China Three Gorges Corporation (CTG), the largest clean energy producer in China, announced that it has generated a total of 3.3 trillion kWh of green electricity as of July 13, lighting up millions of households while helping to reduce China’s reliance on fossil fuels, equivalent of eliminating the need for one billion tons of standard coal. One billion tons of coal! What exactly does this mean?

If it is based on the total electricity consumption of 7,511 billion kWh by China’s population of 1.4 billion in 2020, one billion tons of standard coal can provide enough power for 620 million people for a year.

One billion tons of standard coal can also help generate about 20 trillion RMB worth of output, which is equal to around 20% of China’s total GDP, if based on China's GDP of 101.6 trillion RMB in 2020 and its consumption of 4.98 billion tons of standard coal.

Eliminating one billion tons of standard coal equals to reducing the emissions of harmful greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide by 2.8 billion, 620,000 and 640,000 tons respectively.

It also means the volume of carbon dioxide emitted from all vehicles in China for 3.5 years, (based on 780 million tons of direct carbon dioxide emitted by 281 million vehicles in China in 2019).