The invitation only World Economic Forum, a gathering of politicians and billionaires in Davos, Switzerland, is betting they can brush aside President-elect Trump’s efforts to stop the climate cash juggernaut.
Davos Elite Focus on Climate Change, Ignoring Trump’s Skepticism
by Javier Blas and Jess Shankleman
15 January 2017, 10:01 GMT+10 16 January 2017, 10:05 GMT+10
Donald Trump has often ridiculed global warming and promised to withdraw the U.S. from the global accord signed in Paris in 2015. Yet despite the change of political weather in Washington, the captains of business and finance gathered in Davos this week will spend a lot of time talking about climate change — and how to make money from it.
The World Economic Forum is devoting 15 sessions of its 2017 annual meeting to climate change, and nine more to clean energy — the most ever on the issues.
It reflects how much is at stake. For global business leaders, it’s not just a question of burnishing their green credentials, but about billions of dollars — maybe even trillions — in potential profits and losses. Insurers are starting to price-in more frequent flooding and droughts; energy giants are shaping their business for a world that’s moving away from oil and coal; car makers are putting real money into electric vehicles; banks want to lend money for renewable electricity projects.
“The good thing is that the Paris agreement raised the bar for everyone,” said Ben van Beurden, the head of Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Europe’s largest oil group. “Everybody feels the obligation to act.”
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With money-making opportunities rising, traditional climate change advocates — Al Gore and Greenpeace executive director Jennifer Morgan — will mingle in panel discussions with executives such as HSBC Holdings Plc Chairman Stuart Gulliver and Patrick Yu, president of Cofco Corp., the largest food company in China. They will discuss the nexus between the fight against global warming and business — both how to stop climate change and how to profit from it.
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Global Fight
Michael Oppenheimer, a professor at Princeton University who will help to explain the exhibit, said despite the arrival of Trump, the fight against global warming will continue.
“No matter what the U.S. president says, the progress on climate change can have many routes,” he said. “The U.S. can harm progress, but will not stop progress.”
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China Flip
China, which for years sought to derail global efforts to tackle climate change, has flipped its role and is now lecturing the U.S. and Europe on the importance of the issue. Xi Jinping will be the first sitting Chinese president to attend Davos, after making green finance a key topic for China’s presidency of the Group of 20 nations last year.
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Why would China suddenly want to talk up Climate Change? Some greens are even calling for China to assume global climate leadership. Yet at the same time, China are ordering an entire Canada worth of extra coal capacity to be built in the next 3 years.
As WUWT reported in November, the new Chinese energy plan calls for a 20% expansion of coal power over the next 3 years.
Under the terms of China’s feeble Paris “commitment”, China has a free hand with CO2 emissions until the 2030s.
… Based on its national circumstances, development stage, sustainable development strategy and international responsibility, China has nationally determined its actions by 2030 as follows:
- To achieve the peaking of carbon dioxide emissions around 2030 and making best efforts to peak early;
- To lower carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP by 60% to 65% from the 2005 level;
- To increase the share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy consumption to around 20%; and
- To increase the forest stock volume by around 4.5 billion cubic meters on the 2005 level.
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But China appears to already have far more coal capacity than they need;
Comment: New coal power plants in China – a (carbon) bubble waiting to burst
While China’s coal consumption growth has slowed down, and fell in 2014, coal-fired power generating capacity continues to grow rapidly. This apparent contradiction has led some observers to conclude that China’s coal consumption growth is bound to resume.
But the evidence suggests otherwise. Instead the continued buildup of coal-fired power plants represents an investment bubble that will burst as overcapacity becomes too large to ignore.
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What is the solution to this paradox?
I have a theory – a speculative theory, but one which I believe is supported by the evidence.
China probably didn’t originally intend for there to be a coal capacity bubble – China have been running a loose monetary policy for a long time. Bubbles and resource misallocation are a common consequence of easy money. By the time the Chinese government noticed there were too many coal plants, it was probably too late to stop them being built.
But as WUWT previously reported, China has a plan to utilise their enormous excess of coal capacity – they want to export their electricity, maybe all the way to Europe.
The amount of wasted energy would be ridiculous – by my very rough calculation, even using ultra-high voltage DC power transmission technology, at least 30% of the transmitted electricity would be lost on its 6000 mile journey to Europe.
