Essay by Eric Worrall
First published Jo Nova; Leftist think tanks rationalising China’s dash for coal as a bureaucratic hiccup.
China Pledged to ‘Strictly Control’ Coal. The Opposite Happened.
What Beijing’s about-face on coal power means for climate change—and how the world can push back.
By Lauri Myllyvirta, the lead analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, and Byford Tsang, a senior policy advisor in E3G’s London office.
In April 2021, Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged to “strictly control coal-fired power generation projects” in China. Since then, government permits for new coal power plants have soared. According to analysis of Global Energy Monitor data, in the two years before Xi’s pledge, the government approved 127 plants, collectively capable of producing 54 gigawatts of coal power. In the two years after, that number rose to 182 plants, with 131 gigawatts of coal power. In short, China’s new coal power capacity has more than doubled.
…
The recent about-face on coal is odd for Beijing, which generally under-promises and over-delivers on climate commitments. Controlling new coal power projects is one of the few pledges China has made from now until 2025. Furthermore, more coal power is not necessary to keep the lights on, since China has a booming clean energy sector.
…
The underlying reason for the shortages, however, was the rigid and outdated way that China’s power grid is operated. The hardest-hit province, Sichuan in the southwest, had to continue exporting electricity to far-flung eastern provinces under inflexible contracts while rationing power at home. In a well-functioning power grid, electricity flows would have been readjusted, with Sichuan importing electricity and other provinces increasing power generation. But China’s grid operation is too inflexible to use existing capacity and infrastructure efficiently. The country thus requires excessive power capacity to avoid shortages.
…
Read more: https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/11/12/china-coal-climate-change-carbon-emissions-pledge-plants-apec/#cookie_message_anchor
It is also possible China has realised their renewables don’t work, and is rushing to fix the problem, but somehow that explanation didn’t occur to the think tank analysts.
The divergence between the coal plant build rate of China and the West is comparable to looking at a Satellite photo of North and South Korea.
For now the lights are still burning in the West, but for how long? Nobody has figured out how to make renewables viable, there likely is no affordable path to a renewable energy powered future. For this reason, the rate at which coal plants are being built is a strong indicator of future energy availability.
In the next few decades, our remaining decrepit coal plants will fail – and in the West, we are not building enough replacements. When the day of reckoning arrives, if we don’t change course, the only place where the lights will still be burning are in parts of Asia which have prioritised energy affordability and availability over the Western climate cult.
The founding Prime Minister of modern Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, once told Australia’s leaders we were in danger of becoming “the poor white trash of Asia”.
On that occasion Australia’s leaders were shocked into action by Lee’s words, and enacted powerful, far reaching economic reforms which revitalised the Australian economy. For a time after Lee’s warning, even left wing politicians prioritised economic reform and development.
But the reason for and commitment to those reforms has been forgotten. The once vital enthusiasm for sound economic management has faltered. Unconstrained energy policy folly has brought all of us in the West to the brink of that economic collapse and national humiliation Prime Minister Lee once warned us about.
Update (EW): As WUWT recently noted, India is no laggard when it comes to coal power development, they just announced a 60% increase in coal production. The Global Energy Monitor view of india is also impressive.
Countries like China and India just pretend to be complying with emissions-reduction efforts to appease the UN when in reality they’re just laughing at it and doing whatever suits them economically and politically. Apparently the environmentalists haven’t figured all this out yet.
I think the PRC had enough suicidal lunacy with Mao.
They’ve exported the cultural revolution to Progressives who’s ideologies undermines all the things that made America great.
You do realise China has around five electable Democratic political parties. Don’t you?
But as with the political inertia evident in western politics which keeps our respective uniparties staggering on, most Chinese are comfortable with the CCP.
I discount all news or statistics coming from the PRC every bit as much as I discount anything coming from Joe Biden. Any resemblance to reality is accidental.
It’s not from the PRC, it’s from independent sources. It’s not like China is some mysterious walled country no one is allowed into, they even have tourist’s from the west. Not to mention busloads of Chinese tourists flocking to Harrods in London every day.
They are so communist there are more Rolls Royces allegedly sold there than anywhere else in the world. Allegedly, only because RR won’t release their numbers.
Demonise China at your peril. One way or the other the west is going to have to grow up and deal with the country. Better sooner without guns than later with guns.
