Burning coal produces twice as much CO₂ as fossil gas for the same amount of energy produced. So if China replaced all its coal use with fossil gas, global CO₂ emissions would drop by 10%.
@davidho that may be so, but it would still be dependent on fossil fuels after spending an earth shattering sum to convert coal power stations to gas. If you had the money to spend would it be the best way to spend it, if reducing emissions was the goal?
Not pricing carbon emissions to keep the cost to those producing them in line with their actual costs makes this analysis much harder than it needs to be.
Globally, we do so much of the opposite by subsidizing carbon emissions that we've all ended up in the middle of a game where the people who produce or pay for things that produce the most carbon emissions get outsized benefits. And many people very much have become accustomed to those benefits.
