Fighting climate change will hardly succeed without China's support.

Because the People's Republic is both the largest energy producer and the largest energy consumer in the world.

Around 60 percent of China's electricity is currently generated by coal-fired power plants.

An event at the World Economic Forum in Davos wanted to find out how China is doing in moving away from fossil fuels.

Gerald Braunberger

Editor.

  • Follow I follow

China aims to move away from carbon dioxide by 2060;

fossil fuel use is expected to peak in 2030, said Zhigang Zhang, president of dominant power utility State Grid Corporation of China.

In recent years, the growth in renewable energies, and here above all in wind and solar power, has been 13.1 percent per year.

Among other things, large investments flowed into the networks, with which large distances would also have to be covered.

"Renewable energy is mainly produced in the west of the country, but it is mainly needed in the east," explained Jun Ni, Chief Manufacturing Officer of Contemporary Amperex Technology.

Ambitious plans

China's energy transformation plans are very ambitious, noted Daniel Yergin, who now works for the rating agency and has advised four American presidents on energy issues in a past life.

But it is not only for China that the intended transformation is very complicated: "Life is not like a PowerPoint presentation".

In recent months, the topic of energy security has gained in importance;

In addition, as the example of the French yellow vests shows, governments must take people with them.

Elisabeth Gaines, CEO of the Australian company Fortescue Mining, has high hopes for technical progress.

Green hydrogen can help to make heavy transport more environmentally friendly.

Gaines, who sells 90 percent of her company's production to China, thinks it's possible that the Chinese steel industry could be carbon neutral using green hydrogen as early as 2040.

Gaines believes that moral appeals to companies to open up more to the climate issue are unnecessary: ​​"You only have to look at the price of oil to see that climate neutrality is a smart thing from a company's point of view." The group agreed about the need for more efficient use of energy.

"This topic still gets too little attention," said Yergin.