Everything You Think You Know About Coal in China Is Wrong
By Melanie Hart, Luke Bassett, and Blaine Johnson Posted on May 15, 2017, 12:01 am
See also: “Research Note on U.S. and Chinese Coal-Fired Power Data” by Melanie Hart, Luke Bassett, and Blaine Johnson
China’s energy markets send mixed signals about the nation’s policy intentions and emissions trajectory. Renewable energy analysts tend to focus on China’s massive renewable expansion and view the nation as a global clean energy leader; coal proponents and climate skeptics are more likely to focus on the number of coal plants in China—both in operation and under construction—and claim its climate rhetoric is more flash than substance.
In December 2016, the Center for American Progress brought a group of energy experts to China to find out what is really happening. We visited multiple coal facilities—including a coal-to-liquids plant—and went nearly 200 meters down one of China’s largest coal mines to interview engineers, plant managers, and local government officials working at the front lines of coal in China.
We found that the nation’s coal sector is undergoing a massive transformation that extends from the mines to the power plants, from Ordos to Shanghai. China is indeed going green. The nation is on track to overdeliver on the emissions reduction commitments it put forward under the Paris climate agreement, and making coal cleaner is an integral part of the process.
…
China is greening its coal fleet
Beijing is stuck between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, China cannot eradicate coal-fired power from its energy mix overnight. China has not yet figured out how to develop its own natural gas supplies—which are more difficult to access and therefore more expensive than those in the United States—and renewable energy expansion takes time. On the other hand, Chinese citizens are demanding cleaner air, and they want immediate improvements. Air quality is now a political priority for the Chinese Communist Party on par with economic growth and corruption. This means that China cannot continue to run the same high-pollution coal plants that were considered acceptable decades ago. Beijing’s solution is to move full speed ahead with renewables while simultaneously investing in what may become the most efficient, least polluting coal fleet the world has ever seen.
Not all coal-fired power is created equal. Emissions and efficiency—the latter being the amount of coal consumed per unit of power produced, which also affects emissions—vary dramatically based on the type of coal and coal-burning technology used. What many U.S. analyses of China’s coal sector overlook is the fact that Beijing has been steadily shutting down the nation’s older, low-efficiency, and high-emissions plants to replace them with new, lower-emitting coal plants that are more efficient that anything operating in the United States.
…
The Center for American Progress was founded by John Podesta in 2003, the same John Podesta who later went on to run Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Podesta has been associated with the Clintons since at least the mid 90s.
I find it fascinating that such a well connected left wing organisation has made such an effort to sing the praises of Chinese coal.
The argument that China has no choice other than to use coal for the time being, because they don’t have access to easily recoverable gas like the USA does, is utter nonsense. Even if China does have more difficulty accessing gas than the USA, if China really wanted to cut CO2 emissions, they could simply expand their already substantial zero emissions nuclear fleet.
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So they had a conducted tour of plants sanctioned by the government and saw only what the regime wanted them to see. Reminds of what my socialist uncle said when he visited Soviet Russia in the 60s. Being shepherded around the place by “tour guides” made him think that all was not as it appeared to be
Potemkin village
“In politics and economics, a Potemkin village is any construction (literal or figurative) built solely to deceive others into thinking that a situation is better than it really is.”
This task is made easier when the group that is to be deceived is made up of the sort halfwit the follows John Podesta around.
Check out Paul Hollander’s Political Pilgrims, David. He describes in detail the trips of yearning left-wngers to the USSR and elsewhere, looking for paradise on Earth and finding it in the political dog-and-pony shows put on by their hosts.
The willing suspension of disbelief could not be on greater display.
Chomsky made such a pilgrimage to North Vietnam during the war, which I believe is described in his “American Power and the New Mandarins,” and in some detail in the NY Review of Books, reproduced here.
You mean like Berni Sanders did?
Walter Duranty ace NYTimes reporter was shepherded around Ukraine by his Soviet Communist Minders. He reported that everything was just hunky dory in Ukraine. In the real world 5 million Ukrainians died from the Soviet created famine.
The NYT still refuses to return Duranty’s Pulitzer, even though it admits that everything Duranty wrote was a lie.
most of the pollution is not from power plants. it is from the millions of factories that use coal as an energy source. these range from huge industrial complexes to mom and pop backyard operations. heat is required to work metal. coal and a bellows is a whole lot more affordable than an electric furnace.
look at Detroit. look at the US heartland. an empty wasteland without work. no manufacturing to generate wealth. Chinese air pollution is the result of the factories that have moved from the US to China, not because of electrical production. that is a small part of where the coal is being burned.
