From the NYT
1,600 new coal-fired power plants are planned or under construction in 62 countries.
When China halted plans for more than 100 new coal-fired power plants this year, even as President Trump vowed to “bring back coal” in America, the contrast seemed to confirm Beijing’s new role as a leader in the fight against climate change.
But new data on the world’s biggest developers of coal-fired power plants paints a very different picture: China’s energy companies will make up nearly half of the new coal generation expected to go online in the next decade.
These Chinese corporations are building or planning to build more than 700 new coal plants at home and around the world, some in countries that today burn little or no coal, according to tallies compiled by Urgewald, an environmental group based in Berlin. Many of the plants are in China, but by capacity, roughly a fifth of these new coal power stations are in other countries.
Over all, 1,600 coal plants are planned or under construction in 62 countries, according to Urgewald’s tally, which uses data from the Global Coal Plant Tracker portal. The new plants would expand the world’s coal-fired power capacity by 43 percent.
The fleet of new coal plants would make it virtually impossible to meet the goals set in the Paris climate accord, which aims to keep the increase in global temperatures from preindustrial levels below 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit.
Electricity generated from fossil fuels like coal is the biggest single contributor globally to the rise in carbon emissions, which scientists agree is causing the Earth’s temperatures to rise.
“Even today, new countries are being brought into the cycle of coal dependency,” said Heffa Schücking, the director of Urgewald.
The United States may also be back in the game. On Thursday, Mr. Trump said he wanted to lift Obama-era restrictions on American financing for overseas coal projects as part of an energy policy focused on exports.
“We have nearly 100 years’ worth of natural gas and more than 250 years’ worth of clean, beautiful coal,” he said. “We will be dominant. We will export American energy all over the world, all around the globe.”
hat tip\The Global Warming Policy Foundation
And what was the EPA Clean Power Plan supposed to accomplish? A 32% reduction in CO2 output from US power generation (not just coal). The US is responsible for about 16% of the world’s CO2 output. Power generation represents about 31% of US CO2 production. Therefore – 16% * 31% * 32% = 1.6%. CPP will reduce the global CO2 output by 1.6%.
China and India will cancel that out with their next dozen coal fired power plants.
Screw up the entire power industry, increase the price of electricity and not remotely solve the imaginary climate change problem. Nothing but political posturing! Wasting resources on a pointless exercise is truly harmful to the environment.
BTW since the utilities have been retiring older inefficient coal fired generators ( about 8.5 % of the existing capacity) with more efficient NG combined cycle designs power generation’s share of CO2 is now less than that of the transportation sector.
As Carl Sagan observed, we have been bamboozled, hustled, conned by those wishing to steal and waste our money and rob us of our liberties. Hardly a new agenda.
This needs to be translated into other metrics for the public to understand, like the equivalent of 100 billion “feel good” PR statements about going green, or 500 million solar rooftop homes, or 600 million windmills, or 8 trillion hollow Paris Agreement pledges by mayors and city councils.
I live close to the tracks in BC. Every day I see hundreds of cars filled with coal heading for export to China and those power plants.
We have a large CO2 tax here and it’s getting larger now that the Greens control our legislature.
It seems so hypocritical!
As I have proven in my on-line post “Climate Change Deciphered”, the control knob for Earth’s climate is the amount of dimming sulfur dioxide aerosols emissions in the atmosphere.
The burgeoning construction of new coal fired power plants will result in increased global SO2 emissions, so that we can now look forward to cooler temperatures, even though harmless CO2 emissions continue to rise.
The concern about increasing CO2 emissions is much ado about nothing!
Burl Henry July 3, 2017 at 7:06 am
“…the control knob for Earth’s climate is the amount of dimming sulfur dioxide aerosols emissions in the atmosphere.”
Well, you’re wrong. It’s Q = U A dT
Collected over 2,600!! views on my WriterBeat papers which were also sent to the ME departments of several prestigious universities (As a BSME & PE felt some affinity.) and a long list of pro/con CAGW personalities and organizations.
NOBODY has responded explaining why my methods, calculations and conclusions in these papers are incorrect. BTW that is called SCIENCE!!
SOMEBODY needs to step up and ‘splain my errors ‘cause if I’m correct (Q=UAdT runs the atmospheric heat engine) – that’s a BIGLY problem for RGHE.
Step right up! Bring science.
http://writerbeat.com/articles/14306-Greenhouse—We-don-t-need-no-stinkin-greenhouse-Warning-science-ahead-
http://writerbeat.com/articles/15582-To-be-33C-or-not-to-be-33C
http://writerbeat.com/articles/16255-Atmospheric-Layers-and-Thermodynamic-Ping-Pong
Nickolas Schroeder:
Apparently you did not bother to read my on-line post.
