Guest essay by Eric Worrall
China has unveiled a crash plan to increase coal capacity and usage by 20% over the next 3 years.
China Doubles Down on Coal Despite Climate Pledge
Coal would still make up more than half of the country’s energy mix by 2020, according to latest plan.
BEIJING—China’s government said it would raise coal power capacity by as much as 20% by 2020, ensuring a continuing strong role for the commodity in the country’s energy sector despite a pledge to bring down pollution levels.
In a new five-year plan for electricity released Monday, the National Energy Administration said it would raise coal-fired power capacity from around 900 gigawatts last year to as high as 1,100 gigawatts by 2020. The roughly 200-gigawatt increase alone is more than the total power capacity of Canada.
By comparison, the agency said it would increase non-fossil fuel sources from about 12% to 15% of the country’s energy mix over the same period. Coal would still make up about 55% of the electricity mix by 2020, down from around two-thirds in recent years.
“This is indeed a disappointing target,” said Lauri Myllyvirta, a campaigner at the environmental group Greenpeace. “Given that there is already severe overcapacity and demand for coal-fired power is going down, we would have expected a cap on coal power capacity much closer to the current capacity level.”
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Read more: http://www.wsj.com/articles/china-doubles-down-on-coal-despite-climate-pledge-1478520063
As WUWT previously reported, China may be planning to export coal generated electricity to Europe, via ultra high voltage power lines, to arbitrage permanent structural price differences between restrictive European Paris Agreement pledges, and the Chinese commitment to do whatever they want.
The only real threat to this audacious Chinese plan to milk the West, is the possibility President Trump will tear up the Paris Climate Agreement.
Whatever China’s intentions, you have to admire their hilarious sense of timing – the new Chinese coal plan was announced on the first day of the Marrakesh COP22 Climate Conference.
Message to the cliamte committed regarding their agreements and plans to reduce CO2:
hahahahahahahahhahahahahaha
You pathetic miserable foolish kooks.
By burning coal China is generating cheap power — and cheap power is what the world needs to bring its poorest peoples out of poverty. Paeans to cheap power have adorned this site since its founding. Let us applaud that China is committed to cheap energy growth.
Of course they are still commie bastarrds and not to be trusted — but their energy policy seems much better than what we got in America.
Eugene WR Gallun
Well said… and in addition it should be remembered that with an official GDP of 7+% (unofficially 6 – 6.5%) the increase in coal is significantly below the growth in energy consumption that will power those rates of growth. So a 20% increase is actually, from a per capita or GDP standpoint, a 10% reduction.
“Let us applaud that China is committed to cheap energy growth.”
Should we also applaud them for no longer using mass starvation as a political tool? China has a long history of cheap slave labor coal.
There are many examples of Asian prosperity where cheap coal and slave labor is not a factor. Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, and Japan come to mind.
After 50 years the commie rat bastards figured out that free enterprise zones would would make money by rounding up the rural poor and putting them in high rises to work factories. This increased demand for coal until the slave labor system could not keep up. Buying coal from the Aussies and Yanks in Kentucky ans West Virginia had to be a shock.
God bless those commie rat bastards for getting with the times even if it was 50 years late. Just make sure your church does not get too big or commie rat bastards hear you profess Christianity.
Clean air, safe drinking water, and affordable power is not an engineering problem. Good government is good for people and the environment.
Retired Kip P —
You are correct. The proper descriptive phrasing is “commie rat bastards”. I left out the “rat”.
Eugene WR Gallun
This seems an entirely predictable development. The US coal industry has been “gutted” and Mr. Peabody’s coal mines have all been sold to Soros for the anticipated pennies on the dollar. Now the divestiture is complete, no doubt those assets will be sold or operated at a tidy profit by others. President Obama’s “war on coal” served its purpose perfectly.
If that isn’t treason against US national interests, I can’t really imagine what would be.
“… sold to Soros …”
Have you given thought to the possibility that Soros sold the coal shares “short” and then when they tanked he covered the short position? Likely he has already made millions on this, and the rest (“sold or operated at a tidy profit “) is not of great interest to him.
John; yes, absolutely. In fact it would be my guess he raised the capital to buy Peabody (if he did so) exactly that way.
It’s a strategy very similar to the one Soros used to “break the Bank of England” back in the 70’s.
Greenbats expected China to cap? Don’t they know they are mere useful idiots?
and yet the Green’s will continue to hold up China as an example of a Green friendly country because they are building so much wind and solar.
They are going to expand their energy production… but not all with coal, so yes, they are going green…
I wonder why exports of coal from Australia are growing?
And looking to other sources like Africa?
