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China's post-coal growth

Nature Geoscience volume 9, pages 564–566 (2016)Cite this article

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Slowing GDP growth, a structural shift away from heavy industry, and more proactive policies on air pollution and clean energy have caused China's coal use to peak. It seems that economic growth has decoupled from growth in coal consumption.

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Figure 1

© ALEX SEGRE / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

Figure 2: China's economy, primary energy and coal consumption (setting 1980 values as 100), and their respective growth rates.
Figure 3: Historical trajectories of economic development and coal consumption for the United Kingdom, the United States and China (data normalized for comparison; note differences in values on both axes).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Public Policy and Management, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

    Ye Qi & Tong Wu

  2. Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

    Ye Qi & Jiaqi Lu

  3. Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street, London, WC2A 2AE, UK

    Nicholas Stern & Fergus Green

  4. ecoSERVICES Group, School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, 85287, Arizona, USA

    Tong Wu

Authors
  1. Ye Qi
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  2. Nicholas Stern
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  3. Tong Wu
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  4. Jiaqi Lu
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  5. Fergus Green
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Correspondence to Tong Wu.

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Qi, Y., Stern, N., Wu, T. et al. China's post-coal growth. Nature Geosci 9, 564–566 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2777

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