I have been to china and have experienced first hand the levels of pollution. In Chongqing people were wearing full face gas masks and I soon found out why. At the end of each day I had to was the dirt out of my eyes because they were so painful. You could not see much more than 50 metres.
The fact that so many Chinese (and Japanese!) wear face masks is in itself no proof of the Chinese pollution. It is done for several hygienic reasons and already for more than a century. See: https://qz.com/299003/a-quick-history-of-why-asians-wear-surgical-masks-in-public/
I have seen articles like that before but it does not explain why in Xi-an the day after the pollution blew away so did every single surgical mask. Nothing cultural there I would say just simple cause and effect. Or does this just fall into the category of hearsay as I have not been paid millions for “research” If anyone does want to pay me I still haven’t been to Harbin, mid January, and would be happy to carry on researching this.
theorichel, Strawman much? Full face gas masks != surgical masks. The big problem with doing that is firstly it leads the people you are arguing with to believe you think they are stupid and secondly it destroys your credibility.
I’ll believe that when I see some ancient Oriental art depicting such. –AGF
What a strange reactions. Did I deny that China has a lot of pollution? I only remembered that in the sixties when I was a young admirer of Mau et al I received magazines and books from China with photos of a happy country with streets full of people on bikes and people wearing face masks. No doubt China produced then a lot dirtier than now, but on a much smaller scale and the environment was only a problem in the polluted capitalist west.
Did you admire Mao before or after you realized he’d murdered 100 million of his fellows, theorichel?
Socialist countries, by the way, have been far more polluting than capitalist ones; the difference between centralist power that can ignore and silence people, and a society operating in freedom.
97 Million. ^¿^
Check your fly, dude. Your Communism is showing. ~¿~
Ha, ha. I was 12 at the time or thereabout. I wore a button with the great chairmans face on it. That startled quite a few people which I thought funny. It took some time before I realized that communists and large scale killing often go together, although I would like to know the date and source of your 100 million claim.
I have lived in Beijing for the last 7 years. While there are people who will wear surgical masks all the time, few do until the AQI goea over 100 and when the AQI goes over about 150 anyone who can afford 3M 9001V masks or better is wearing them (Vog masks are gaining in popularity, too). For 400+ days and sandstorms (we recently pegged the aqi meters at 999 because of pm10 dust paying us a visit from the Gobi desert), I have been known to ride my bike to work wearing a respirator (dual filters-type similar to what pro-painters will wear). I have never seen anyone wearing a full face mask, though some older women will wear full face UV-blocking polarized shields to try to prevent their face from tanning.
I’ve been to Beijing years back and there were many days when the smog is so dense, you can barely see buildings across the street. You go out with a white shirt and come home with a grey shirt. Funny thing about Air Canada to China, landing in Beijing the recorded message played in English, then in French, when 99% of the plane is filled with Chinese.
Does Air Canada, out of Quebec, play the recorded message in French First? (Kind of like the signage in stores)
Bus drivers in Northeast China need an instrument rating to run the streets!!!
“In December 2016, the Center for American Progress brought a group of energy experts to China to find out what is really happening. We visited multiple coal facilities—including a coal-to-liquids plant—and went nearly 200 meters down one of China’s largest coal mines to interview engineers, plant managers, and local government officials working at the front lines of coal in China.”
I’m sure China made a big donation to the Center for American Progress. Just to cover expenses of course.
They went nearly 200 meters into a coal mine?
Criminy, they didn’t get past the front porch.
I’ll guess none of them have ever been under the surface before.
And it helped how?
Made me chuckle.
Probably didn’t want to take them to where the real dirty work happens
It is after all Old Clean Coal
Old Clean Coal
was a merry ole soul
and gave its energy to me
It ran things night
and it ran things day
and it worked without winds out at sea
I suspect that the Center for American Progress, like the Clinton Foundation, is for hire. A tidy, back door contribution and they’ll do whatever you want. Polish your international eco-profile? That’ll be 2 billion yuan, please.
I actually doubt they are quite that for sale.
