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1) China to expand coal power fleet by
10% by 2025
Bloomberg, 16 December 2020
2) China's primary
energy use to peak in 2035 ... promise
Reuters, 17 December 2020
3) Patricia Adams:
Western greens are China’s useful idiots
Financial Post, 16 December 2020
4) Reds and Greens:
China’s useful idiots
Richard W. Rahn, The Washington Times, 14 December
2020
5) Francis Menton: Where is the
criticism of China from environmentalists?
Manhattan Contrarian, 14 December 2020
6) Frank Furedi: Narratives of
Existential Threats in the Climate and Covid Era
2020 Annual GWPF Lecture, 16 December 2020
7) And finally:
Climate activists lose legal battle to stop Heathrow’s third runway
Sky News, 16 December 2020
1) China to expand
coal power fleet by 10% by 2025
Bloomberg, 16 December 2020
Chinese state-owned
utilities are betting on coal’s longevity by building new coal-fired
power plants, with their fleets set to expand about 10% by 2025.
Workers sort coal near a mine in Datong, in China’s northern Shanxi
province, in November 2015. | AFP-JIJI
The future of coal looks like an ice cream truck parked half a kilometer
down a mine shaft in China’s Shanxi province. The yellow and white
vehicle is equipped with a 5G router from Huawei Technologies Co. to
gather data for the mine’s control center, where technicians monitor
high-definition feeds on a screen the size of a two-story house. They’re
tracking temperature and methane concentrations while keeping watch over
the black lumps zipping along conveyor belts on the way up to waiting
trucks.
The data collection would previously have been done by workers down in
the pit, but Yangquan Coal Industry Group has managed to eliminate some
of those workers and virtualize the least appealing aspect of mine labor.
“It will take time, but in the future, miners will wear suits and white
shirts,” says Han Weihai, manager of Huawei’s mine projects in Shanxi. “People
no longer want to work in a mine, especially young people with college
degrees.”
When President Xi Jinping announced in September that China would be carbon-neutral by 2060, he gave coal a
four-decade transition period. Or even longer, perhaps, if China’s vast
and politically powerful coal industry can find a way to capture the
planet-warming pollution generated by burning the fuel, or find other
ways around the national policy.
The long transition buys China time to use up its vast coal resources and
figure out how to gradually shut down an industry that still employs,
directly and indirectly, tens of millions of people. Nowhere shows this
high-tech trajectory for China’s coal sector better than the Xinyuan
mine.
Next-generation mining jobs there pay as much as 100,000 yuan ($15,000) a
year. That’s more than miners of previous generations could have dreamed
of making, and for some workers, that’s for sitting behind a desk in a
college campus-like facility with a basketball court, pingpong tables and
a library. The company organizes outdoor movie nights in the summer and
running races in the spring and autumn.
The operation produces about 2.4 million tons of coal a year, less than a
tenth of a percent of China’s current demand. That much coal could
generate as much as 5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide when it’s
burned, even as Xinyuan employs emissions-reducing techniques such as
using methane instead of coal in its boilers.
Coal’s long exit is part of a two-speed approach proposed by climate
scientists at Tsinghua University. Citing the inertia of energy and
economic systems, they proposed allowing coal power plants to continue
being built until around 2030, when China will be richer and replacement
technologies will have advanced. Then the plan calls for the ongoing
transition to solar and nuclear to accelerate sharply.
Easing off coal slowly would reduce abrupt shocks that risk bringing
unrest, the Communist Party’s biggest nightmare, by dulling the
inevitable pain to China’s army of coal workers. “The industry will cut
jobs, but it should be slow and gradual,” says Wang Haigang, Xinyuan’s
deputy general manager. His mine had 3,000 workers in 2012, and by 2025
plans to have fewer than 1,000. “It may take a long time, but we’re
aiming for a future in which no workers need to work underground.”