But as long as Europe continues to attempt to adhere to their Paris agreement pledges, and continues to inflict expensive renewables onto European consumers, Chinese electricity is so cheap that even a 30% transmission loss is acceptable.
It would be cheaper and less wasteful to transport the coal to Europe, and burn the coal in European power plants, but this would violate the Paris agreement. Under the terms of the Paris agreement, China is allowed to burn the coal, but Europe is not. So China gets to burn the coal Europe used to burn, and the Chinese electricity is shipped to Europe, without violating European or Chinese Paris agreement pledges.
Of course, if President-elect Trump wins his battle against the green blob, if the Paris agreement collapses, if Trump and Brexit and Le-Pen in France cause the Paris agreement to unravel, the Davos corporates who have cynically helped to finance and facilitate this audacious scheme to mine European government stupidity stand to lose their shirts. The Chinese coal bubble will burst, maybe along with the Chinese economy, and the Chinese plan to loot the west will come unravelled – leaving America standing tall above the broken rubble of a nasty scheme to profit from the misery of electricity consumers in Europe.
It may well be a whole new world during the next four years… Global cooling may have a real chance of commencing with the upcoming solar min (after weak solar max). Along with it, the atmospheric co2 growth rate will plummet as it has during every cool spell (over the last 59 years). On top of all that our next recession is already underway a la the federal reserve (raising interest rates). Trump won’t be able to stop it, as the fed trumps trump, so the first thing that may go are these useless green schemes. (he’s already on the record as saying that such schemes will have to make economic sense, certainly during a recession they won’t) And God only knows what else will come down the pike during the next four years. It may well be a whole new world…
I watched a discussion of Davos on CNBC last night, the talking heads getting it wrong as usual, they conflate Climate with Air Pollution, a favourite trick of greenies. China already has a lot of coal capacity, but it is in the wrong places, not near the major smog-prone cities. To fix the smog problem China needs MORE low-cost coal capacity near the smog, and/or natural gas, so that people can stop burning coal in their homes for heat, which is a major cause of the smog.
Another interesting thing about smog is that it reveals the weather conditions in the area. Smog needs very light winds, i.e. wind power is not the solution.
Heard on BBC Radio 4 this am that 100 UEA signatories have written to Mrs May…please keep the money coming.
Never was the saying, “FOLLOW THE MONEY !! ” ever so true!
The trail seems to lead towards cronyism and markets manipulated for profit! Hmmm!
The law of unintended consequences strikes mercilessly. Europe can import coal produced electricity at a 30% loss of efficiency than if they burned the coal themselves. This is why World Government cannot work if these morons can’t figure that out from the first day what hope is there? What will Trump say? Your Fired!
You are fired becomes you’re fired, not your fired.
“The crux of the biscuit is the apostrophe” – F. Zappa
I suspect that the over capacity of coal powered generation in China is twofold. First, the government failed to predict the economic slow down such that coal powered generation increased in line with earlier predictions of sustained economic growth. Second, China is a huge country and unless economic activity is to be concentrated in just one or two small areas, which would be detrimental and would create a very uneven society, it is inevitable that there will be investment in infrastructure across the land some of which will never be needed, or will be taken up more slowly than other areas which may benefit from better geographical links, rail networks and shipping.
China is in it for the long game. It knows that the 21st century belongs to it, and its time will come. All the coal powered stations will find a use as economic activity once more picks up. If nothing else, they will be used to build the wind turbines and solar panels which China will ship to the West as West nations continue to destroy their energy and industrial infra-structure.
TrUMp has no choice but to pull back from the Paris Accord. He is a business man, and this is where reality reigns supreme. TrUMp has committed himself to bring jobs back to the heartlands of America. If he does not keep that commitment he will be toast in 2 or 3 years. If he keeps that commitment, as I expect him to do so, then America’s CO2 emissions will rise significantly as more emphasis is given to jobs in the coal mining and steel industries, and as infrastructure investment/construction takes place. We have already seen F0RD pull back from locating a car plant in Mexico but instead keeping production in the States. Whilst that was only one small action, it has already impacted upon the future CO2 emissions, and one can expect to see more and more of this type of action. America is not going to offshore as much of its industry as it would have done so under a ClINt0n administration, and that means that America’s CO2 emissions will rise.