I mean, if an American Coal company wanted to
hiremake a donation, they would probably turn up their noses.Only Leftists need apply. ~¿~
I actually doubt they are quite that for sale.
I mean, if an American Coal company wanted to
hiremake a donation, they would probably turn up their noses.Only Leftists need apply. ~¿~
Genuine progressives like myself, hate the Center for American Progress. It is a nothing but a shill for the corporatist Democrats. It actually makes perfect sense for these folks who parade as hating C02 but really don’t give a damn about it. Total hypocrites. And yes, they probably made some big bucks on this deal. The owner, John Podesta, is the Clinton advisor famous for the DNC email scandal.
I like how “renewable energy expansion takes time”. It’s only a matter of time, you see. There’s nothing else that could possibly be influencing the Chinese not to build windmills instead of coal plants. Not money, certainly. Nor unreliability, good heavens no. The only downside with renewables is the time it takes to build them…
Sort of like Fusion power. Since at least 1970 (probably earlier) there has be another announcement promising that Fusion power will be generating our electricity within 20 years.
70 years ago they where saying in 50 years.
30 years ago they where saying in 20
Now they are saying 10
It is, progressing. It’s just slower going then many assumed it would be. There have been a lot of dead ends.
The thing is, by now we know it CAN be done. Right now we could build a device that could sustain nuclear fusion (at least for a short time) and use it to produce electricity. We just haven’t perfected it to a point where we could do it economically.
Fusion power today is kind of like where the Space Shuttle was in regards to a true SSTO. You can see where they’re going, and you know they’ll get there eventually, but they still got a lot of works to do.
Have they reached engineering break even yet?
Sounds about like the paradox of Achilles and the tortoise.
Obviously they are aware that the renewable generation they are building and peddling to the rest of the world is rubbish. They can’t allow their own energy infrastructure to be dependent on the same effluent they are spreading to the rest of the world.
The Chinese are building renewable power where it suits them, mainly to bring power to places they cannot get connected to sufficient transmission lines. Interruptible power is better than no power at all.
They were fast enough to create a PV solar panel industry from scratch.
DaveS
Well, they were fast enough to create a PV solar panel industry from the Western world’s politicians’ demand for Chinese-supplied PV solar panels paid for by western taxpayer subsidies. The industry didn’t start from scratch. It started from western taxpayer cash forced from western economies by western politicians to feed the CAGW beast.
Basically, when you can’t explain it, make an excuse for it.
Why would the greens criticize China? They are already communist.
Good point, Alex. 🙂
Yes, watermelons are still Reds at heart…birds of a feather.
But clean coal is possible, and the USA had already gone a long way in making coal-fired plants cleaner by the late 1960s… before the Reds started shutting them all down. “We” already had excellent particulate filters, scrubbers for the trace sulfur and nitrogen byproducts, cooling towers… at least at the plants I was at all familiar with. And all of those approaches had improved considerably in the 1970s.
Then the Reds started shutting down the uranium and petroleum refineries… whip-sawed the electricity generators from coal to oil to nuclear and then natural gas. (As I recall, before the mid-1970s, natural gas was primarily used in more expensive “peaking” units that were described to me as more akin to jet engines than traditional boilers, but it is completely possible I simply misunderstood my father’s descriptions. I used to read through my father’s operations manuals, but these were not in the ones he left.)
Spot on. Peaking generators use aero- derived gas turbine engines to spin the generators. These have been replaced or added on with cogeneration heat recovery or dual cycle to recover waste heat. In doing so, combined cycle efficiency is around 60%.
The issue with gas turbine power is low efficiency or high NOx emissions. Natural gas is nearly free of sulfur, especially the bulk high pressure mains which have no added mercaptan odorant added(domestic natural gas has odorant added for safety).
Calling these people greens is a joke. They are far from being Greens. Much closer to Republicans in drag.
China is reducing its coal fleet plans…
http://energydesk.greenpeace.org/2017/05/16/china-coal-overcapacity-policy-hits-provinces/
(yes its Greenpeace… so follow the link in it to the official chinese govt announcement)
“The Chinese government has ordered the vast majority of its provinces to stop permitting new coal power projects.
According to a statement from the National Energy Administration (NEA), 28 of China’s 31 mainland provinces do not currently have the right financial or environmental conditions to build new coal capacity.”
