Guest essay by Eric Worrall
As China scrambles to recover from a severe coal shortage caused by Xi Jinping’s “non-negotiable” climate directives, their coal, gas and electricity buying spree is triggering shortages in India, Europe and Britain, and perhaps even the USA.
What has caused China’s electricity shortages, and is Beijing’s carbon-neutral goal solely to blame?
Sixteen of mainland China’s 31 provincial-level jurisdictions are rationing electricity as they race to meet Beijing’s annual emissions reduction targetsThe price of thermal coal, used for power generation, has been soaring all year and hit new highs in recent weeks
Orange Wang and Cissy Zhou
Published: 9:00am, 28 Sep, 2021Non-negotiable carbon reduction targets have forced many local provincial governments in China to impose rushed measures such as widespread power cuts, although an urgent shortage of coal has also emerged as a likely reason for the power supply crunch that is sweeping the nation.
China’s power supply crisis ratcheted up a notch over the past week with more than half of the country enduring power cuts, making it one of the most extreme examples of energy rationing in the nation’s history, especially considering the impact it is having on regular households.
Power cuts are commonplace in China and are usually restricted to industrial users, but their frequency has risen since the second half of last year and have now been extended to households.
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Last month, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the country’s top economic planning agency, criticised the “energy consumption intensity” of nine provinces – Guangdong, Jiangsu, Yunnan, Fujian, Shaanxi, Guangxi, Ningxia, Qinghai and Xinjiang – for actually increasing their energy use instead of reducing it. Following the warning, the nine provinces stepped up their efforts to cut power, with little impact felt by customers.
“An additional 10 provinces failed to meet their progress targets in the reduction rate of energy consumption intensity, and the situation of national energy saving is very severe,” NDRC spokeswoman Meng Wei said.
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“Xi’s dual carbon targets are politically non-negotiable. Accordingly, they have become a catalyst for all manner of policy – certainly including the power generation and consumption controls,” said Cory Combs, an analyst with consultancy firm Trivium China.
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Read more: https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3150313/what-has-caused-chinas-electricity-shortages-and-beijings
India’s coal crisis is also worsening – largely as a result of China’s last minute scramble for adequate stocks of coal and gas to survive the Winter (h/t JoNova).
India’s coal crisis brews as power demand surges, record global prices bite
Reuters / Oct 4, 2021, 22:20 IST
CHENNAI: Indian utilities are scrambling to secure coal supplies as inventories hit critical lows after a surge in power demand from industries and sluggish imports due to record global prices push power plants to the brink.
Over half of India’s 135 coal-fired power plants have fuel stocks of less than three days, government data shows, far short of federal guidelines recommending supplies of at least two weeks.
Prices of power-generation fuels are surging globally as electricity demand rebounds with industrial growth, tightening supplies of coal and liquefied natural gas.
India is competing against buyers such as China, the world’s largest coal consumer, which is under pressure to ramp up imports amid a severe power crunch.
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Read more: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/indias-coal-crisis-brews-as-power-demand-surges-record-global-prices-bite/articleshow/86760074.cms
How is all this affecting Europe? Europe has recently been experiencing energy supply shocks, because of their over dependence on unreliable wind power. In desperation they’ve turned to Russian gas – but the supply of Russian gas is surprisingly unavailable.
Russia has been accused of playing political games with energy supply to Europe. But a more plausible explanation for why Russia has reduced the flow of gas to Europe, is that Europe is not their most important customer.
Russia doubles electricity exports to China to help ease power crunch
By Reuters Staff
2 MIN READ
MOSCOW, Oct 1 (Reuters) – Russia’s electricity exports monopoly Inter RAO said on Friday that it would double its October supplies to China after a request from the world’s No.2 economy as it grapples with power cuts.
China is scrambling to deliver more coal to utilities to restore supply, as nearly two-thirds of Chinese provinces struggle with power rationing. The three northeast provinces of Liaoning, Heilongjiang and Jilin – home to nearly 100 million people – have been particularly hard hit.
Inter RAO, which received a request from the State Grid Corporation of China to increase electricity supplies to the country’s northern provinces this week, started to increase exports on Friday, the company told reporters.
In October, its exports to China will rise by 100% year-on-year and by 90% from the original plan for this month, the Russian company said.
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Read more: https://www.reuters.com/article/china-power-russia/russia-doubles-electricity-exports-to-china-to-help-ease-power-crunch-idUKL8N2QX3A9
As Europe declines in economic significance and descends into political climate insanity, Russia may be prioritising their relationship with China over keeping the EU supplied with gas.
Even the USA might be affected, though likely not to the extent China, India and Europe are experiencing. Thanks to the anti-pipeline and anti-fossil fuel insanity of Biden and some Democrat run states, some regions such as California depend on significant fuel shipments from overseas. Even though the USA has more or less enough primary supply to satisfy domestic demand, a self inflicted lack of distribution infrastructure means it is easier for some states to import fuel from overseas, than to pipe fuel from US based sources to where it is needed.