In it, i identify more than 3 dozen instances since 1850 where reduced global SO2 emissions resulted in temporary increases in average global temperatures, due to increased insolation.
Each instance was due to a business recession, or to “Clean Air” reductions in SO2 emissions.
A simple empirical model, but it perfectly explains and matches what has been happening to our climate, and completely eliminates the possibility of any additional warming due to greenhouse gasses..
If aerosols were the control knob, the areas closest to the aerosol producers would show the greatest changes.
This is not happening.
MarkW:
“If aerosols were the control knob, the areas closest to the aerosol producers would show the greatest changes. This is not happening”
On the contrary, it IS happening. The GISS global temperature maps show that the industrialized northern hemisphere is showing the greatest temperature changes. This is most obvious from their accompanying graphical representations of the temperatures of the two hemispheres..
Don’t lose sight of the fact there is 100% correlation with temporary increases in average global temperatures whenever global SO2 emissions are reduced.
“Electricity generated from fossil fuels like coal is the biggest single contributor globally to the rise in carbon emissions, which scientists agree is causing the Earth’s temperatures to rise.”
Should read:
Electricity generated from fossil fuels like coal is the biggest single contributor globally to the rise in carbon dioxide emissions, which a few “scientists” claim is causing the Earth’s temperatures to rise.
CO2 is causing the temperature to rise. The argument is over how much. A few tenths of a degree or a degree or two.
China is the leader in population boom and purloined human organ sales.
This is where China “leads”.
The Main Stream Media has always admired despots.
Leftys love Leftys.
I remember hearing on the US news in the 70’s just how wonderful was the USSR. With their 100% employment and their happy children and their superior military.
Leftys love Leftys.
Our Prime minister in Canada, Trudeau 2.0 emphasis on 0, has stated he admires the Chinese government and how they get things done. He deplores democracy just like his old man.
“Even today, new countries are being brought into the cycle of coal dependency,” said Heffa Schücking, the director of Urgewald.
That’s just awful Heffa, awfull. Coal dependency, wow, sounds like some sort of addiction. What words would you use to describe life predicated on darkness at night, cooking with dung spewing smoke into your immediate surroundings, raw sewage in your immediate area, no clean water or running water, no refrigeration or freezers to preserve food until it is needed, no heat when it is cold, no cooling when it is hot?
I’ll tell you the words Heffa. A short brutal life.
It’s dung dependency.
I don’t like using “planned” activities as a gauge. Governments and corporations love to plan and send out press releases for virtue signaling. Rarely do their actions follow their plans.
It appears reality will eventually conquer fake science, fake engineering & fake news (at least for poor undeveloped countries and for China as China does whatever makes sense for China).
Why would there be more than 1600 planned coal plants?
1. Country in question needs reliable 24/7 access to cheap electricity.
2. Country in question is undeveloped (dirt poor) and hence does not have access to local cheap natural gas.
3. Coal can be easily transported via water and rail.
4. LNG has been historically and is predicted in the future, to be roughly 2 to 2 ½ times the cost of coal, for regions that do not have access to cheap local natural gas
5. China has four times more reserves of coal than the US.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/electricity-gap-developing-countries-energy-wood-charcoal/
“Forget Paris”!! I say forget the very notion of “Agreement”. Agreements are weapons today, used by some to get immediate “Virtue” points (“look at me, I’m such a good and noble person”) and by others to finesse and handicap the serious players (people that will do what they say) because they themselves have no intention of doing a damn thing (“catch me if you can”). Just think of Charlie Brown as the US and Lucy(rest of the world) and the football. Now envision Charlie is Trump. He advances to kick the ball. Lucy is chuckling to her self and thinks “these Americans are so clue-less” and BAMM, Charlie administers a pefect kick to Lucy’s backside, picks up the ball and says: “Good Grief! I told her ‘America First’ ”
If we’re going to keep playing the virtue game and make agreements then we should make sure they are measureable and implmented immediately. No one can make a comitment to do something in a year or more because no one will remember what they promised. 3-5 years out are a joke. Information and data is growing exponentially. In 3 years 2020 the total information in the world will be 44 trillion gigabytes. (4.4 trillion in 2003. according to >> http://www.infodocket.com/2014/04/16/how-large-is-the-digital-universe-how-fast-is-it-growing-2014-emc-digital-universe-study-now-available/<<😉 It will double every 2 years. Unless you print the Paris agreement and keep a copy you probably won't be able to find it in 2020, even with Google. Remember Kyoto? Google "Kyoto + global" you get 31.7 million hits. Ask the man on the street and he'll probably think it is a car.
Ask the same person about Paris today or 2020 and the best you can hope for is "in the spring" or Casablanca's "we'll always have Paris".