I wonder why their actual ‘green’ power output is less than 10%? https://www.statista.com/statistics/265612/primary-energy-consumption-in-china-by-fuel-type-in-oil-equivalent/
Griff,
When you are lying, which is frequent, you are annoying. When you are sincere, you are pathetic.
Growing by 20% is not an increase in the us of coal?
The Chinese are absolutely ecstatic that Western countries are allowing the CAGW scam to destroy their manufacturing capacity by switching to expensive and uncompetitive alternative energies, and implementing draconian CO2 sequestration and pollution standards that have no merit.
These irrational policies make domestic production unprofitable and uncompetitive, which forces foreign manufactures to move their operations to China.
While Western countries waste limited resources on expensive wind and solar, China will eventually replace their coal-fired plants with Thorium reactors, which will cause a second tidal wave of foreign manufacturing to flood into China.
Leftists have destroyed Western economies and their destruction continues at an increasing pace.
This is disappointing – but it is not an increase on previous plans: China will need to cut about 150 gigawatts of coal-fired power from projects that are either approved for construction or already under construction to maintain the 1,100-gigawatt limit (and it is an absolute upper limit).
The above article omits to mention non-fossil power will increase 48 percent to about 770 gigawatts over the five-year period through 2020 as total capacity expands by 31 percent to 2,000 gigawatts. (China’s coal power generation capacity will grow as much as 19 percent over the next five years)
http://energy.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/power/china-issues-5-year-plan-to-reduce-greenhouse-gas-emission/55266217
“In the new plan, the government will restrict other greenhouse gas emissions and start a carbon trading market in the next five years to help meet the commitment to peaking carbon dioxide emission around 2030, according to the 13th Five-Year work plan for greenhouse gas emission control by the cabinet.
Total energy consumption will be kept within five billion tonnes of standard coal by the end of 2020, with more use of non-fossil fuels including hydropower, nuclear power, wind power and solar power, whose installed capacity would reach 340 million, 58 million, 200 million and 100 million kilowatts respectively, the cabinet decision said.
Total coal consumption will be kept at about 4.2 billion tonnes, while smoggy regions should aim for negative coal use growth after 2017.
The share of natural gas consumption in total energy consumption should be lifted to about 10 per cent by 2020, it said.”
Thanks for an informed comment Griff. You are evolving into an informed reader.
Griff has no idea what China is doing. Now why would I say summat like that? I will tell you. I WAS in Africa in 2006, in a “western” hotel and I got chatting to a bunch of westerners, geologists mostly in fact, a subject I am keenly interested and studied in. And *ALL* Of them were there, for the Chinese, looking for resources. Anything!
Local Ethiopians, apart from the corrupt, “connected”, elites, would not receive any benefit from resource extraction.
You may ask for links, but it is difficult getting any “official” information from the corrupt Ethiopian govnt. What did you expect?
Add to this. Ethiopia is building the largest hydro power dammed system in Africa. Dwarfs Aswan. Now do some google maps (In my day we used paper maps) and look at the down-stream countries. Are they worried? You bet!
You are giving him too much credit
Most people assume that anyone who says what they want to hear, must be intelligent.
Meanwhile….
http://www.pv-tech.org/news/breaking-china-slashes-2020-solar-target-by-20
“This is disappointing ”
No its not, not in the least bit disappointing. 🙂
India and China alone plan to build 1617 new coal power plants by 2030. Indonesia intends building 47.
Between 50 and 86 new coal plants are planned for Turkey in the next few years.
Japan and South Korea are pressing ahead with plans to open at least 60 new coal-fired power plants over the next 10 years.
New coal-fired plants have been proposed in
Germany, France, Italy, Slovakia, and the UK, Cambodia, Laos, Oman, Sri Lanka, Uzbekistan, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Morocco, Namibia, Senegal,
So .. DON’T PANIC, Griff..
There will be PLENTY of INCREASED CO2 emissions around the globe for many, many years to come.
PLENTY to keep the world’s food supply GROWING.
And guess what.. there is NOTHING the anti-CO2, anti-life, anti-progress AGW cultists can do about it. 🙂 🙂
Essentially ‘when your enemy/competitor is destroying himself just stand back and watch’ this green thing has been like that from the beginning. Asians and Africans beleive that the West has lost it’s collective mind. They are right.
In China, Coal is a Green Investment:
http://www.scmp.com/business/money/investment-products/article/2018962/what-green-green-bond-investors-china-need-answer
Green bonds are becoming a hot topic in China after the country officially ratified the Paris climate accord ahead of the G20 Summit and a senior central bank official hailed China’s status as the world’s biggest green bond market in a recent speech.