Meanwhile in India:
https://cleantechnica.com/2017/05/16/gujarat-cancellation-4-gw-power-plant-line-indias-goals-reduce-reliance-upon-coal/
“Gujarat Cancelling 4 Gigawatt Coal Power Plant As India Moves Away From Coal”
Cutting plans from 2100 plants to 2000 plants because the economy isn’t growing as fast as predicted.
Proof positive that China has given up on coal.
Sheesh Griff, is there any lie you won’t repeat over and over again?
Nope …. Griff is a one man lie cornucopia.
I’m suspicious that giffiepoo and engorgio-proboscis are stagnant slime pool clutch cousins.
More loser paid religious believers from the lands of those hated by the gods.
They cut 100 in a 6 month period, including some under way already… they have over capacity and now they’ve banned more coal plant starts in most of China.
what part of that is not a slow down/reduction in future coal?
and if the report quoted above is right all along they’ve been shutting old inefficient coal plant…
100 out of 2100. Big whoop.
They are still planning 2000, but have banned new starts?
Griff, your brain has seized up, please see your handlers for a replacement.
Griff, I don’t think that Greenpeace and Cleantechnica know China very well. From at least Beijing to the north, both east and west, the cities and towns have large, old, co-gen plants that supply steam heat to businesses and apartments and condos. The heat goes on at a certain date, then off on a certain date, no matter the temp.Some of these cities,like Benxi in Lioning province, sit in a valley which causes the pollution to hang in the air for long periods of time. In Beijing, a good of the pollution rolls in from west of the city. That will not change quickly. I just happen to be passing through Beijing and Nanjing to a city south east for a wedding come Sunday.
Well, they are quoting an official Chinese source which you can check
One constant with Griff, he actually believes that anything printed by a government is the truth and can’t be questioned.
He’s a good useful idiot. About the only thing he’s good at.
official Chinese source
=====================
well you can be sure that will be accurate and free of politics.
Griff shouldn’t you be convincing China they don’t need the coal power stations all they need to do is build wind turbines and get everyone to blow. You have a new source of the power and they blow all the pollution away.
I’ll send them a post card.
But I think they are all still working on the ‘all stand on a chair and jump off at the same time’ global destabilisation project…
I haven’t been around for a while Griff how is your immediate Artic Sea Ice catastrophe for this year going? I mean you were going on about the little squiggly line showing that it was going to happen this year. I had a quick look an looks like it’s sort of gone back into the normal slightly decreasing from year to year range.
So is the catastrophe off and can I stop building my Arc?
Not looking so good for the sea ice LdB…
Pacific side melting early, ice thin and low volume; extent high as dispersed ice being blown/drifiting into Atlantic, Baffin Bay to melt.
https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
As always, when reality doesn’t favor him, he picks ever smaller sections of reality to focus on.
Who cares that the arctic as a whole is having one of the slowest melt seasons on record. The Pacific side is melting, so that’s what Griffie will focus on for now.
Don’t feed the troll.
“Not looking so good for the sea ice LdB…
Pacific side melting early, ice thin and low volume; extent high as dispersed ice being blown/drifiting into Atlantic, Baffin Bay to melt.”
Oh good. Our environment is improving. More food, less poverty, more happiness.
The simplest, best, way to clean up the air in cities like Beijing is to build large, centralized, coal-fired electric generating stations. The problem in these polluted cities is widely distributed, unregulated, combustion. That is how they cleaned up notoriously bad air in London. Scrub the power plant emissions and you only have CO2 and trace elements to worry about, (if you want to worry about something)
You still need to worry about the much larger emissions from cooking and heating.
Yah, wouldn’t want the little people to have any independence or privacy. They might become more difficult to herd.
My comment has nothing to do with control and more to do with inefficient cooking and heating sources.
The argument that China has no choice other than to use coal for the time being, because they don’t have access to easily recoverable gas like the USA does, is utter nonsense. Even if China does have more difficulty accessing gas than the USA, if China really wanted to cut CO2 emissions, they could simply expand their already substantial zero emissions nuclear fleet.
China has 20 nuclear power plants under construction (vs 4 in the US). They are planning to build more. China is hoping to nearly double their current nuclear generation (32GW) in the next 3 and a half years. At that rate, they’ll easily pass the US (100GW nuclear generation) within a decade.. Considering that it takes some time and specialized resources to plan, build, and provision a nuclear facility, they are likely already expanding nuclear as fast as is practical..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China.