Keeping coal alive while reducing the number of miners may also solve a
further headache for China, where climate policies governing 1.4 billion
people are planned in Beijing but have to be implemented by dozens of
local governments. The central government has long struggled with the
question of how to get local officials to embrace plans for restructuring
industries that many of those officials rely on for income.
New mining technology will allow provincial governments to keep earning
money that could be used to develop post-coal industries. That’s
happening in Jinzhong, the city above the Xinyuan mine, which in 2018
invested 11.5 billion yuan ($1.8 billion) in a medical research center,
an industrial park for logistics companies, and other major projects.
Chinese state-owned utilities are betting on coal’s longevity by building
new coal-fired power plants, with their fleets set to expand about 10% by
2025. Just last year, China opened the $30 billion Haoji Railway line, a
2,000-kilometer (1,243-mile) conduit to haul 200 million tons of coal a
year directly from central mining basins to energy-hungry regions in the
southeast.
But the coal industry and local governments that support it may be too
optimistic about the remaining timeline. China needs to stop building
coal power plants immediately if it wants to meet the 2060 pledge,
according to the Draworld Environment Research Center and the Centre for
Research on Energy and Clean Air. That goal would require whittling
China’s coal fleet down to 680 gigawatts by 2030, a reversal of the
1,300-gigawatt expansion currently planned.
Before long, an uncomfortable truth could push to the forefront: China’s
national target of reaching net-zero emissions might not be compatible
with another generation of coal.
The climate researchers and the coal industry envision two parallel
universes. In one, the use of fossil fuels is drastically reduced and
China pivots quickly to renewable energy. In the
other, coal is phased out slowly as new technologies are used to reduce
their environmental impact.
China’s coal bosses know their regions may struggle to recover if the
first scenario comes to pass. In the northeastern city of Fuxin, locals
have been extracting coal since the 1700s. When the Communist Party took
over in 1949, leader Mao Zedong made Fuxin central to his efforts to
modernize the nation. Working the mines was an economic necessity but
also a source of patriotic pride.
Full story
2) China's primary
energy use to peak in 2035 ... promise
Reuters, 17 December 2020
BEIJING/SINGAPORE
(Reuters) -China’s total primary energy consumption is expected to peak
around 2035, at 5.6 billion tonnes of standard coal equivalent, under
Beijing’s recently announced carbon-neutral goal, China National
Petroleum Corp’s (CNPC) research arm said on Thursday.
China, the world’s largest energy consumer and biggest emitter of climate
warming greenhouse gases, has vowed to bring its total carbon emissions
to a peak before 2030 and to be carbon neutral by 2060.
In its annual long-term energy outlook, the research arm of state energy
firm CNPC also forecast China’s oil demand to be capped at 730 million
tonnes by around 2025.
Natural gas, a key bridge fuel over the next two decades with a 2.8% per
annum demand increase, will peak around 2040 at 550 billion cubic metres,
CNPC said.
Consumption of coal, currently accounting for nearly 58% of China’s
energy mix, will fall sharply from 2025, to 2.9 billion tonnes in 2035
and to 900 million tonnes in 2050, CNPC said.
“If China maintains the current development model, it will not be a
problem to cap its carbon emission before 2030, but will be very
difficult to reach carbon neutral before 2060,” said Jiang Xuefeng, vice
director at CNPC’s research institute.
“China will have to change its economic and energy structure as soon as
possible and as intense as possible.”
Full
story
3) Patricia Adams:
Western greens are China’s useful idiots
Financial Post, 16 December 2020
Environmentalists
have become the highest-profile cheerleaders for the CCP, helping divert
attention from the regime’s worrisome pursuits
For anyone under the illusion that China’s Communist regime was a force
for good in the world, the past few years have been a wake-up call. Under
President Xi Jinping, China has: incarcerated over a million Uyghur
Muslims in “re-education” camps; allowed the coronavirus pandemic to
sweep the world; violated its treaty with Britain by ending Hong Kong’s
self-rule; and vowed to invade Taiwan.
