Guest essay by Eric Worrall
All that potential to embarrass the USA not being realised…
China is positioned to lead on climate change as the US rolls back its policies
September 12, 2019 9.05pm AESTKelly Sims Gallagher Professor of Energy and Environmental Policy and Director, Center for International Environment and Resource Policy at The Fletcher School, Tufts University
Fang ZhangChina Research Coordinator and Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Tufts University
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We study many aspects of China’s energy and climate policy, including industrial energy efficiency and reforestration. Our analysis indicates that if China fully executes existing policies and finishes reforming its electric power sector into a market-based system, its carbon dioxide emissions are likely to peak well before its 2030 target.
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China’s climate portfolio
Over the last decade China has positioned itself as a global leader on climate action through aggressive investments and a bold mix of climate, renewable energy, energy efficiency and economic policies. As one of us (Kelly Sims Gallagher) documents in the recent book “Titans of the Climate,” China has implemented more than 100 policies related to lowering its energy use and greenhouse gas emissions.…
China has added vast wind and solar installations to its grid and developed large domestic industries to manufacture solar panels, batteries and electric vehicles. In late 2017 it launched a national emissions trading system, which creates a market for buying and selling carbon dioxide emissions allowances. This was a profoundly symbolic step, given that the United States still has not adopted a national market-based climate policy.
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Even as China made big investments in wind and solar power in recent years, it also kept building coal plants. Power sector reform will help reduce the resulting overcapacity by stopping planned additions and encouraging market competition.
But success is not guaranteed. The affected companies are giant state-owned enterprises. There is political resistance from owners of existing coal-fired power plants and from provinces that produce and use a lot of coal. The current U.S.-China trade war is slowing China’s economic growth and spurring rising concerns about employment, which could further complicate the reform process.
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The professor leaves out a few details, like China’s commitment to massively increase their already colossal coal fleet, and their tendency to classify synthetic gas made from coal as climate friendly gas projects.
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I’m not even going to bother reading the article. China promised in the Paris Agreement to CONTINUE INCREASING EMISSIONS UNTIL 2030 with no promise to decrease in the future. So, what is the “if” you are dreaming of? You have to invent fake news to be published? If you want to be published, then open the eyes of the world that who really promised what in Paris.
“China has added vast wind and solar installations to its grid …”
The last I heard, the new wind turbines were disconnected because they were disrupting the grid, and wind-and-solar are only being added to the grid if they can prove their cost-effectiveness before construction.
Shame on you for using a photo of the air in a Shandong Province city polluted by the annual crop waste burning event, which lasts for about 5 days each year, typically starting on the 15th of October, and then under it, writing about coal fired power plant emissions.
This is a trick used by the likes of the PBS, the BBC and Greenpeace, not writers that are knowledgeable and honest.
Look at the date and the colour of the smoke. This is China’s equivalent of the Indian Brown Cloud and comes 100% from the burning of renewable biomass.
It is misleading and unfair and a deliberate misrepresentation to use the effects of a so-called savior renewable fuel and claim it shows an effect of the fossil fuels they are supposed to supplant.
Here’s the sitrep in a nutshell: With the exception of the US (so far, and only thanks to Trump), the developed world has pretty much gone full retard on climate and energy. The developing countries, including China pretend to be onboard the climate retard train, but only to the extent that they see it as a way to benefit from it. China is the biggest poser of all. While the climate retarded developed countries are busy knocking themselves on the head energy-wise with hammers, China both pretends to do likewise, while handing out hammers (or selling them). Win-win.
CO2 is certainly not their problem; not our problem.
Th professor is wrong – China has halted all wind projects due to their disruption of the grid. China is building quite a few nuclear plants and will build more, something the professor somehow missed. Solar is likewise viewed as a disrupter of the grid due to its unreliability.
If Kelly Sims Gallagher’s pappy had had boobies, he would have been her mammy.
Thanks for sharing all of your experiences!
My Tufts degree just lost half of its value.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-49567197, can anyone elaborate on this?
Meanwhile, back in the real world, China is poised to see the same thing that Germany is seeing in 2019; an 87% drop in new onshore wind farm construction concurrent with the end of subsidies.
Reuters, Sustainable Business, May 24, 2019:
“The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said tariffs paid to onshore wind projects will be cut to as low as 0.29 yuan ($0.0420) per kWh in 2020, while grid price parity will apply to all new projects from Jan. 1 2021.”
And if my aunt had knuts she’d be my uncle.
I love how smug leftist propaganda sites are given pompous self righteous names such as “the conversation”, when that conversation is rather one sided. The obviously don’t know what a conversation is. “The indoctrination” would be more accurate.
Climate leader? Those climate nuts never leave out any turd destined to embarrass them. If China cut its coal consumption by half, it would be the biggest coal consumer of the planet. Hell, it would remain nr. one even if they cut to 25% of current consumption. If they cut coal down to 10% of now, they would still be nr 3 worldwide. China is a coal monster without equal. Calling China a potential climate leader and the US the laggard is beyond lying. It’s criminal.
China has overcapacity in solar panel manufacturing. And, no doubt in wind also. Plus, a real need for energy independence given its dependency on imported oil across sea lanes protected (controlled) by the US Navy. Energy independence and maximum employment are China’s drivers. Nothing else. And, surely not saving the planet. China has stopped subsidizing electric cars. And, thus, EV sales have fallen.
Tuft’s University has a Confucian Institute also. Surprise, surprise! Virtue signaling for a donor.
And if China stopped being the world’s factory, mine, refinery, blast furnace, and plastics plant ……it would move somewhere else long before the uninformed realized it had even moved out of the U.S. jobs base to China.
mmmm, all because “leading on climate change” whatever that means is sooooooooooo important. We wouldnt want to be left behind, oh the ignominy!
China has positioned itself as a global leader on climate action through aggressive investments and a bold mix of climate, renewable energy, energy efficiency and economic policies??????
OK, I get it. He lives on a different planet.
As Grandma used to say, “If ifs and buts were Soup and nuts then every day’d be Christmas.
China is only cutting back on coal because their economy is coming to a standstill. The Chinese miracle is over and while their future may be catastrophic or they may grow slowly the period of high growth is over.