But, nuclear power production in China doesn’t face the same lengthy and costly process that new generation in the U.S. faces. Since it is a State run regime, the State is in control of the costs. Shoot, they don’t even have to deal with Big Green EcoZealots (they have Tanks for that)
I wonder how well solar plants (pv or thermal) would work in the polluted air, and I’ll bet that windmills wouldn’t be too effective without the wind to blow the pollution away.
If gigantic fans were set up to blow the pollution away then the wind generated by the gigantic fans could also power the windmills.
And the windmills will produce power to run the gigantic fans.
Wheeee – perpetual motion, and with 20% off the top to make solar panels.
We-e-ell, the science is settled!
Sign me up for a million’s worth.
Auto
PS – Mods – yes, you guessed – /SARC.
In Wonderful Widescreen and Glorious Technicolor.
gigantic fans were set up to blow the pollution away
=====================
using power from the coal plants, windmills can be used to blow away pollution rather than generate electricity.
At least they admit that there are “new, lower-emitting coal plants that are more efficient that (sic) anything operating in the United States.” Let’s all start building these clean, efficient, cost-effective coal plants ASAP.
There is a company right here in Colorado Springs which is in the business of globally competitive coal plant emissions scrubbing and described their main competition as Japanese .
Yeah, and Neumann just went under.
Nicholas , thanks for the info . I can believe it . Met the guy running it a while ago . Haven’t bothered pulling up my notes . But the company didn’t sound strong . The comment on the Japanese tek was memorable tho .
This whole story is fundamentally wrong on two key facts.
1. The Chinese plan to create the majority of their base load electricity from Nuclear and hydro, not from real time renewables. Most of the hydro is done. They have 30 nuclear plants in build and plan 300GW of capacity “in the next 10-20 years”. Nuclear and hydro are the dominant replacment for coal.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2011-12/07/content_14223281.htm
2. And the simple fact is that new coal plants have filters/scrubbers to remove the pollutants the old plant’s don’t. That’s all it takes to get “clean” coal. The pools created are a clean up job, but not a problem, but the atmosphere is OK, only CO2 and H2O released up the chimney. Efficieny of open cycle fossil plant’s is pushed to exceed 40%. Only CCGT gas with the high temperature of the secondary heat source can deliver to 60% level. (The exhaust is used to create steam that drives a separate steam turbine in addition to the Gas Turbine’s mechanical energy driving a generator) .
You can put filters on existing coal plants, though the result isn’t as efficient as when they are designed in from the start.
brianricatt, is chinadaily one of China’s ‘free and objective’ newspapers who aren’t under control of the communist Chinese government?
Chinadaily is an English language newspaper. It’s owned by the government, but it appears (or at least used to appear to be — haven’t read it much lately) free to report much stuff reasonably objectively. Don’t expect it to report on power struggles in Beijing, but it’ll tell you a lot of China related stuff in well written English with a minimum of heavy handed propaganda. Here’s a link to the US edition http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/ website. Think of it as a dirty window with a restricted field of view. Maybe not the greatest viewport into China, but probably better than no viewport at all.
So what? RU confusing your opinions with facts, like climate scientists? Did you read the statistics on the number of nuclear plants in build around the World before commenting? To check whether Chinese have this as their strategy you can easily check from the nuclear plants in build globally , and planned. 30 or so in China currently, plan to have more than anyone by 2020, way ahead of everyone else. May I suggest becoming knowledgeable before commenting?
http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/plans-for-new-reactors-worldwide.aspx
ABSTRACT: “In China, now with 36 operating reactors on the mainland, the country is well into the growth phase of its nuclear power program. There were eight new grid connections in 2015, and five in 2016. Over 20 more reactors are under construction, including the world’s first Westinghouse AP1000 units, and a demonstration high-temperature gas-cooled reactor plant. Many more units are planned, including two largely indigenous designs – the Hualong One and CAP1400. China aims to have more nuclear capacity than any country except the USA and France by 2020.”
A lot of coal plants have retrofitted AGCS (Air Quality Control Systems). AQCSs eat up auxiliary power (less to sell on the grid), plant site foot print and gobs of cash, but work as intended removing 1) fly ash 2) SO2 3) NOx 4) mercury. The evaporation ponds are from a lot of sources not just the AQCS.