The Peoples Republic is way closer to Italian Fascism than Stalinism or Maoism, so they are not really “communist”. But it is still a non transparent oligarchy that only allows facade democracy.
What really went on in the PRC with Covid 19?
I see, so any derogatory association will do for China, as long as it doesn’t threaten the hegemonic imperialism of an increasingly authoritarian west.
You are still living out your Cold War/China, Reds Under The Bed fantasies.
China isn’t the problem. We are.
Yeah but at least in the West we freely allow citizens to identify as whatever they choose to be from time to time, and woe betide anyone who doesn’t use the stipulated pronouns.
So down the track, it’s a sure thing that younger generations of Chinese and Indians will be clamoring to immigrate to AU, Canada and UK just to luxuriate in the plethora of diverse pronouns that are welcomed.
Even if they have to do it in the cold and dark, eating raw food.
The nation with the most pronouns wins! /sarc
“requires excessive power capacity to avoid shortages.”
Yes.. you always need reliable dispatchable capacity to meet the highest peak demand.
That is why wind and solar need 100%+ back-up from reliable sources.
Which is why wind and solar are a totally unnecessary parasite on the electricity supply system.
The CCP’s goal is world domination by every means possible. The US is who they have to dethrone to do that. Under mining our economy with climate commitments while they expand energy production is just one of the many fronts they are attacking us on.
How many military bases does China operate overseas? And does it compare to America’s/NATO’s 903, including around three illegal ones in Syria.
If China’s goal is global domination it’s certainly not by “every means possible”.
And if it commercially enslaves the west, who will buy the products it manufactures?
If you are under the illusion that Taiwan is under threat of attack from China, it’s worth understanding Taiwan has been part of China since 1943, ratified under the Potsdam agreement in 1945 when, by agreement with the attendant US and British delegations, it accepted the surrender of the Japanese on the island.
It should be obvious that America is preparing to organise a political coup in Taiwan, just as it did in 2014 in Ukraine (and on 83 documented occasions between 1947 and 1997) to disrupt the upcoming elections in Taiwan which are universally recognised to likely result in the islands reunification with China. Why else is Biden shipping tens of $billions of weapons and cash into Taiwan?
It should also be obvious by now that the only nations with Globalist ambitions are the USA and its puppet nations in Europe.
Why are you supporting totalitarian fascism? The globalists like the Chinese model of authoritarian control of information and markets. That is the war happening now which apologists ignore.
‘Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air’. The name of the think tank tells you everything you need to know about the drivel they produce.
CO2 does not pollute clean air. Renewables do not produce dispatchable energy. Claiming otherwise may get you grant money. But it also reveals your basic factual dishonesty.
China uses coal power to produce renewable ruinables for export to climate change fearing suckers like the UK, where you are situated. NOT a bureaucratic China hiccup. Smart move.
Yes, these days even the constructed names of government bills, programs, departments and ngo’s would qualify as the “misinformation / disinformation” that activists want censored.
“Inflation Reduction Act” is one of the more blatant examples of arrant dishonesty.
Yep! Don’t you just hate misspellings? Lol.
“Inflation Induction Act”
It would even make Orwell blush.
If you are for freedom and peace and prosperity….China, Russia, Iran, and N. Korea must be isolated and resisted on every level. They are not your friend and ignorant pols like Joke Biden only help the enemy.
The fact those nations have been bad neighbours is no reason to ignore when they get some things right.
China have massively increased military spending in recent years, and it seems likely they will replace their failed house construction bubble with a government debt funded military buildup. That’s going to result in an awfully big pile of military hardware. Lots of guns for their demographic excess of 34 million young men who can’t find a girlfriend to play with.
How many decisions have western leaders like Biden, Sunak, Shultz, Macron, Trudeau etc. got “right” in the last four or five years?
And whilst China spends $338 billion on it’s annual defence of 1.4 billion people, America spends the best part of a trillion dollars every year in ‘defence’ of 350M people (does $113 billion+ to Ukraine and tens of billions to Taiwan count as defence or foreign aid?).
It should also be recognised that China is constructing more nuclear power plants than the rest of the world combined. As they are commissioned, older coal fired power stations will be progressively shut down, whilst the west is still fiddling around with wind turbines and solar panels.
Unlike most of the west, at least China had a house construction bubble.
And in a population of 1.4 billion, 34 million unmarried men is a drop in the ocean.
