German economy minister Robert Habeck urges China to shift away from coal power
- China is expanding coal production for security reasons, Robert Habeck says after talks with Chinese officials in Beijing
China was expanding coal production for security reasons, Habeck said in Hangzhou on Sunday, citing Chinese officials he met the previous day in Beijing.
“China also imports large amounts of gas and oil and China has already seen what has happened in Europe and Germany in the last two years,” he added, referring to the energy crisis triggered by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
He also said cooperation with China must be strengthened.
“Without China it would not be possible to meet the climate targets globally”, Habeck said, adding that it should be possible to achieve the same level of security with fewer coal-fired power plants.
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China’s largest photothermal power facility drives development of new form of energy
Later, Habeck told students at Zhejiang University that the difficulty lay in integrating variable forms of energy such as wind and solar into a system built to work on more predictable fuels.