I have no clue what you mean by “open cycle” but coal plant net heat rates, which is proper jargon for anybody who knows anything about power generation, runs from 11,500 to 8,500 Btu/kWh or 30% to 40%. Highly unlikely that a Rankine design would exceed 40%.
A CCPP sends about 10% up the stack, 30% CTG output, 30% STG output, 30% rejected heat to cooling system.
You need to study the subject more closely before commenting perhaps, then your clue would increase. It’s good to learn new things.
Open cycle is a generation industry standard description for burning fuel and capturing no waste heat. Hence 40% ish thermal efficiency limit for burning gas and coal in boilers, however fancy, with the best technology. However CCGT, as used in most modern natural gas plants, burns the gas in gas turbines/jet engines and produces electrical energy from both mechanically driven turbines as well as the exhaust driving its own thermally efficient (T2-T1 etc.) boilers and steam turbines, hence delivering 60% thermal efficiency. These have been th dominant gas generation technology for at least 20 years in developed countries.
This efficiency overcomes some of the fuel price premium over coal, as does the low plant CAPEX of gas, about $1B per GW, which is about half a coal plant per GW. Also quicker to build and clean. Need a gas supply though.
But this is a lot less environmentally nasty and easy to deliver the fuel once built than coal, obs. Reduces CO2 emissions from coal by 60% directly, 50% over whole supply chain, round nubers.
This is grid generation 101. I invite all readers to do just a little reserach and you will find these are generation basics – for New York states largest electricity source. etc.
How does visiting the “front lines of coal” at a mine make any difference other than spin perception? That’s a red flag in what amounts to a whirlwind PR swing and road trip to write a travelogue report. DC is choked full of these fake research centers with a bias.
I was thinking they could have visited the coal mine in Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry and probably have learned as much .
I was there when I was about 5 and was really impressed with the long elevator ride down to the mine, except I thought there was something wrong with it.
I was back when I was 23 and realized what was “wrong” with it. I was more impressed at how little progress they had made at the coal face. A lot of deja vu there!
The newborn chicks looked unchanged.
I grew up a couple of blocks from the lake in suburban Highland Park so got there a number of times . Great museum — and the message of industrial progress it conveyed .
I liked the vertical slices thru a human attached to the wall of one stairwell .
I thought you were going to say you realized the elevator ride was so long because you went to the top of the museum to get on it .
No one crosses Beijing these days. The global economy is entirely dependent on Chinese GDP growth. Plus, CAP and the Podesta brothers probably feed at the Chinese table.
They certainly enjoyed their Russian visit.
Assuming the claim that new Chinese coal plants are more efficient than coal plants in the US, is true. The the greens should have no trouble with American power companies also replacing older coal plants with new ones.
CAP is telling multiple porkies on multiple levels. Lies couched within lies. Just one example is their use of the word “emissions”. They are conflating actual pollutants, which are responsible for much of their poor air quality with the fake pollution, CO2.
They use a most condescending title: how the bloody hell can they possibly know what I know.
The so-called “Center for American Progress” appears to be the very thing that it isn’t !
It is not a center; it is not American: it is not progress.
Well spotted Eric. Thank you as always.
No, the Center For American Progress is named on the same basis as the American Cancer Society./snark
Why does the media continue to refer to China as communist when they have clearly transitioned to fascist? In fact, I think it’s about time they got rid of their bloody communist flag. I have designed a nice new one for them. 3:5, as all flags should be. http://i.imgur.com/v85dH.gif
I was born in a cave, raised in a small log cabin, and went to school in a one room building.
I have no idea what your flag means.
We keep thinking that the leaders of the left are engaging in discussions of climate change, pollution and the environment because these are the things they care about. Nothing could be further from the truth. Those are just the noble causes that they are using like a heard of Trojan horses. Their real agenda has nothing to do with noble causes. It is all about ideology, power and control.
China has the worst air pollution on the planet, but it is a socialist country. If the left cared about the environment and pollution, they would be continually attacking China for it’s crimes against Gaia. But they don’t, because they don’t really care about Gaia at all. They care about power and political ideology. In this, they are much closer to communist China than the American people, so China gets praised, no matter what they do.
This article makes it very clear what the real agenda of the left is all about.
These people are the phony left. They are corporatist Democrats, owned locks stock and barrel by Wall Street.