Present facts on WUWT, a scientific blog, and some pillock always downvotes them.
According to the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) China has also led the way in building wind turbines, both on and offshore, for the last 2 years. In 2021 it built 80% of all offshore wind followed by the UK at just under 11%
Which still represents 2% or so of global energy.
It’s nonsense. China is playing with the west thanks to its manufacturing ability we exported to them.
People have become so accustomed to swallowing lies they can no longer distinguish between a lie and the truth. It is their own fault. Lying is not okay, cheating is not okay, wake up. We need to stop tolerating it.
According to SCOTUS, lying is perfectly fine.
China, March 5, 2021
Leader Xi Jinping is serious about pushing China to become a leading nuclear energy superpower.
April,29, 2021:
“China’s energy structure is dominated by coal power. This is an objective reality,” said Su Wei, deputy secretary-general of the National Development and Reform Commission. CNBC translated his Mandarin-language comments, which he made late last week following Xi’s separate remarks at a U.S.-led global leaders climate summit.
“Because renewable energy (sources such as) wind and solar power are intermittent and unstable, we must rely on a stable power source,” Su said. “We have no other choice. For a period of time, we may need to use coal power as a point of flexible adjustment.”
China gets tons of flack for being run by the Communist party.
Here in the United States our economy/government uses markets based on free enterprise and capitalism. Businesses and services are free of government control.
Wanna bet???
Our Environmental Protection Agency ruled 14 years ago that CO2 was a pollutant in it’s endangerment finding, threatening the public health and welfare of current and future generations.
It has denied over a dozen petitions to try to overturn this anti science ruling since then.
Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases Under Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act
https://www.epa.gov/climate-change/endangerment-and-cause-or-contribute-findings-greenhouse-gases-under-section-202a
In 2022 the Supreme Court restricted the EPAs ability to directly mandate carbon emissions but that didn’t stop the dishonest EPA/government.
They want to go around the Supreme Court and require coal and natural gas burning plants to have new technologies (that don’t exist now in some cases) that reduce planet greening, crop enriching CO2 emissions by 90%.
In other words, shut down all the coal plants.
EPA Proposes New Carbon Pollution Standards for Fossil Fuel-Fired Power Plants to Tackle the Climate Crisis and Protect Public Health
https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-proposes-new-carbon-pollution-standards-fossil-fuel-fired-power-plants-tackle
Then you have the Biden administration using almost a trillion dollars of government force on the markets with fake green energy schemes, subsidies, tax credits, rebates, mandates and other NON free market schemes. States like California having insane, impossible to meet government requirements/mandates.
China on the other hand has a government that’s building new power plants.
Maybe this is just a matter of China having a smart government compared to our current dumb government when it comes to energy policies but make no mistake fake green energy in the United States is anything but a free market enterprise.
And most of the world understands this. The government’s support and crony capitalism will run their course and we’ll end up using mostly fossil fuels in a couple decades because of the laws of physics, science and economics……just having to learn some costly lessons in the short term.
There Is No Energy Transition, Just Energy Addition
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/03/12/there-is-no-energy-transition-just-energy-addition/
FLAK, not flack.
Thanks much for the spelling correction! Spell check usually saves me.
A quick internet search says total US Coal power plant capacity is 217GW. China added nearly that much new capacity in four years. And we’re [USA] the ones supposed to be cutting back to solve global warming? Are the alarmists brain-dead? Don’t bother answering, it obvious…except to them.
If your top scientists think AGW is inconsequential compared to the benefit to your society of fossil fuels….also your possibly main military competitors are willing to cripple their economy to enable their irrelevant beliefs….plus those competitors purchase equipment from your business sector to further their renewable energy desires….plus your needs are such that coal, geothermal, nuclear, wind, and solar are all likely to be required anyway…..well, WHAT DO YOU THINK they are going to be telling everyone….
“The recent about-face on coal is odd for Beijing, which generally under-promises and over-delivers on climate commitments” Say what? I don’t know that they committed to anything other than doing what they want until 2030 and only then will they revisit CO2 production.
Of course, you would be aware that China is also decommissioning coal plants, and that the share of renewable energy in their grid is steadily increasing? You wouldn’t be just cherry picking would you?
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/numbers-behind-chinas-renewable-energy-boom-2023-11-15/
HOW BIG IS RENEWABLE POWER IN CHINA?China has been the world’s largest and fastest-growing producer of renewable power for more than a decade, and its lead has widened with an acceleration of solar and wind power capacity in recent years.