TrUMp is no one’s fool. The reality is that TruUMs commitment to jobs makes it inevitable that America’s CO2 emissions will rise, and therefore TrUMp has no choice but to ditch the Paris Agreement. Politically, it will assist him to undermine the science/scare behind cAGW and to suggest that the model predictions are way off base and that Climate Sensitivity, if any at all, is low, and that there is nothing to be feared about a rise in CO2. It will assist him for him to present evidence that suggests that US temperatures have been tampered with and exaggerated. If the elite business leaders of the world do not see that TrUMp will make an assault on cAGW and ditch Paris in his pursuit of American jobs, they are fools.
In 1962, when coal was burned in steam locomotives to haul coal 600 ton trains in the UK, it was cheaper to transport coal 100 miles to be burned in a local power station & generate electricity, rather than generate electricity adjacent to the coal field & send it 100 miles down the transmission lines. What would be the cost of an INVULNERABLE infrastructure to transmit electricity 6,000 or more miles from China to Europe?
“…INVULNERABLE infrastructure to transmit electricity 6,000 or more miles from China to Europe”
Dream on, Sol can fry it at will.
First time on this site. Lots of comments on GHG promotional money angles that I had never though about previously. My thoughts on the subject:
Davos is a billionaire’s Juke and Jive dance to distract us
while they slither into the pocketbooks of each dumb cuss
CO2 doesn’t cause climate change as Al Gore’s preachin’
his religous superstition to deny the truth – ozone depletion
from the impact of CFC’s and volcanic aerosol emissions,
a mavelous dance between oxygen’s photodisassociation
from UVB radiation and ozone’s creation and distruction.
Check out https://WhyClimateChanges.com for a lesson,
and you will conclude Davos is a conspiracy of high treason
worthy of a racketeering and corrupt practices conviction.
Copyright: MH Publishing – freely distribute with attribution
It would be truly amusing to see China burn coal in their super duper ultra critical boilers, so that they could supply Europe with politically acceptable electricity, losing 30% of the energy along the way as heat!
I suspect that some of these new coal plants are for replacement of old inefficient, dirty plants, not for new capacity.
It will be interesting to see what effect the early summer melt has on the Davos politicians. It won’t happen while they are there, but it seems likely it will happen much earlier than usual and from a much lower level of refreeze. Effects of this phenomenon on the Northern hemisphere’s weather ( if any) may well concentrate their minds on the issue of climate change. On the scale of investment versus outcomes, it does not take much to affect the balance.
I see IKEA are suggesting they will withhold substantial green investment from the UK unless it gets its act together. Will such pressure increase I wonder in the face of events?
Do ‘We The People’ still have power or have multinationals taken it away from us? Never wonder why elections only change faces not politics. Remember HOPE and CHANGE. So can Trump break the power these Multinationals have or is he just one of them? Do you think he’ll abolish the Federal Reserve? If he doesn’t nothing will change.
This tells you what you are. A Slave a Guinea Pig and Cannon Fodder.
The Chinese are playing the long game. They have a free pass until the ’30s so they can do and say anything the like until then – by which time they must figure that the whole rotten scam will be over, and they get to walk away with their economy intact. (well, OK, their energy supplies).
Yes, that’s basically it. But while giving tacit approval of the Obama feel good agenda they also did their fair share of territory grab in the South China Sea to match the Putin grab in Crimea. They know an easy mark when they see one.
The. Chinese are choking on the pollution caused by their scrubberless thermal power plants, and this seems to be a huge driver in their current behavior. They have a mixed system, a communist dictatorship trying to sustain itself using a capitalist economy, but they retain the central planning mania, and the citizenry can’t articulate the suffering and misery caused by dirty air to the upper caste oligarchs.
I also want to point out that sending electricity from China to Europe is beyond bizarre, and that China will have an increasing tendency to focus on energy security. Depending on Australian coal, Iranian oil, and LNG from Qatar, Russia, and Australia isn’t a recipe for success.
I call the Chinese system “rich slaves”. A system that maintains shackles on its people but allows them to have jobs that pay enough for buying nice stuff. Which is what the Davos oligarchy wants as well.
