HANGZHOU: German Economy Minister Robert Habeck said on Sunday that China was indispensable to achieving global climate goals and must find a safe alternative to coal, which accounted for nearly 60 percent of China’s electricity supply in 2023. Officials told Habeck that China was expanding coal production for security reasons, the minister told reporters in the southern city of Hangzhou, the day after meeting Chinese officials 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 said cooperation with China must be strengthened, adding: “Without China it would not be possible to meet the climate targets globally”.

“You don’t have to teach them that CO2 emissions are bad for the climate. They’ve got that,” Habeck said, adding that it should be possible to achieve the same level of security with fewer coal-fired power plants.

Later, Habeck told students at the university of Zhejiang 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, adding: “That is basically my work.” He said that doubling capacities was “the old way” of doing it, but not the most efficient. China is expanding its coal production but also installed almost 350 gigawatts (GW) of new renewable energy capacity in 2023, more than half the global total.

Habeck said extension of the power grid and use of batteries to store energy could reduce the number of traditionally fuelled power plants needed to meet China’s needs, adding that economic growth and climate action were not opposites. “Transforming the economy to a climate-neutral one is not only good for the climate but creates new opportunities for wealth and growth,” Habeck said.

Habeck had said on Saturday that the door of the European Union is open for discussions regarding EU tariffs on Chinese exports. “What I suggested to my Chinese partners today is that the doors are open for discussions and I hope that this message was heard,” he said in his first statement in Shanghai, after meetings with Chinese officials in the morning in Beijing.

Habeck’s visit is the first by a senior European official since Brussels proposed hefty duties on imports of Chinese-made electric vehicles (EVs) to combat what the EU considers excessive subsidies. Habeck said in Shanghai that until November, there is time for a dialogue between the EU and China on tariff issues, and that he believes in open markets but that markets require a level playing field.

The EU provisional duties are set to apply by July 4, with the investigation set to continue until Nov 2, when definitive duties, typically for five years, could be imposed. “This opens a phase where negotiations are possible, discussions are important and dialogue is needed,” Habeck said. — Reuters