In the first seven months of this year, China issued a total of 120 billion yuan in green bonds, which accounted for 10 per cent of the country’s total debts outstanding and over 40 per cent of total global issuance of green bonds in the same period, Yi Gang, deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China, said in his speech.
To promote China’s green bond market, the government has introduced the China Interbank Bond Market for green bonds, which provides access for overseas sovereign funds and otherlong-term institutional investors. However, so far there has been little enthusiasm from overseas investors; most buyers of green bonds in China are still local banks.
“In think an important reason that overseas investors haven’t invested deeply in the [domestic green bond] market is that China’s definition of a green bond is a bit different from that in more developed markets,” said Beijia Ma, a strategist at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
“It means that something labelled green in China may not be green outside China.”
A notable feature of the Chinese guidelines, as compared to other markets, is that they permit the operators of clean coal facilities to issue green bonds, even though it is universally accepted that the funding of fossil fuel power generation does not qualify for green bond classification.”
Well coal is black green (Former green plants) after all. Someone at work recently was talking about coal, but no hint of “emissions” and “climate change” etc, but how “bad” it was, and I replied “Y’know coal is, effectively, concentrated sunlight aye?” To which he gave me a “Stunned” look. I then asked “Do you know what photosynthesis is?”. Answer “Yes”.
Then I said coal was laid down ~250mya from decaying PLANT matter. And I asked, what caused that plant matter to form and then, obviously, decay under compression over millions of years?
He could not connect the dots!
Space Studies Institute reported on a study done once that looked at the composition of a certain carbonaceous chondrite asteriod and found that it was made up of material that was very similar to Pennsylvania crude oil (a high-quality crude oil).
It seems there is more than one way to naturally produce oil.
A liquid asteroid? Sounds neat. How do they keep the oil from evaporating into the vacuum of space?
MarkW November 8, 2016 at 9:31 am wrote: “A liquid asteroid? Sounds neat.”
I see you are in facetious mode.
“How do they keep the oil from evaporating into the vacuum of space?”
You tell me. You don’t deny the organic material is there, do you? It obviously hasn’t evaporated away.
Here’s a little additional information for anyone who cares:
http://web.gps.caltech.edu/classes/ge133/reading/sephton.pdf
“The carbonaceous chondrite meteorites are fragments of asteroids that have remained relatively unprocessed since the formation of the solar system 4.6 billion years ago. These carbon-rich objects contain a variety of extraterrestrial organic molecules that constitute a record of chemical evolution prior to the origin of life. Compound classes include
aliphatic hydrocarbons, aromatic hydrocarbons, amino acids, arboxylic acids, sulfonic acids, phosphonic acids, alcohols, aldehydes, ketones, sugars, amines, amides, nitrogen heterocycles, sulfur heterocycles and a relatively abundant high molecular weight macromolecular material. Structural and stable isotopic characteristics suggest that a number of environments may have contributed to the organic inventory, including interstellar space, the solar nebula and the asteroidal meteorite parent body.”
The chinese have clearly realised that the only way to prevent the mass destruction of bats is to use coal.
From today’s Times http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/turn-off-wind-turbines-at-night-to-stop-killing-bats-say-scientists-dmbjqtgdl
Behind paywall.
“Thousands of bats are being killed by wind turbines but the carnage could be reduced by switching them off at night…………
Dr Fiona Mathews, who led the research, said that turning off turbines at night from April to October, particularly around sunset and dawn when bats were most active, could significantly reduce the death toll.”
Bats indeed.
Peak demand will continue to grow strongly in China, hence they must expand all their proper power stations, wind is poor at providing energy, but is lousy at providing peak demand on every cold day. Burning coal to provide electricity IS clean and green, because the resulting cheap electricity allows people to not burn coal at home for heat, one of the real causes of the bad air in China.
I wish someone here, that is much smarter than me,would ask the “Alarmists”, what temperature is it that you are seeking, and where on planet Earth should it be ?? If the Tropics cool down, then the North will get get unbearably cold…If the North heats up, then the Tropics will be unbearably hot, as per their models…soooo, what exactly do they want ? I was born in the semi far North of Canada, moved to the South of Florida and then returned to the North of Canada again in a 40 year span…The temperature differences were huge…and I am still alive with very little side affects..I think..?
What I wish someone would ask…
If the world is going to end tomorrow if we don’t stop CO2…
…how come 200 countries get off with doing nothing
Is there anyone here who actually believed that China would do anything else?
nope….Griff the exception
which is why I keep making a point about China here…
The change in position in China over the last 3 years has been rapid and exceptional…
Just looking at the amount of renewable energy commissioned and changes in coal plant planning, including recent cancellation of 17GW of planned capacity, shows what’s going on.