Maybe China is considering selling electricity to Japan or Taiwan.
Seriously doubt they would buy it. Why would a developed nation rely on electricity generated by a communist dictatorship with imperial ambitions?
developed nation rely on
====================
The EU relies on Russian gas and oil big time. Why would they place themselves at the mercy of Putin? If Russia turns off the gas and oil to the EU in winter, how many days would it take for the EU to fall?
The Chinese plan for energy self-sufficiency and becoming an energy superpower is electricity from thorium powered molten salt reactors fueled with thorium from Bayan Obo, the largest rare earth and thorium deposit on the planet. Thorium-based molten salt reactors operate at atmospheric pressure, are scalable, the fission by-products cool rapidly (~100 years), “burn” uranium reactor waste, operate at a temperature 200deg C higher than uranium reactors and so are more efficient thermodynamically, have no potential for run-away core meltdowns, are scalable from 1MW to 1GW, and have estimated electricity production costs of $0.01-0.02 per kilowatt-hour. The Chinese have over 1000 engineers working on this technology. The USA, perhaps 3-10. Europe probably 0. The major problem to be solved is a materials problem with regard to pumps and piping required to circulate the molten salt or finding a less corrosive “salt” molten at the appropriate operating temperatures. Current piping and pump lifespan with current materials technology is estimated to be10 years. Needs to be 50+ years. Once the Chinese have solved the problems, they will have the patents, and reactor production capacity to undercut every other form of power production in the world. They will sell or provide for “free” the thorium fuel and reactors and charge a royalty on all electricity produced, making all other counties uncompetitive with China on an energy basis. It will be a new form of “bondage”, especially for Europe and possibly Canada. With carbon taxes, the energy costs in Ontario are already at $0.17 per kilowatt hour – a true competitive disaster since Canada is also selling hydropower to New York state for $0.04 per kilowatt hour under a long term contract. The USA nuclear research program demonstrated the feasibility of this reactor technology in research programs from the 1960’s to 1980’s and then the US gave the technology to the Chinese (in the early 2000’s I think). Check out the Thorium Energy Alliance website for details (http://www.thoriumenergyalliance.com/.for) the full story. The Chinese should have the technology problems solved by 2030 and then be able to reduce CO2 emissions without a problem. Never mind that CO2, is not the
I apologize for hitting the post button too soon. The last part of the post should be: Never mind that CO2 is not the controlling variable with respect to climate change, it’s “Ozone Depletion”. See Dr. Peter Langdon Ward’s website https://www.WhyClimateChanges for the full story. Dr. Ward provided this information to the UPCC and nearly all climatologists and paleoclimate scientists in the world in direct e-mail communications so the Chinese already know this. They are not stupid.
The Davos Elite are the ultimate rent seekers. They have settled on Global Warming to gain control of the wealth of nations, a step toward World Government with themselves in power. They are not above fomenting violence to further their cause.
That’s just conspiracy theory
No, it’s a reasonable conjecture and nothing like the crazy mindless drool you regurgitate here regularly.
Davos has effectively become the center of a multinational oligarchy of the most powerful and most wealthy. They have invited the ruler of a country that is manipulating them to become their leader. This alone makes me more comfortable with the election of Trump than just about anything that has happened
Yes. They need a figurehead. Be wary of those to whom they channel their donations.
The ‘Chinese export power to Europe’ idea is just a mirage.
Yes, there is a contradiction between existing Chinese coal plant construction plans (already drastically watered down each year in the last 3) and the capacity needed. China recognises this: most of that coal plant won’t get built.
It may be difficult to take on board, but China has rapidly changed tack on coal power and is heading for truly massive renewable investment. The change is so recent and continues so fast that any analysis or article even a year old is out of date.
Meanwhile, the world’s largest manufacturing, consumer goods, insurance, financial and energy companies fully accept the science of climate change and the Paris agreement and are moving and investing based on that premise.
The only people not on board with this are the incoming US administration and the fossil fuel interests in the US which funded it.
Griff, the plan to increase coal fleet by 20% is not old news, it is recent news from last November.
If China are as you suggest fibbing about their coal plan, what assurance do we have that they are not also telling porkies about their renewables plans?
