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.
Urban sprawl in the mountains….for the cause of course.
Why would the high tech loving clowns need a physical meeting to plan their war against humanity? Do they realize how much carbon it took to fly their pampered asses to Davos?
They are partying their asses off on the backs of the poor.
The Devos guys have to meet in person to take and receive bribes.
Also to keep their discussions off line and with no written record.
China will play both sides of the street and ultimately go along with anything that benefits China. They are not hard to read. Trump has been right about China all along. And as far as Putin, he is similar, though not as smart and if I hear one more “Russia hacked the election” comment I’m gonna barf. SOMEBODY got some emails from the DNC. That is not hacking the election as the msm likes to propagandize it. Lord have mercy!
Yes, so far any concessions are well into the future and they are free to do what they want until then. After they get to the deadline years, they could just say “We aren’t following this because of x did that and y did this”. Doing anything prior just gives a huge economy an advantage for the next 15 years. All sold on a good faith agreement being honored then. Yeah, right.
Jim, I agree with you except for one statement “somebody”? I suspect that a NUMBER of people hacked into the DNC emails since it was so easy, in addition to the Russians, and there is a possibility that Assange is correct in that he did not get the emails from the Russians. The DNC refused to give access to the server to the intelligence community so how could they be so certain that it was only the Russians. Of course I could be wrong just like the claim that ISIS was the JV team and the top intelligence doctored the field intelligence to make the President look good.
The Horror!: Truth defeated Hillary.
The only hacking that could have made any difference in the election were the hacks of the DNC and Hillary cronies, and all we got out of the hacked emails was the truth. I have no problem with someone revealing the truth to me, no matter who it is. OTOH, the Left has a BIG problem with the truth being revealing, as demonstrated by their screaming about its release. Understandable, since the truth makes them look real bad, but whose fault is that, other than their own.
Sorry, I’m not going to be outraged over the truth being revealed. I like it that way. More, more, more.
A 30% loss is trivial compared to losses by Thames Water. Distribution systems somehow know how to remain profitable, no matter how high the loss.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/water-torture-3300000000-litres-are-lost-every-single-day-through-leakage-2034999.htmls
Whe China gets up to the quality levels of the Clean Air Act of 1963, we can talk.
China supports the Paris agreement because they don’t have to abide by it and they’ll manufacture have the stuff used for alternative energy. It’s a no brainer.
As far a excess coal plants, they spend a lot of time trying to keep people employed so they are not just thinking about what they need.
China can be involved as its strategic solution to enrgy supply and pollution, maybe climate change, is simple and very public. All nuclear and hydro. Because they prefer energy science fact to green science fiction, what can deliver adequate power in the future at any level required 24/7 after fossil.
Facts of generation are that renewables are technically inadeqaute on the basic characteristics of the density and intermittency of their energy sources, excluding the waste of farmland/more than coal CO2 emitting “bio fuels”. Add to that the environmental impact of renewables massive resource use per unit energy in materials and land use to collect much lower density energy, as well as visual environmental impact and natural environment effects of wind turbines, water damming and growing bio fuels. Nuclear is wholly insignificant by comparison. And, as any high school student with the national energy production data can check, using renewables to offset fossil on the grid actually makes CO2 emissions expesnively worse than simply replacing coal with gas and nuclear replacing both. No renewwables are needed to achieve the biggest and fastest decarbonisation of grid electricity supply. Science fact. No consensus required. It’s not climate science
The only part of renewables policies that works reliably and as advertised are the Billions regressively added to bills to make every measurement of climate change and enrgy supply worse in fact. Sure, the Chinese will also export into that easy money market as long as that state legalised extortion racket can be maintained. But it isn’t what they plan for their own end game.
Yet at the same time, China are ordering an entire Canada worth of extra coal capacity to be built in the next 3 years.
China ARE? Eric, this mangling of grammar has to stop. The noun China is singular, not plural. It’s a single country so you must write China IS, not ARE. Lately, I’ve seen a trend to misnumber the verbs that go with singular subjects, as in saying “the team are…” Teams, like China, are collections of individuals, but they themselves are single units so their accompanying verbs must be singular. You can look it up.
This may seem a small thing (and it is). Yet, the fate of the language hangs in the balance through misuse (/sarc). Just please be more careful in the future.
Gary,
You are working under the delusion that everyone uses northern US grammar. There’s lots a folks what is usin other rules.
You’re right about “China” being singular everywhere, but wrong that “team” is necessarily singular. In the UK it (and similar collective words like “company”) is treated as a plural.
China seems to want the rest of the world to be at an energy disadvantage by being dependent on expensive renewable energy. It’s hard for industry to be competitive when your energy costs are so much more than your global competitors.
Gmak,
Good point, why is it that a portion of our elected leaders cannot grasp this simple concept, it is so obvious. Of course excessive regulations also play a role also which are not a problem in China.