The country will build as much new solar capacity this year as the total installed capacity in the U.S., according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.
Fossil fuels now make up less than half of China’s total installed capacity for power generation.
China decommissions the tiny old ones polluting one in their cities..
And builds brand new ones with many times the capacity and use of coal.
China has always had a fairly large proportion of “renewables”, in the form of Hydro power.
Their solar and wind installations are small compared to the installations of coal power, often not connected and built mainly to CON gullible people like you.
When talking wind and solar, “installed capacity” is basically a meaningless number.
Coal still makes up the vast majority of China’s electricity production, and increasing rapidly.
Wind and solar not so much. !
Quite! You see this weird combination of idea all the time from greens. That there is a climate crisis. This is nonsense of course. But they then go on an assert the greater nonsense that the solution is moving power generation to wind and solar and transport and heating to electric. |Which is impossible, and even were it possible would not make the reductions in emissions they claim to believe are necessary.
And then they are confronted with the fact that China is emitting enough on their theory to destroy human civilization. And rising. So. like Tonyx in his post, they have to find some way of denying that China’s emissions count or need to be reduced. The most laughable one has always been the per capita argument. When per capita emissions are irrelevant, what supposedly counts is the total tonnage of emissions. And when anyway, China now has per capita emissions at about the level of the EU.
Then you have the other irrelevancies, that its only for export, that their historical emissions are low, that they are installing lots of wind. All of which are totally irrelevant, its gross tonnage that supposedly counts.
What they keep arguing is that China should just carry on increasing and the EU and the US should reduce as fast as possible. Its the China lobby, that’s all. Intellectual contortions and intellectual dishonesty.
Don’t see anything in the cited piece from Reuters which shows that the share of renewable energy in their grid is steadily increasing. The piece is not cherry picking. Search for ‘China Coal Generation Capacity’, and this is what you find:
https://www.startpage.com/do/search?query=china+coal+generation+capacity&cat=web&pl=ie&language=english
Page after page of it. There can be no doubt about it: China is in fact not reducing emissions. In fact, its increasing emissions as fast as its economic growth target requires. The only rational conclusion from what its been doing for the last decade or so is that it does not believe in the global warming story, and has no intention of doing anything but talk vaguely about stuff it may do in the distant future. While, as at COP, vetoing any calls for emission reduction.
The usual things that the China lobby says are: its installing lots of wind and solar. Its per capita emissions are lower than the West. Its historical emissions have not yet caught up with the West. Its only emitting so much in order to export to the West. This is all nonsense. If you are serious about global warming, you should believe that the only thing that matters is the total of future emissions, and that China is single handedly emitting enough CO2 to doom humanity, and you should be demanding it reduce.
No-one ever does.
The facts about China’s emissions can be found here:
https://www.iea.org/reports/co2-emissions-in-2022
“Total energy-related greenhouse gas emissions increased by 1.0% to an all-time high of 41.3 Gt CO2-eq.” “Energy-related emissions in China were relatively flat between 2021 and 2022, decreasing by 0.2% or 23 Mt to around 12.1 Gt.”
To save the planet, China’s emissions need to fall. Global emissions supposedly need to fall below 5 Gt. China’s then would need to fall below 1 Gt. Is anyone advocating or demanding that? No. What matters to the green lobby is excusing China at every opportunity and demanding that a few coal stations in the UK or Germany be turned off. Or that the UK stops mining 0.001% of world coal production to use as metallurgical coal.
The most wonderful example of the frantic finding of excuses for China came in a Reuters piece. You have to read it.
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-huge-coal-plant-building-has-weird-climate-logic-russell-2023-09-19/
It being Reuters, it does actually give the basic facts. Like: “The world’s largest producer and importer of coal has 136.24 gigawatts (GW) of coal-fired generation under construction…This represents 66.7% of the global total of 204.15 GW, and China is streets ahead of second-placed India, with 31.6 GW being built and third-placed Indonesia with 14.5 GW. These three countries represent 89% of the coal-fired plants currently under construction…China’s under-construction coal generation is about 12% of its existing capacity…”
The author, in a brilliant insight into the obvious, then notes that
“….adding more coal-fired power would seem incompatible with the stated goal of achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2060.”