China has form when it comes to fiddling their CO2 emissions narrative.
Link to the 20% Chinese coal plan. https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/11/07/china-announces-a-massive-20-increase-in-coal-by-2020/
And that plan makes no sense, because it would lead to overcapacity.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-13/china-seen-investing-too-much-in-power-plants-that-burn-coal
Already their plant seems to be operating at 50% capacity…
Stupid they ain’t.
See also:
https://www.nrdc.org/experts/alvin-lin/chinas-new-plans-deepen-action-climate-change
A 6% reduction in proportion of demand met by coal by 2020 and a coal cap for 2020 are incompatible with continuing expansion of coal, in the above labelled as leading to coal plants being stranded assets…
Stupid they aren’t, just dumb like a fox.
Oddly enough Eric, our friend Griff comes to comment most when the subject of discussion is the economics of renewables and their feasibility. I smell that he is employed by from the very entity being discussed n this thread
Griff: “Stupid they ain’t.”
Lots of things they do are stupid -> one child policy for instance?
“Fully” is projecting and hoping. There’s no way to judge their sincerity and depth of commitment. There’s more reason to believe they’re playing along, drifting with the current, speaking goof to power, being lemmings, etc.
“Lots of things they do are stupid”
Especially their militaristic puffery in the South China Sea, which will serve only to antagonize their neighbors (and the US) and to make impossible useful trade negotiations which would benefit them. Stupid, stupid, and stupid.
You mock others for conspiratorial ideas, yet you are certain that the fossil fuel companies fund Trump or fund skepticism, I am not certain which. There is no news according to you about this rapid Chinese pivot on coal versus renewables, but you somehow know all about it. Insurance companies according to you are brilliant with assessing risks, as long as they are climate risks that aid your cause, but otherwise would be ripping off the gullible to raise their rates. Griff, you add amusement at times.
Yes, China is in an economic down turn, but I always thought that the surplus coal plants might just have been a green negotiating tool. Build 100 more than you need and then get green credits for not using them.
The so-called “Greens” do not depend on the climate or on the nature, it is important to build a socialist world through the back door. Here in Germany one calls then people, which for such a thing can be clamped useful idiots.
Well, of course there are billions to be made and lost from climate science. Why, the US government are spending billions and the lobby groups are making billions. I always found it fascinating that greenies and so called climate scientists could be somehow trusted to be holier than though, when in any business in the World you need to make money. Climate science is just one of those and until they think they can make money from another aspect of climate, it will continue.
I remember I had a job in my early twenties in an IT support role, which really didn’t need to exist. Did I tell my explorer? Eem, no, I actually spent my free time justifying my existence and actually creating problems to fix.
“Insurers are starting to price-in more frequent flooding and droughts”
What about pricing in the benefits — have they done that?
In my language “choke” means “strangle”, Davos, meaning one who strangle.
There is organized a collection of those who prepare the noose poor that they strangle their “innovations”.
It is strange that many conscious people accept this nonsense that man is to blame for global warming. Who and what is much that silenced so many scientists that have lost their connection to the natural laws. They suggest that it does not know the power of the mutual influences of the planets and the sun and the influence of magnetism on the change in the behavior of the sun and planets, going to change the temperature of the Earth itself and its tread. Mali is ztačenja influence of the sun, or magnetic fields and their fluctuations (see the cycles of sunspots) are the main cause climate change in general.
I hope that’s enough Tramp aware of this and that, as an influential man, stop this avalanche of stupid theories, which are designed to enrich the individuals that will receive energy from natural gases from the births of their wells.
Tesla’s technology will win all these lunatics, which would have destroyed all of humanity for his own benefit.
Is it like a George Soros bet?
The Davos agenda was set many months before the US election, much of it even likely before Brexit. This may be warmism’s last hurrah.
So….
1. Global Warming
2. ???
3. PROFIT !!
This business model only works with government intervention, because only government has its hands in the pockets of taxpayers.
The Davos Elite are whistling past the graveyard.
The World Economic Forum is being subsidized by taxpayers in the US through US Aid grants. Likely not the only country doing this. Considering who attends these meetings and their expensive location that says it all.
Let us hope that the Trump asministration defunds the thing.