President Trump’s energy independence plan could have shielded the USA from overseas supply shocks, like the current unfolding international catastrophe. But Biden reversed all that. Long standing Democrat hostility to new domestic pipelines like Keystone has left parts of the USA exposed to the international market, which could trigger Carter administration style supply shocks, if the international supply dries up.
Australian politicians are as guilty of creating this shortage anyone else. Politicians and banks have starved the Aussie coal industry of capital, and thrown obstacles in the path of new mine site approvals. They have pretty much done everything in their power to kill off the local coal industry, short of outright banning it. Now the world desperately needs coal, Australia still has tremendous capacity to supply that coal – but will it be enough?
It may be too late to fix this near global energy shortfall, at least in the short term. Even if the coal becomes available, the international energy supply chain is difficult to dial up on short notice.
As the Northern Hemisphere descends into winter, India and China are scrambling for fuel supplies which increasingly aren’t available. If China and India turn to diesel, to try to bridge the coal supply shortfall, the desperate prices they offer could divert natural gas, oil and gasoline supply ships away from nations which are sensitive to overseas supplies, such as Australia, Europe and parts of the USA. Some diesel generators can burn gasoline, so gasoline supplies could also be affected by the scramble for adequate energy reserves for winter.
Australia does not have enough refining capacity or reserves to service domestic gasoline and diesel needs, so Australia is vulnerable to international gasoline and diesel price hikes and availability shortfalls, despite Australia being a net energy exporter. This could in turn feed through into increased coal mining costs, as coal miners in Australia and elsewhere pass on whatever international gasoline and diesel fuel price hikes do to their operational costs, or are forced to constrain production and transport of coal, due to not having enough fuel to run their mining operations. A deadly price spiral could develop, as coal prices drive price spikes for other fuels, which in turn drives further increases in the price of coal. A price spiral could leave poor people across the Northern Hemisphere without adequate heating this winter.
Suppliers will do what they can, and it may be enough – they have a tremendous incentive to cash in on the demand, if they can satisfy it. But this crazy self inflicted shortage of winter energy should never have been allowed to occur. It is up to we, the people, to hold our politicians accountable for their climate stupidity.
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Steel Mills in India Pay Four Times More for Coal on Low Supply (yahoo.com)
China is showing all the signs of preparation to move to a war footing.
They have built up ghost cities with populations that are less than 3% of capacity, basically a population just big enough to maintain the cities. Small enough to likely not be nuclear weapons targets. These will be their post war fall back recovery bases.
They have massively built up their industrial base, which can be turned into a military industrial base in short order.
This build up of resource stockpiles.
They released the SARS-CoV-2 virus on the world. Used their western stooges to hype it into a plandemic. Handed over the spike protein to western pharmaceutical companies in advance of it being known to be in the wild.
We are using their designed “vaccines” to 100% infect our military and as close as possible infect our entire working population and are in fact looking at infecting all of our children as well. Aim is for 100% infection with their “vaccines”.
They have started to run rolling blackouts to conserve their resource stockpiles, and likely are using this time to convert some factories towards military production.
I do not think an attack in eminent. I believe they will continue using their stooges in western society to degrade us further until the 2022 election cycle is over, and they will make certain that the steal is even more blatantly obvious than 2020. Then their goons, including Antifa and BLM and others will begin even more massive riots than we saw in 2020.
Around the same time specific cyber attacks will take down much of our communications networks, leaving only friendly to them agencies to spew their propaganda.
Western nations will be looking inward due to all this chaos while China prepares to make their attack sometime in December, 2022 or January/February 2023. At this point their most deeply embedded sleeper agents in our industry, big tech, media and government will begin massive sabotage, further eroding our ability to respond when they finally strike out.
They will likely have infiltrated many cargo ships with troops turning them into amphibious assault ships. Having hundreds of cargo ships “stuck” out at sea in advance of their attacks will seem normal at that point.
I would imagine they have contingencies designed to prevent America launching nuclear weapons. One of those being Biden. Which places the date of attack more likely to be pre inauguration 2023 rather than February 2023.
This is the best camp fire story I have read all day. 👍
“I do not think an attack is eminent.”
The Taiwanese said yesterday that they didn’t think the Chicoms would be ready for a full-scale invasion of Taiwan until about 2025.
There are also reports that American Special Forces troops have taken up residence in Taiwan.
Who could have predicted an energy shortage? All the trillions invested in random energy generators so far this century could have been flushed down the toilet to achieve the same result. Could be regarded as an expensive learning exercise!
I fear time is running out for Australia to enjoy the spoils of the religious fervour fuelled by the IPCC faith leaders.
Well, they always said sacrifices were going to have to be made. Oop, there it is, ever’body cabbage patch.
This was always inevitable. The data shows a steady YoY increase in the use of FF, all due to the developing world’s continued industrialisation, which is driven faster by the developed world’s exit from the global industrial arena as they adopt hard left climate policy. The cause of the problem is the curtailing of FF production by western nations, who now are moving from producers to importers as their RE predictably fails to deliver.
Ironically, this energy crisis is ultimately caused by UN policy, which seeks to kill off the liberal democracies of the west to allow a transition to a global government with China. The irony being that they probably didn’t see this global impact coming and the people most at risk will be those in poorer nations with high populations who can least afford high energy prices.