..Go Charlie Brown, errr, I mean Trump !! ( I always hated Lucy as a child) LOL
ETF stocks to buy: KOL (global coal), URA (global uranium), UNG (US nat. gas, coal plants can burn nat. gas) and DLNG (LNG shipper, high dividend).
The article fails to mention that a lot of old coal plants will be retired. That will make the 1600 number a lot smaller in reality.
In reality, 1600 new coal plants is 1600 new coal plants, no matter how many old ones are retired. If I said there were a million babies born in a given time period would it make sense to point out that some people died during the same time period? This would change the number of babies being born by zero. The point is not the net number of coal fired power plants. The point is that many of the signatories to various climate pacts are building coal plants instead of “alternative energy sources”. Two reasons. One, when they signed those climate pacts they had no intention of paying anything but lip service to the pact, and two, they are unable to find viable cost effective “alternative power sources” because if they could, they would build those instead.
Thank you for acknowledging that there will not be 1600 NET new coal plants in operation. The point is that the NET number of plants is relevant to CO2 emissions, not the number of new plants. Of course it assumes that the new plants are the same size as the retired ones, correct?
Luis read Daves reply to you again but this time slowly.
nc, let me make it simple, so that even you can grasp the concept. The “1600” number is bogus without context. As an example, suppose they retire 10 500MW plants, and build 20 100 MW plants. The headline would read “Forget Paris, 10 new coal power plants built around the world.” The reality would be the 20 smaller plants burn less coal than the 10 big ones. Without context, the “1600” number has no meaning.
…Ummm, 1,600 new builds equals 100 not being built ?? Only with liberal math !! D’OH !
The claim is that coal is dead.
1600 new plants disproves the claim.
The evidence is in, despite the claims by the activists that renewables are the future, people are still fully committed to coal fueled power plants.
Over all, 1,600 coal plants are planned or under construction in 62 countries, according to Urgewald’s tally, which uses data from the Global Coal Plant Tracker portal. The new plants would expand the world’s coal-fired power capacity by 43 percent.
Embedded above there is a link to the Global Coal Tracker http://endcoal.org/tracker/. Look up China. Lots of multicolored circles. As displayed, it is difficult to read, at best.
Go to the checkboxes and click them all off.
Then click Retired.
Leaving retired on, click on Announced.
Then Pre-permit development
Then Permitted
Then construction
Then Shelved
Then Cancelled
Then Operating.
How can a coal plant be operating, retired, cancelled, shelved yet be under construction, permitted. Pre-permitted, and announced.
Lets make it simple. Operating, retired, and under construction, at the same time? How can that be? Which is it?
Because most sites on the chart mostly contain all categories, how can one use this map to explain anything that may or may not going on. With the proper clicks one can paint any picture, good or bad, in what’s going on vis a vis coal plants in China.
Quite worthless.
If you click on the small circles, they expand…
Try it with Australia.
Reports of the death of Coal are grossly exaggerated:
http://www.mining.com/top-3-coal-countries-produced-6-coal-january-may/
The radiant greenhouse effect upon which the AGW conjecture is based has not been observed on Earth or anywhere else in the solar system. The radiant greenhouse effect is hence fiction as must be the AGW conjecture. If CO2 really affected climate then one would expect that the increase in CO2 over the past 30 years would have caused at least a measureable increase in the dry lapse rate in the troposphere but that has not happened. There is plenty of scientific rational to support the idea that the climate sensivity of CO2 is really zero so increasing or decreaseing the amount of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere will have no effect on climate. So in terms of climate it will not matter now many more coal fired power plants are fired up and brought on line.
China the leader in Climate Change. A Limerick.
Is China’s “clean energy” coal?
Use half of the world’s is their goal.
It pollutes with its soot
but they don’t give a hoot.
Their aim is for world-wide control.
https://lenbilen.com/2017/07/03/china-the-leader-in-climate-change-a-limerick/
“China buys coal from Australia. It’s cheaper to transport coal by ship than by railroad.”
And what did China learn? It needed to build a lot of nukes.
This is 1600 coal plants which ‘might’ get built… a lot of them are in the announced or pre-permit stage – and just won’t make it to construction.
There’s one shown in Scotland, for heavens sake… not going to happen. Three more in Germany – same.
The ‘planned’ plant in the US won’t get built…
And so on.
So China is making the world a better place by providing more energy and wealth. Means less hunger, poverty and war, etc.
And so is India, by installing an additional 160GW of wind and solar power by 2022
https://phys.org/news/2017-06-solar-power-price-slump-shadow.html
“…the contrast seemed to confirm Beijing’s new role as a leader in the fight against climate change…”
Only dolts like the NYT bought this. And they stood behind it while we told them otherwise.