You don’t say!
But he then comes up with a truly wonderful excuse. He argues that all this is actually good for the climate, because its necessary in order to convert China’s transport to electric, and this will lower oil imports. This will supposedly lower emissions, so China’s coal program is actually good for the climate.
The next thing we need to hear is the same logic applied to the US and Europe. They too should follow China’s world leading example in the fight against climate change, by quickly building as much coal generation as they can. To electrify their transport, of course, a truly noble goal we all share.
Ever hear the activists applying this argument to the West? Didn’t think so.
The China lobby.
“that China is single handedly emitting enough CO2 to doom humanity, and you should be demanding it reduce.No-one ever does.”
I often remind the climate whack jobs here in Wokeachusetts that they should fly to China and make demands of them to slash “carbon pollution”. They never respond.
Personally, I think China NEVER intended to follow through on Climate Commitment, it was done to quiet the green gullible out there and go through the motion on Wind and Solar to weaken the world on energy decision who went for their low mass stuff idiotically.
Now they are the ones laughing at the West who fell flat faced on being fooled so easily.
Yes, all the public evidence suggests you are right. In particular their behavior at COP. All the evidence from their behavior and the way they are running their economy and society is that they don’t believe in CAGW at all.
Eric, I hate the use of phrases like „the left“, „the right“, „the deniers“, „the democrats“ or whatsoever. They deny the fact that we are all complex being‘s and that we live in a complex world.
case in point is China. I neither endorse or deny China but try to understand how to act and react in a complex world like normal societies do.
My first thought about climate policies is to emit the least amount of potentially harmful chemicals as possible and we do emit and manipulate a lot. My interpretation of other nations climate action is to optimize without endangering their nation development. Sometimes you have to look at what they are not doing. Yes let’s improve climate policy (their thoughts maybe „how my political-economical scientist define it“) and continue to have meaningful interaction’s. Talking and discussing topics is always better than shutting out controversial topics like it is the favor of today’s western world.
Coming back to the term „the leftist‘s“. There is not one version and nothing else. Anyhow, Ofer the last couple of years those terms have become meaningless. What is nowadays left and right????
Nature dwarfs our emissions on every scale, not least by VOC’s (volatile organic compounds) which are emitted by any plant with a scent which, to a greater or lesser extent, is just about all of them. Living trees emit methane, to say nothing of the trillions of tonnes of decomposing leaf fall at this time of year in the northern hemisphere. CO2, the poster child for “emissions” has increased by 140 parts per million since pre-industrial times, which translates to 0.014% in terms more easily understood. This means that the composition of the atmosphere has changed by much less than one thousandth of one percent per decade due to CO2. I’m sure the Chinese are clever enough to realise that human emissions of anything are negligible, therefore they will not be stopped by any pangs of conscience.
Edit to above:
Forgot to add that methane is currently 180 parts per billion.
I suggest reading Kissinger’s “China”.
You are exactly the kind of relativist stooge that totalitarians love. They even have a name for your ilk, useful idiots. The CCP is simply evil.
Much as I hate to write this, Chinese, like Russians and so many others, are perfectly able to verbalize outrageous lies nicely straightfaced.
Cold is weather, warm is Armageddon. Try to keep up.
The authors come from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air based in Finland, and the London office of E3G – Brussels, Berlin and Washington being their other offices. The CREA board are linked to thinktank Demos Helsinki and seem to be very short of any relevant qualifications listing political science, social science and theoretical philosophy. Not much atmospheric physics or engineering there. Funding comes from grants and from finding people dumb enough to pay for its work. Seems a small time bunch.
E3G is a far more substantial bunch of activists that gets funding from governments – UK taxpayers are represented by the Foreign Office and the Net Zero Destroy the Economy Department – and the likes of the Rockefellers. They have a whole bunch of people who have all worked to make life worse for everyone. The founder is Nick Mabey, who to his eternal shame holds a mechanical engineering degree but perhaps more tellingly a Master’s Degree in Technology and Policy from MIT. He received an OBE ‘for services to climate change’ and we wonder if honours are now thoroughly degraded – any thoughts on that Lord ‘Call Me Dave’ Cameron? Shockingly he was seconded to the Foreign Office from WWF-UK where he worked as Head of Economics and Development.
And very helpful for WWF-UK to have an ex PM as Head of Economics and Development, opens so many doors!