Climate benefits

Consequences beyond the borders

The country’s legacy investments primarily in coal as a source of energy combined with the rapidly growing energy demand pose a huge environmental challenge with negative consequences reaching far beyond China’s own borders. In addition to air pollution, which causes breathing difficulties for many of China’s residents, coal combustion leads to extensive carbon dioxide emissions, climate change and eventually environmental destruction globally.

Producing one kilowatt hour of electricity in China generates emissions of about 531 grams of CO2 equivalents, the corresponding figure in the Nordic countries is 90 grams. Producing electricity with solar panels also entails emissions from a life cycle perspective of approximately 41 grams per kilowatt hour produced. This means that the savings in climate emissions from solar energy in China will be more than 10 times as large in China compared with the Nordic countries (490 grams compared with 49 grams).

Savings