Phony left or real left. Both end up killing real people.
The center for american progress [towards socialism] gets some of its funding from Rockefeller and Soros wealth. That explains to me why the communist Chinese are getting a pass on coal.
Another left wing source that funds them is Apple. They can’t afford to build iPhones and computers in America so they off shored manufacturing them to places like China. The result? Apple has over a quarter of a trillion dollars in cash and is keeping it in countries that shield it from paying huge amounts in taxes.
What’s Apple to do with the money but give it to organizations such as the center for american progress…
https://www.americanprogress.org/c3-our-supporters/
The left has proudly taken the credit for demonizing the coal industry, and they lost millions of votes because of it, look how well it turned out for the Democrats.
This article from CAP might be the first signal that the left will move away from demonizing the coal industry, they want those voters back.
I sincerely doubt that. Once a demon, always a demon.
If they move away from demonizing coal, they risk losing the eco-looney voters.
Yea, I know that these voters would never vote for the Republican, but they can stay home.
Why should any company pay more in taxes than they are legally obligated to pay?
They are corporatist Democrats. It is no surprise they would write an article like this. Totally phony when it comes to anything like FDR democrats who at least espouse traditional Democratic values.
Such as stealing from others so that you don’t have to worry about working for a living.
Funny how CAP applauds in China what it opposes in the US: replacement of older less efficient plants with new, more efficient ones, as well as opposing upgrades to existing plants
A possible reason is that it’s faster for a nation to ‘develop’ (progress towards a modern society) with fossil fuels. Wouldn’t be surprised if this is a way for china to ‘converge’ towards us as we ‘contract’ our rate of economic growth.
Another possible reason is that the CAP is far left Soros and Rockefeller funded and simply likes socialism and communism.
I found the Hockey Stick . It’s in China’s CO2 emissions :
http://cosy.com/y17/CrispChinaHockeyStick.jpg
from David Crisp: Measuring atmospheric CO2 from space – 24 April 2015 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYyhMQzcVlY .
The last little blip of growth rate is one thing (2012 – 2013) but from Y2K (2000 – 2013) figures are quite different
India has a 100% increase
Europe has an 8% decrease
USA also has an 8% decrease
China has a 230% increase
Bob Armstrong, excellent graph.
China’s spike in CO2 occurred shortly after we gave China permeant normalized trade relations (PNTR).
It also is timed nicely with the beginning of the largest ever amount of lost manufacturing jobs in recorded history as shown in the St Louis Federal graph of manufacturing jobs link below:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MANEMP
Does anybody remember back in the 90’s when Clinton was president, the Chinese communist government was caught giving illegal contributions to the DNC and Clinton? Before this occurred, Clinton was against PNTR, then he changed his mind after the contributions and was in favor of PNTR. To me, this appears to be nothing but simple political payback. The result was a royal economic screwing for America as it resulted in millions of lost good paying jobs.
Don’t quite remember the same rabid media coverage when this came out as I’m seeing today with Trump/Russia…
I’m ashamed to be a European, we are clearly not doing enough.
The detail in the actual report doesn’t support the claims in the press release. They flat-out admit they can’t get unit-level data for smaller Chinese units (< 600MW, which is a lot of them) and two of the three sources used don't report CO2 emissions. The third source (CoalSwarm) estimates it from other technical data. The report also admits that estimate is based on the 2013 global capacity factor of 59.3% while the 2016 actual US value was 52.7% and China was 47.5%. Generally, a lower capacity factor will imply lower fuel efficiency as well, meaning greater emissions per MWH.
So they are comparing reliable and complete data including CO2 emissions for 100% of US units against estimated emissions for only the larger and newer Chinese ones, based on less than totally reliable data.
Clarification: I was referring to the “Research Note on US and Chinese Coal-Fired Power Data” link.
From the article: “The nation [China] is on track to overdeliver on the emissions reduction commitments it put forward under the Paris climate agreement, and making coal cleaner is an integral part of the process.”
That’s funny. China’s emissions reduction committment under the Paris Agreement equals a big, fat Zero until the year 2030.
“Everything You Think You Know About Coal in China Is Wrong”
Translation: “Coal is OK as long as western countries aren’t using it”
No, I didn’t read the article because it’s probably full of bullshit and the purpose of the article is only to push the subtext of the headline anyway.