Trump’s pick of Scott Pruitt for EPA and possibly Dr. Will Happer as science czar
convinces me that he intends to keep his promises on climate.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/12/07/trump-names-scott-pruitt-oklahoma-attorney-general-suing-epa-on-climate-change-to-head-the-epa/?utm_term=.b3182bd17cde
http://dailycaller.com/2017/01/16/trump-may-pick-a-prominent-global-warming-skeptic-as-his-science-czar/
Tillerson’s past positions as Exxon’s CEO simply reflect the reality of dealing with
One World Government types.
[blockquote]Insurers are starting to price-in more frequent flooding and droughts; /blockquote]
And if these things don’t happen… hey, free money and everyone told them to expect it, so it’s not like they’re gouging people….
Use angle brackets on your tags, not square brackets.
Didn’t Dav(r)os say, “I am exceedingly difficult to kill.”
Though in the finish his own creations turned on him.
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 destruction.
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
CEO for Unilever was on CNBC today saying that trump has to stay on bord with climate change. He will have no choice.
Unilever and all the other big EU corporations, that depend on the EU commission for their money, are desperately trying to keep Europe on the train. Thing is, there is so much corruption around europe and stupid politicians , that they will stay on track until their economies collapse. Fighting a dominant US and a renewed UK will destroy them.
“CEO for Unilever was on CNBC today saying that trump has to stay on bord with climate change. He will have no choice.”
Trump should send the Paris Agreement to the U.S. Senate. Then the CEO of Unilever can threaten the entire Senate over CAGW and tell them how they have to get on board.
A majority of Americans do not support CAGW. The CEO should demand they get on board, too, since he knows what is best for the rest of us.
I think the CEO of Unilever should stick to running his business and stay out of the business of others.
“A majority of Americans do not support CAGW. ”
Unfortunately, two-thirds of them think the government should “do something” to fight climate change. Multiple congressional subcommittees need to thoroughly air this issue to re-educate the public. If Trump or the GOP acts unilaterally, there will be immense pushback.
…while the Greeks sell off their last properties and possessions and dependent on aging grandparent pensions for three generations worth of needs.
Somewhat O/T but … just for the record …
In my earlier comment above, I had speculated on possible explanations as to why the Guardian‘s Science editor, Ian Sample, neglected to include a link to the actual “petition” [from “100 scientists” to PM May] in his recent article.
As it turns out, it very much seems that there was – what many might consider – a good reason for Sample
to exclude any link to the actual “peitition”. The prime mover and shaker behind this “petition” may well have been none other than …. Bob Ward!
Shub has gathered all the details in one post that’s well worth reading, IMHO:
Letter to British PM from climate scientists authored by Bob Ward?
https://lnkd.in/gHVWmjY
Here is a rather good opinion on the efficacy of Davos….
China will do with their coal generation bubble and overcapacity what Germany did when they unified and inherited vast uneconomical east German industry. They will exploit and leverage this run-down of carbon emission – which happens for purely economic, not enviro-altruistic reasons – to force other nations to perform matching carbon emission cuts which in their cases will economically irrational abd damaging; and paint themselves as environmental saints and heroes in the process. It is a cynical and hypocritical act of economic warfare.
In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if China cultivated the coal generation bubble specifically for this purpose.
“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.”
The long haul offsets the high tech DC, but nothing new in the 30%. That’s the average line loss in the US grid.
Money chasers always cash in on silly but profitable ideas. Take bottled water. In the US, well and watershed potable water, sans lead pipes, out of the tap is perfectly good water. In fact most bottled water is from those taps. Yet people continue to pay for bottled water. Cashing in on AGW business is like buying bottled water. China knows a good thing when it sees one. Eventually the market will go away, but till then flexible money chasers will make dough. Don’t blame them one bit. In fact my biggest China gripe has to do with pencils. Don’t get me started on that one.
There is one thing tap water is not good for: it makes tea unpalatable. Tea makes for about 90% of my water intake, the rest balanced with milk, tomato juice, and occasionally beer. I almost never drink just water, and if I do it is also distilled because now, after 50 years of using only distilled water I am attached to how it tastes (or does not, rather). So does everybody in my family. I notice that we are not the only idiots out there, as about 10-20% of bottled water sold at places like Walmart or Jewel is distilled (from eyeballing the shelves with 1-gallon jugs).
We were shocked when we moved to Scotland and then England and could not find distilled water sold anywhere except in minuscule quantities available at automotive supplies stores. It was not drinkable quality either, and extremely expensive. Fortunately, two brands of bottled water they sell (one is Eden Falls, I recall, the other is from roughly the same area) are close enough to distilled to make good tea (stated analysis is 10 mg/L Ca, which seems true). That is especially shocking as ground water quality atrocious in most of England. Now I understand their habit of drinking tea with milk. Without milk, it is outright disgusting. Scotland is different. Their tap water is close to distilled — much closer than 10 mg/L, I am estimating. But outside Scotland and a few other small countries situated on exposed basalts and granite, with all their drinking water coming form yesterday’s rain, there will always be a strong market for pure water.
Buying bottled tap water is insanity, I agree.
It’s us voters doing us harm.
Longing to be counted with the dogooders elite we elect our Merkels and Obamas.
So if BritishPetrol wants to sell their stuff why not dressed like dogooders.
Duh.