy production from coal. As a point of comparison, Germany, which is the largest coal-fired energy producer in Europe, had about 40GW of generation capacity in total at 84 plants across the country in 2019.
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a non-profit attempting to reduce the world’s reliance on fossil fuels, said that China has the potential to stop an additional 37GW of overseas coal projects (32 plants) that are currently in the pre...