China’s Coal Emissions Are a Mystery in Fog of Conflicting Data
- Discrepancy in carbon equivalent to all of Spain’s emissions
- Faster growth doesn’t have to mean missing climate goals
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Whether or not the world’s biggest polluter increased carbon emissions last year is up for debate after releases of conflicting Chinese data, according to a leading climate researcher.
The discrepancy lies in the difference between official statistics indicating strong growth in coal use, and industrial data showing weak output in all of the major coal-burning sectors, said Lauri Myllyvirta, an analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. The difference means that China’s emissions could have increased by 1.3% at one extreme, or fallen by 1% at the other, Myllyvirta wrote in a report published in Carbon Brief.