Energy
Environmental activists have called China as the world’s de facto “leader” on fighting global warming, but energy experts don’t think the communist nation will actually do much to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels.
The Energy Information Administration (EIA) projects that while China will peak its coal use as soon as next year, “coal will remain an important component of China’s energy mix, peaking at nearly 4,400 billion kilowatthours (bkWh) by 2030.”
China has been replacing older, less efficient coal plants and even delaying coal projects until after 2020 as part of the government’s crackdown on air pollution. However, China still operates 1,000 gigawatts of coal-fired power capacity, and that number isn’t expected to change much in the coming decades.
Coal’s share of the Chinese electricity market is expected to shrink dramatically, but that’s a relative measure. The EIA doesn’t expect Chinese coal use to change much in absolute terms by 2040.
However, there’s a lot of uncertainty in EIA projections. The EIA bases its outlook on current policies, including China’s latest five-year plan and the country’s plan to comply with the Paris climate accord.
China promised to peak greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and increase its use of energy from non-fossil fuel energy sources. China wants to get 20 percent of its energy from solar, wind, nuclear and hydro power by 2030.
China announced its Paris accord ambitions alongside former President Barack Obama in late 2014. One year later, China joined nearly 200 other countries in signing the accord.
President Trump announced in June that he would withdraw the U.S. from the Paris accord, largely on grounds that it favored China and India. Many politicians and environmentalists now see China as the “leader” of the global warming crusade.
China currently gets 72 percent of its electricity from coal plants and is ranked as the top carbon dioxide-emitting country in the world.
China and India both increased coal use in the first half of 2017, and China has spent billions of dollars financing coal projects outside its borders.
China signed a joint venture with Pakistan that is “expected to spend around $15 billion over the next 15 years to build close to a dozen coal power plants of varying sizes around the country,” Reuters reported in May.
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The idea that converting from fossil fuels electricity power plants to hydroelectric or nuclear is just as bad as solar and wind. The creation of Cement is the second largest contributor of Carbon Dioxide to the actual burning of the fossil fuels. Add the burning of fossil fuels mining and transporting the raw materials to the kiln that roasts it and then the mixing with sand, rock and water to the transportation of it to the site to pour it, where it was first prepared by construction using fossil fuels. Each step adding more CO2 now to reduce future CO2 emissions. It takes adding more CO2 in every type of construction of electricity generators in the present for future use. The thought that they are saving the planet is bass acward. When this added CO2 is actually helping the environment become greener and the miniscule warming their alarmist scare tactics scream as doom and gloom fail to recognize the benefits they are doing by increasing CO2 now. Just like they created the most CO2 INCREASE by forcing the automotive industry to convert Carbon Monoxide into Carbon Dioxide to reduce smog here in the USA and yet most countries do not do it and it took some countries a decade later to do it.
As a side note… I was looking at a few alarmist websites and they actually say that Carbon Dioxide is killing plant’s. Not fertilizer. But poisonous to plant’s. Sorry my phone makes it hard to give link’s.
Enviromental activists are useful idiots for Chinese government
USSR helped them a lot for a reason.
my biggest problem with the Graph at the top from the EIA isn’t the fact it projects a sudden major change in trend lines starting next year, (although that is stupid) it’s that it also shows a sudden change in trend of how much energy is supposed to be produced TOTAL.
The Historic part of the graph shows a continuous trend of adding about 100 GW each year. But for the Projected part of the graph it drops to adding about 30 GW each year.
Srsly? We’re supposed to believe that after a decade of constant growth China is suddenly going to drop to a growth rate 1/3rd of that? For the next 25 years, at least?
I know there’s been speculation that China has been pushing their growth faster then they can sustain it, but that is a HUGE drop, especially for a nation that still has a significantly lower level of Average Energy per Capita compared to many developed nations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electricity_consumption
Personally, I’d be shocked if we see a drop below 70GW added per Year, at least for the next decade.
That EIA graphic of China’s electric generation by source is surely pure fantasy.
If you remove wind and solar lines, it suggests that total baseload dispatchable power sources will only rise from 1.4 TW to 1.55 TW between 2017 and 2040.
China’s leaders are not that stupid. That EIA graphic was made to sell a false narrative, and is thus purely propaganda.
I think they care. At least about the continued propaganda, because, near as I can tell, the only ‘solutions’ involve hamstringing their biggest global competitors, with their own compromise being that they promise they will really, truly, seriously, hamstring themselves sometime in the future.
China is only too happy to play the “carbon” game. And laughs all the way to the bank at Western stupidity.
The Greens adoration of China , despite an awful environment record let alone human rights one. Merely shows their Watermelon nature, anything not Western = good,if it can be viewed as anti-west even better.
Odd that if has claimed AGW is the most important thing ever with no time to lose. They would put political ideology ahead of the planet.
“… energy experts don’t think the communist nation will actually do much to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels.”
