The Chinese path to supposed decarbonization starts with a lot more coal
Duggan Flanakin
You have to give it to Xi Jinping. The Chinese “President for Life” insulted the kings of the United Nations last September with his unexpected promise that his country “wants to achieve a high level of CO2 emissions before 2030 and CO2 neutrality (net zero) before 2060”.
Xi also called on other nations “to pursue innovative, coordinated, environmentally friendly and open development for all through the rapid use of new technologies”, “to achieve a green recovery of the world economy in the post-COVID era and thus create a strong force, that drives forward sustainably. ” Development.”
Confident that the mantle of world leadership would pass from the United States to him and China, Mr. Xi concluded, “The baton of history has been passed down to our generation and we must make the right choice, a choice worthy of trust of people and our time. Let us together uphold the values of peace, development, justice, justice, democracy and freedom that we all share, and build a new kind of international relationship and community with a common future for humanity. Together we can make the world a better place for everyone. “
How is China preparing for Net Zero?
London-based energy and climate research group Ember reports that China generated 53% of the world’s total coal-fired power plant in 2020, a 9 percent jump from 2015, while adding 38.4 gigawatts (GW) of new coal-fired power plants in China in 2020 alone. China is also funding billions of dollars’ worth of coal-fired power plants in African, Asian and other “developing countries”.
In 2020, China also added a record 71.7 GW of wind and 48.2 GW of solar and set a target of 70 GW of installed nuclear power by 2025. “However, progress is nowhere near enough,” says Dave Jones. Electricity analyst at Ember insists that “coal power must collapse by 80% by 2030 to avoid dangerous warming.” At least, he and President Biden believe.
A joint analysis by Climate Analytics and the Asia Society Policy Institute comes to the conclusion that China would have to achieve the highest levels of CO2 emissions by 2025 in order to meet the Paris Agreement goal, the temperature rise of the global industrial age (after the Little Ice Age) Limit 1.5 ° C and then reduce it quickly afterwards, with a complete phase-out of the coal-fired power plant by 2040. Very unlikely.
However, a typical coal-fired power plant has a lifespan of 40 years. Would China ditch massive investments just to turn to the UN? Draworld Environment Research Center’s chief economist Zhang Shuwei says Chinese coal may have to raise more than $ 300 billion in stranded assets if the nation gets through and “plunges coal-producing cliffs” after 2030. Also highly unlikely.
According to the New York Post, China’s betrayal of its commitment to Hong Kong, its duplicity to the COVID pandemic, and its disagreement over how Uyghurs are treated all suggest that the Middle Kingdom cannot be trusted to keep its word. It shows there is no point in negotiating with the Chinese Communist Party on issues like climate change, the Post added.
Agence France-Presse reported in March that China’s latest five-year plan increases investment in coal and removes any cap on total energy consumption. Lauri Myllyvirta, an analyst at the Center for Energy Research and Clean Air, also compares Xi’s words to China’s actions and concludes that “the central contradiction between expanding the chimney economy and promoting green growth seems unsolved”.
Japanese journalists also questioned China’s commitment to a “green” economy. They contrasted China with supposedly “excellent” efforts by Japan and its Western allies to boost wind and sun – without mentioning that new Japanese coal-fired power plants will have retired in 2020, or that India and many other nations are also stepping up coal mining and mining Power generation.
Other journalists are equally offended by China’s apparent duplicity. “Despite commitments to cut emissions, China is going on a coal tour,” proclaimed a Yale Environment360 headline. In the article, China-based freelancer Michael Standaert argued that there is “a real and figurative haze about how strong its climate ambitions really are and how quickly the country can wean itself from … coal”. Mother Jones published the article under the headline “China’s Out for Coal.”
Vox correspondent Lili Pike offers an apology for China’s seemingly contradicting behavior. China’s provinces have the power to self-approve new power plants and view new coal-fired power plants as a means of increasing their GDP and creating jobs. The economic slowdowns associated with COVID gave them additional incentives to do so.
Perhaps Vox believes the provinces will recognize their ill-considered investments and shut down their coal-fired power plants as soon as their economies recover. Maybe pigs fly.
China’s approach to moving towards net zero contradicts panicked warnings from UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who insist that “the climate emergency” is the crucial crisis of our time and is happening even faster than we feared. It’s “a race we lose, but it’s a race we can win,” he says.
Guterres made a toothless appeal to China last July to stop building new coal-fired power plants, but flippantly applauded Xi’s rhetoric in September. Xi was also lauded by mega-billionaire Bill Gates, who raved about China’s “determination” to prioritize the climate and its contributions to carbon reduction.
Gates said, “It is great that President Xi is making climate a priority and wants to work on it with other countries. Without China’s contributions, many of the main ingredients are [in fighting climate change]would not be as affordable as batteries and solar power. ” [We’re on the same team, babee!]
In the real world, not every forecast of environmental disasters has come true. Actually, hardly any of them have. For example, Paul Ehrlich’s bestseller The Population Bomb opened with the terrible claim: “The fight to feed all humanity is over. In the 1970s, hundreds of millions of people will starve to death despite all the crash programs currently in place. At this late point in time, nothing can prevent the world death rate from rising significantly. ”
The greatest famine since Stalin and Mao deliberately starved tens of millions of people.
More recently, Ehrlich’s ideological offspring, Greta Thunberg, said: “The world will end in twelve years if we don’t deal with climate change…. By 2030 we will be able to start an irreversible chain reaction that is beyond human control and will lead to the end of our civilization as we know it. Thunberg criticized China for the imprisonment of a young Chinese “climatic storm”, adding: “Billions of people will die and children will die while parents lose their jobs!”
Of course, people are far more likely to lose their jobs or die when countries are forced to exist on minimalist, weather-dependent wind and solar power – under racist, carbon-colonial restrictions imposed on them by alert climate-alert banks, bureaucrats, and pressure groups, and badly trained youth.
Maybe Xi Jinping knows it’s too late to save the planet. So why not just “rush” on coal, keep his carefully watched subjects happy, and continue playing President Biden and other Western leaders like a piano? Maybe he’s read the tea leaves or the astronomical maps and knows that another killer asteroid is headed for Earth – so why worry about death from climate change caused by fossil fuels?
Or he anticipates that by 2030 the entire world will be under his control – as its economy and military grow, Beijing owns or controls utilities and manufacturing for the full range of renewable energy technologies and steals Intellectual property rights with impunity and no foreign country will dare to take over China for all these reasons.
Duggan Flanakin is director of policy research on the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org).
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