This is a recent and rapid change which is worth keeping an eye on.
They mean it and are going to be asking the US a lot of hard questions about why it isn’t serious about what it promised.
Griff….this blog post has a title….what is it?
Griff….
India and China alone plan to build 1617 new coal power plants by 2030. Indonesia intends building 47.
Between 50 and 86 new coal plants are planned for Turkey in the next few years.
Japan and South Korea are pressing ahead with plans to open at least 60 new coal-fired power plants over the next 10 years.
New coal-fired plants have been proposed in
Germany, France, Italy, Slovakia, and the UK, Cambodia, Laos, Oman, Sri Lanka, Uzbekistan, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Morocco, Namibia, Senegal,
So .. DON’T PANIC, Griff..
There will be PLENTY of INCREASED CO2 emissions around the globe for many, many years to come.
PLENTY to keep the world’s food supply GROWING.
And guess what.. there is NOTHING the anti-CO2, anti-life, anti-progress AGW cultists can do about it. 🙂 🙂
“which is why I keep making a point about China here…”
No Sunshine, all you keep doing is making stuff up.
But hey, we all have to earn a crust, right?
No Andy – no more new coal plants in UK, Germany or France.
Many of the rest you list won’t get built.
coal is over.
It was China’s way of celebrating the Paris “Agreement” and a nice sendoff for Kerry the Dunce.
Too bad west coast states won’t allow us to ship coal from their ports. Sounds like a good market opportunity.
And meanwhile wind power blowhards are sticking America with more and more of their useless tax payer subsidized dangerous and undependable wind mills.
As Trump said: “A Chinese conspiracy!” He might be glib as he admits to, but us glib sometimes hit it right on the head.
Then there’s Germany that somehow maintains the facade of being green while they are really coal to the core (it helps that green NGO’s are brain dead).
https://www.energy-charts.de/power.htm , see real time German coal in action with this web site
Yes, never mind they are still compensating for shutting down nearly half their nukes overnight in 2011 and have 32% of electricity from non-hydro renewables (a figure higher than most EU countries)
Never mind they reformed their FIT regime, are building out new offshore wind.
Never mind they are waiting on their north/south HVDC connection to allow further wind power growth
Never mind they are on course for 2020 target for renewables and even for 2050 80% renewable electricity target.
They won’t scrap their coal power till they have a plan for replacing the lost jobs and they have entrenched unions slowing reduction in coal.
Germany is relentlessly heading for renewables and the coal is definitely going.
Hey Griff….why does Germany need another HVDC connection to allow further wind power growth?
“the coal is definitely going.”
Ah, that must be why they’re buying up all the bits of the coal fired stations we scrap in the UK to build their new lignite burners!
Glad we’ve got that straightened out!
It is geography John… and the limits of the current grid.
Most of Germany’s wind power is produced in the north, most solar in the south.
a lot of the nukes they are shutting down are in the south too.
there is no north south grid connection sufficient to distribute the wind south/solar north at levels much beyond current capacity
The UK just finished an HVDC line out of Scotland to distribute more wind power and is well underway building a second, the Western connector.
Another explanation for the German energy odyssey is that there is no national plan, just a lot of special interests trying to their piece. That would explain early adopter, low efficiency solar rooftops at 10 times the current price of solar and offshore wind farms requiring grid investments after the fact and manufacturers adapting to keep costs down and traditional power companies getting around their problems.
er, yes, there is a national German plan!
We need to put Griff on the suicide watch.
He’s been pushing the myth that China is getting off coal for months now.
This news is going to crush him.
Or his funding may run out soon.
As I have posted above, there are HUGE numbers of COAL-FIRED power stations being built and planned around the world.
There will continue to be a highly beneficial increase in emissions of CO2.
Atmospheric CO2 should continue to rise unhaltingly.
And there is nothing the anti-CO2, anti-progress, anti-LIFE, agw cultists can do about it
Minor nit. Anti-progress, anti-life are the goals.
Anti-CO2 is just the latest method.
nit-pick accepted. ! 🙂
and indeed it IS getting off coal.
changing China’s energy policy is like turning a supertanker…
I hope people will be more upset about the increased health problems this will cause than the potential small impact on predictions for future global average temperatures. Pollution is shortening lives in China right now, much more so than any life shortening going on from a 1 degree rise in global average temperatures over the last 100 years. I feel like climatologists look at Chinese people in gas masks and rather than feeling any sense of urgency to help them they see money, money in the form of potential study grants and jobs and paid speaking engagements related to global warming. When they talk about how increased coal burning affects the predictions of their failed climate models it distracts from the real issue of people living in life shortening air right now.