Could we perhaps stop pretending that China is somehow a “communist” nation?
sure, as soon as we stop pretending that the Communist Party isn’t communist, that is, communist isn’t communist. Well. Why not.
Just because China and it’s methods of enforcing conformity reminds you of the Democratic Party in the US doesn’t mean they aren’t communists.
@chilemike
Heh…now that’s funny I don’t care who ya are!
I equate it with what President Trump said about Venezuela. “It’s not that socialism failed. It’s that it was faithfully implemented.” Socialism is Socialism…Communism, Democratic Socialism and Fascism are still based on a totalitarian Centralization of Government. And frankly the USA has not been a Free Enterprise system since FDR brought Fascism here with his New Deal and it has morphed into full Fascism since then.
I equate it with what President Trump said about Venezuela. “It’s not that socialism failed. It’s that it was faithfully implemented.” Socialism is Socialism…Communism, Democratic Socialism and Fascism are still based on a totalitarian Centralization of Government. And frankly the USA has not been a Free Enterprise system since FDR brought Fascism here with his New Deal and it has morphed into full Fascism since then.
China simply has a different approach to all this mess. In their long recorded history they have been through “climate change” several times. They have learned that there is little we can do about climate change regardless of the cause. They realize the best approach to climate change is to be able to adapt, prepare for whatever climate change might bring. Therefore it is better to be a rich nation than a poor or deeply indebted nation. Meanwhile in the USA since WWII we have moved millions of people to the coast, allowed people to build in well known flood plains, and generally move into harms way. In 1959 Florida had 3 million people, most of whom lived in Miami, Tampa, Jacksonville, and Pensacola. Today there are over 20 million residents and generally double that during the height of tourist season. Yet we know from Japan’s example, you can build to standards that withstand regular hits by cat 3 and above tropical cyclones. Hurricane Andrew demonstrated that we just weren’t paying attention. Remember Reagan’s most hate by the environmentalists Secretary of Interior, James Watt. He tried to warn against the problems we have seen manifest the past six weeks. He was shouted down.
You cannot say that “They have learned that there is little we can do about climate change regardless of the cause. “. The whole Chinese mythical history is about coping with impossible challenge. They tamed flood of mighty rivers, build road through mountain a stone after another, constructed the great wall, and recently build the Three Gorges Dam.
If they thought that climate change was a real danger to them (them, not the “planet”) , and could be prevented by some sort of great work, they would do it. But, first thing first, and for sure climate change is low, low, low in their priority. They have to cope with current climate, first.
I would simply refer my honourable friends to the answer and graphic I gave earlier, re who is building all the nuclear power stations.
Also this if I didn’t before: You can believe what you like, but this is what their declared strategy is, they are investing heavilly in secure refined Uranium supplies as well, to ensure they can fuel the expanded fleet as it grows, and will soon be selling their own PWR copies to the developing world, such a Kazakstan as mentioned below, how the world will become developed by default of the Malthusian green’s extremist beliefs – using nuclear power from China and Russia, under IAEA rules and inspections.
Both regimes are still developing internally so are well placed to help the 3rd World culturally, and are not hamstrung in the devloping countries by massive bureaucracies scared of every move or change, based on problems that have already been understood and ameliorated in the Westren designs they have built, improved and copied in the Chinese case, and they happy to deal with the selfish nonsenses of the privileged “green” elites of 1st World colonisers, who are quickly, and rightly, suppressed.
The few in the WEst will not hold back the progess to health, wealth and happiness of Billions, using all the nuclear energy and GM crops you can eat. They have no power or influence where this will happen fastest and with most impact on human development.
The limits to growth are what humans care to engineer, and infant survival has already taken care of birth rate increase, we just have to get to a developed 10 or 11 billion, well fed and powered.
Renewables are self evidently not energetic enough energy sources to deliver this, expesnive as real time supply and and massivly overpriced with storage. Facts of physics, which Russia and China have understood long ago.
I expect China to start burning a lot more gas, if they can find it and once the pipeline infrastructure is built, as the WEst has done. Coal mines are a convenient way to kick off an industrial economy, fuelling nearby power stations, then by road and rail. Gas pipelines are so much better with no transport links required, no waste products, 60% less C02/MWh and no significant emissions of any polluting or toxic gasses, just CO2 and water vapour, essential for life through the carbon and water cycles. etc.
The West did coal until the mid-late 20th Century, when we could finally clean our cities. The moors in the Penines made your clothes black if you went for walk in the heather, etc. The Third World will have less of that getting to where we are, with cleaner coal, plus the CCGT gas and nuclear technology we have already developed and improved, and they will develop further. The Russians already have the first serious production fast fission/ low spent fuel/high burn fission reactor. etc. The world won’t wait for the scared of progress, whose lucky privileged deny what they have to others without it. etc.
Here:
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2017-08/01/content_30312378.htm
and Here:
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2011-12/07/content_14223281.htm