Ed Miliband may be fretting about the viability of net zero, but Xi Jinping seems to have no such reservations.
To satisfy skyrocketing demand for electricity, the Chinese leader is now pushing forward plans to ramp up coal consumption by an additional 75 million tonnes annually. This move is set to further entrench China’s status as the largest emitter of greenhouse gases, already responsible for roughly 15 billion tonnes of carbon each year—nearly one-quarter of global emissions.
In stark contrast, Britain is a minor player in terms of climate impact, producing around 400 million tonnes annually. This figure has dropped from 817 million tonnes in 1990, with Energy Secretary Ed Miliband aiming to reduce emissions further to just 155 million tonnes by 2035.
In a Commons speech last year, Miliband emphasized that the UK’s ambitious green energy plans signal its return to climate leadership, both domestically and internationally.
Meanwhile, China is not following the same path. Instead, Beijing has accelerated its coal consumption strategy, blatantly disregarding its 2021 commitment to “strictly control” the use of this particularly polluting fossil fuel.
Commodity reporting agency Argus reported that in 2024, China’s coal consumption reached a record 4.9 billion tonnes—a roughly 6% increase—and accounted for 56% of the world’s total.
This surge means that China burned over 300 million tonnes more coal in 2024 alone, resulting in an additional 800 million tonnes of carbon emissions.
That one-year jump in emissions is nearly twice the 400 million tonnes of CO₂ that Britain has managed to remove from its energy system since 1990—a feat often celebrated by Sir Keir Starmer and Ed Miliband.
Joseph Clarke, writing for Argus’s Coal Daily International newsletter, noted:
“China consumes, by a long way, the most coal in the global market and has been growing for most of the last 20 years. The majority of this consumption is domestically produced coal, but this is still not enough to satiate Chinese demand. It means China is also the biggest importer of coal in the seaborne market, where it imported 359 million tonnes of seaborne thermal coal in 2024, a record high for any country.”