The impact of this crisis would be expected to follow the same path as in the late 70s, with low or negative growth and inflation, better known as stagflation. Usually it would take several years to get energy production to ramp up, but in this new age of FF curtailment, the time period could be greatly extended, especially if developed countries such as Australia agree to UN demands to halt all coal exports.
Given that Australia’s income from iron ore has just been halved or more by a plunging iron ore price, Australia’s politicians would have to be stark raving bonkers to halt all coal exports and thus cut the national income even more. Unfortunately, that doesn’t rule it out. At the moment, it seems that only the Nationals (junior party in the ruling coalition) stand between Australians and oblivion.
“Australia’s politicians would have to be stark raving bonkers”
I’m not sure how to describe NZ’s effort, having lost the third of national income that was tourism , and sitting on 15 billion tonnes of coal , while importing Indonesian coal to keep the lights on during the cold snaps.
I guess it’s there for when things get really cold , but we sure could use the income right now.
Australia will not do that, the adverse impact on votes alone is a major deterrent.
Because Australia was stupid and signed the UN Lima Protocol/Agreement in 1975 to transfer most manufacturing industry and know how to developing nations, such as China, the nation has lost many places of employment and jobs, and the taxation revenue the businesses and employees provided.
Now Australia relies heavily on exporting natural resources and has an enormous reserve of most minerals and energy, to stop mining coal, gas and others would be economic suicide.
And do not forget that Australia signed the UN IPCC Kyoto Japan Agreement to reduce “greenhouse gas emissions” and achieved those targets, very few signatory nations did that. And now is achieving Paris Agreement emissions reduction target. So when the vast majority of UN follower nations have achieved their emissions reduction targets maybe then they would be in a position to demand more from Australia?
Interesting.
When the third world was colonised in the 19th century it was in many cases in order to get access to raw materials that were shipped back for manufacturing into industrial and other goods.
Turn to the present, when third world countries are encouraged to do the manufacturing themselves, whereas Australia seems to have reverted to the status of a 19th century third world country, just providing raw materials.
Also if some Australians I have spoken to are to be believed, the raw materials should be left in the ground. So what is left, tourism?
The only possible upside to this would be for it to be likened to having money in the bank, to be brought out and sold at high prices when the rest of the world is running out of resources. (Unless the Chinese have bought it all up by then)
“A deadly price spiral could develop…” Oh, the markets are always looking for a mousehole or a crack in the wall to cash in.
Okay, so rather than get into whining and complaining, how can We, The People (USA and elsewhere) prepare ourselves ahead of time to blunt the trauma of losing power, heat and the comfort of home?
This almost sounds like one of those eddies that look harmless enough, until you get near one of them and realize that it isn’t just a simple eddy: No, Boys and Girls, Children of All Ages and Epochs, those whirling, spinning curiosities mean that someone punched a hole** in the tunnels that underlie Chicago’s merchandise resources down in the Loop, and the basement is where that stuff is going. (** It happened a while back. Look it up. April 1992, done by a crew doing repairs.) If this sounds like what’s going on now, well, it is very much the same.
What I get out of this article is that no one – including Vlad Putin and Xi JinPing – no one was prepared for really bad weather starting early.
Creedence Clearwater Revival said it best, a long while back.
I see the bad moon a-rising
I see trouble on the way
I see earthquakes and lightnin’
I see bad times today
If the planet is heading into a colder period – meaning fall, winter and spring, both hemispheres – that means not jut shortages of suppllies. It also means a shorter growing season may be in the offing in all areas.
“In desperation they’ve turned to Russian gas”
You make it sound it’s a new state of affairs…
The vision of a politician in most cases does not extend beyond the date of the next election.
And decisions they make in government are far too often for completion long after they have retired.
Latest information out of Russia is that V. Putin has instructed Energy officials to ensure that long-term contracts are honoured, but filling Russian winter storage then takes priority. Sensible approach to look after your own people, particularly as the EU parliament has passed a range of bills trying to cut Russia off and demanding “all efforts short of war” to ensure regime change in Russia. Now everyone else is livid because Russia is playing by EU rules and doing only what it has contracted to do. This could be interesting, as the depths of Siberian winters reportedly reduces the well outputs. Russia also has coal for sale and is upgrading the rail link from mines to seaports. As far as I know, Russian industry does not yet build wind turbines of any size.
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In the midst of this fuel crisis caused by climate change hysteria teen Greta Thunberg will get a Nobel Prize for helping to cause it.
A coal shortage caused by mandatory reduction in coal usage? Does that file under “Only when government does it”?
“one of the most extreme examples of energy rationing in the nation’s history”? The country’s never had enough.
India: Fear of disruption in power supply entirely misplaced, says Coal Ministry
“Despite heavy rains in the coal field areas, CIL has supplied more than 255 MT (million tonnes) coal to power sector in this year which is the highest ever H-1 supply from CIL to power sector,” it said.
Due to high international prices of coal, supply of power even under power purchase agreements (PPAs) by import-based power plants has reduced by almost 30% while domestic-based power supply has gone up nearly 24% in first half of this year.