I wish they would say “Look, forget the global warming implications, we can argue about that, but you can’t argue that this air in many Chinese cities is awful, people are losing years off their lives and living lower quality lives because of this. We need to help the Chinese find a way to stop this growth in coal burning, or spread it out so it is not so condensed in certain areas, to help these people”.
When they talk about global warming then the public thinks “Oh your models suck, this isn’t the problem you say it is” and the urgency to develop a plan to lower the pollution goes away. The problem is pollutants from coal burning is well defined, and telling chicks at the bar that you are studying health impacts of living in polluted air isn’t near as good a pickup line as telling them you are studying human induced climate change. And then there is the need to keep the climate change money train moving, keeping the impression there is urgent need for action and more studies. It seems like keeping their climate money train going is more important than trying to help the people in Chinese cities.
The new coal plants are much cleaner than the old ones.
And they allow the phasing out of old local practices that cause the pollution in urban districts.
Its called PROGRESS !!
It is how they will eventually clean up the air in their main cities.
How many people died when London was covered in smog?
Cleaning up cities is what countries do as they grow richer.
On the other hand, the greens seem to be opposed to wealth in general. (With the singular exception of their personal bank accounts.)
Cleaning up smog: There’s a concept called “diminishing returns”. Suppose the country spent, say, $100 billion to reduce air pollution by 90%. Well and good. Then if the EPA, to justify its existence and acquire more power, proposed spending $1 trillion more to further reduce air pollution an additional 2%, would you just assume that’s worth it?
“How much is enough, Gordon?”
“$1 trillion more to further reduce air pollution an additional 2%,”
Oh, I thought they wanted to reduce CO2.
What actual real air pollution do they want t reduce?
What like these people drawing attention to the problem of air pollution in china and campaigning to improve air quality?
http://www.greenpeace.org/eastasia/campaigns/air-pollution/
AndyG55,
I must answer you here at this late date (due to the forum format):
“Oh, I thought they wanted to reduce CO2. What actual real air pollution do they want t reduce?”
I assume you are not being facetious, and honestly do not know that CO2 was declared by the EPA to be a “dangerous pollutant”. Read that again. Arguably the most precious substance for life on the planet is a “dangerous pollutant”.
dudleyhorscroft and RoHa…..you are assuming my intent and wasting bandwith being pendants. Why do some people believe it is up to them to correct others? Does it make them feel superior?
Why do you feel errors shouldn’t be corrected?
MarkW commented: “…Why do you feel errors shouldn’t be corrected?….”
To begin there was no error. But let’s explore word, grammar, and spelling police. When a post is understood what purpose does it serve other than to make the corrector feel better? Errors of fact should be called out if it’s pertinent to the discussion. Some of the most intellectual and important contributors to society are/were poor written communicators but it doesn’t change their message.
Uh, did you mean “pedants”?
brians356 commented: :..Uh, did you mean “pedants”?…”
Yes. Made their point for them 🙂
A 20% increase in coal by 2020 for the US sounds like a nice goal for a Trump presidency. Thanks for the idea, China!
🙂
“The roughly 200-gigawatt increase alone is more than the total power capacity of Canada.” But Canada will seriously damage our own economy to reduce our CO2 emissions by 1 or 2%, which will have exactly 0 impact on global CO2 emissions and 0 impact on global temperatures.
Yep Jeff.. Those countries GULLIBLE enough to follow the anti-CO2 mantra, really need to wake up to the REALITY that their piddling little efforts with have absolutely ZERO effect on world CO2 emissions.
(and may actually increase those global emissions.)
Jeff,
Environmentalism is a religion. And apparently an apocalyptic religion, calling for humanity to commit mass suicide. You know, “to save the planet”.
History will record that the USA lost it’s position as the greatest world power in the first few decades of this century by gullibly following all the non science trotted out by alarmists. How sad! Can anyone please show me a valid statistical correlation between increasing CO2 and Temperature? Didn’t think so.
Who will be left to write that history (presumably on cave walls)?
maybe what the coal industry lacks is skilled advertising?
if the output of a coal plant (water and CO2) was pumped directly into greenhouses to grow crops, would this count as carbon capture and storage? what if the greenhouse was as large as the earth’s atmosphere?
China Power: Turning coal into food.
“China Power: Turning coal into food.”
Hey give India and all those other countries building and planning to build coal fired power stations a bit of fair recognition, too. ! 🙂
India is busy building 160GW of new renewable capacity, mostly solar…