China-Revolutionary Green Transformation

The Peoples Republic of China's "miracle" or "Golden Era" as they call it, required tremendous amounts of new energy systems. Pulling hundreds of millions of people out of poverty took countless tons of coal and other fossil fuels. Because China had lots of coal and it is relatively easy to extract, it was used as the prime energy driver for the nation's rapid growth. According to an analysis by Climatescope, from 2008 to 2013, China's annual energy consumption rose 51 percent, with almost 70 percent of electricity coming from the burning of dirty coal. Largely because of all its coal use, China has become the world's biggest carbon polluter, surpassing the US (Climatescope, 2014).