The global battle against climate change has passed a historic turning point with China’s huge coal burning finally having peaked, according to senior economists.

    They say the moment may well be a significant milestone in the course of the Anthropocene, the current era in which human activity dominates the world’s environment.

    The peaking of China’s coal use is very significant, Schellnhuber said: “It is a turning point and very good news.” But he argues that another, steeper, downturn in coal burning will be needed in future to stabilise the global climate.

    “If we take the 2C target seriously, coal really has to disappear,” he said. “I think coal will have to be phased out completely in all countries of the world by about 2035.” Schellnhuber, one of the world’s most influential climate scientists, said in 2015 that an “induced implosion” of the fossil fuel industry was required to beat climate change.

    The latest official government statistics from China support the idea that its coal use peaked in 2014. Coal production fell 9.7% in the first half of 2016 compared to 2015, which itself saw a 5.8% decline on 2014, and coal burning fell 3.7% in 2015. China’s total emissions have been near flat in recent years.

    Stern said there are a series of deep and long-term transformations taking place in China, which means the nation’s falling coal use is now a permanent trend. One is the falling rate of economic growth from 9-10% to about 6% and the transformation of the Chinese economy away from heavy industry and towards more hi-tech and service sectors, which are much less dependent on energy.

    There is also a serious focus on improving energy efficiency, he said, to avoid dependency on imported fuels.

    Another critical factor is a major policy shift from the Chinese government to tackle the pollution of air and water that blights many citizens. Stern said China’s emergence as a global power in recent decades was important too, as well as its self-interest in avoiding global warming.

   “It is partly the sense of responsibility that China really does feel” as a global power, he said. “But it is also climate change itself. Water has dominated Chinese thinking for millennia and its major rivers come off the Himalayas. What happens to the Himalayas and its ice caps is absolutely crucial to China, and of course climate change is mostly a water phenomenon.”

    As coal declines, clean electricity in China is increasing rapidly with solar power up 28% in the first half of 2016, nuclear up 25% and wind and hydropower both up 13%. But challenges remain, including connecting new windfarms to the grid. China’s Renewable Energy Industries Association says that 15% of the wind power produced in the country in 2015 was wasted. Read More