As a result of these eye-opening actions, among others, public opinion
throughout the West has changed dramatically. Where the majority
previously saw China favourably as a benign giant, only 15 per cent of
Australians, 14 per cent of Swedes, 22 per cent of British, 23 per cent
of Canadians, and 22 per cent of Americans continue to view China
favourably, according to a Pew survey. Most now recognize that the
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) cheats and threatens to get its way and is
hostile to rules-based institutions.
The big exceptions to those who have had their eyes opened are Western
environmentalists and their funders who, rather than becoming more
cautious about China’s role in the world, continue to lavish its
environmental efforts with superlatives such as “herculean” and “momentous.”
As recently as 2018, Natural Resources Defense Council’s Barbara Finamore
wrote a laudatory book entitled Will China Save the Planet?
The environmental gushing for China is reciprocated by the regime, with
Communist Party media organs such as the China Daily dedicating full-page
articles to extolling the environmental movement for its positive role in
partnering with China.
Western environmental organizations enjoy a privileged position in China.
While foreign advocacy organizations of almost all stripes, from human
rights groups such as Amnesty International to legal aid groups such as
Chinese Urgent Action Working Group, are extremely restricted, if not
effectively banned in China, the environmental groups are sponsored by a
designated state agency or department of the CCP government, as all
acceptable NGOs now must be under a 2017 law governing foreign NGOs.
The sponsor does not play a passive role, as the term implies, however.
Rather, it is responsible for monitoring and supervising the
environmental group’s work and often works hand-in-glove with it on joint
projects.
As part of their supervision, foreign NGOs are required to submit annual
plans for their projects and use of funds to their sponsor and, after being
approved, must file these plans with the public security organs.
Supervision also includes “regulatory talks” and onsite inspections of
NGO premises. Failure to comply can result in seizure of assets,
detention of staff, and a five-year ban on further work in the country.
The environmental groups’ embrace of China is understandable. They are
often lavishly funded. One U.S.-based foundation, Energy Foundation
China, has provided over US$330 million to U.S.-registered organizations
operating in China. As a result, they can spare no expense pursuing their
efforts to rid the planet of fossil fuels. Apart from the power and
prestige they enjoy in this role, many doubtless welcome the opportunity
to use their research to promote their progressive goals. Given the
perceived urgency of their cause — saving the very planet — they can
easily justify turning a blind eye to China’s aggression in the South
China Sea or human rights abuses on the mainland.
China’s embrace of Western environmentalists is also understandable. To
borrow a line attributed to Lenin, the environmentalists are the CCP’s
useful idiots. The government not only monitors their activities to
ensure their compliance with policy, it also directs the
environmentalists’ agenda via its de facto control over their use of
funds and even through its staff.
Energy Foundation China, for example, is headed by Ji Zou, a Chinese
national with a long career as a senior official in China’s government,
including during its climate negotiations for the Paris Agreement. Zou,
as a paymaster for the Western environmentalists, decides what projects
to fund, thus enabling him to effectively solicit work desired by his
former employers in Beijing from the Western environmental organizations,
who give the regime their imprimatur of legitimacy.
While critics of China’s many malign activities give it a black eye, the
environmentalists’ glowing reports about its environmental leadership
paint China in a favourable light and put critics on the defensive. In
fact, environmentalists have become the highest-profile cheerleaders for
the communists, helping divert attention from the regime’s worrisome
pursuits. Chief among these is China’s appropriation of fossil-fuel
resources in the South China Sea and elsewhere in pursuit of its goal of
displacing the U.S. as the dominant economic and national security
superpower by 2050.
As virtually all students of China now appreciate, the West was foolish
to trust Communist China to embrace democracy once it had access to
Western markets and Western values. The implication is, or should be,
clear. As Conservative MP Garnett Genuis says, “A government that is
genocidal and totalitarian … cannot be trusted.” Or, as Bonnie Glaser of
Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies puts it,
China “should not be a model for the rest of the world.”
For most of us, China is not a model for the rest of the world. For
Western environmentalists, sadly, all too often it is.
Patricia Adams is
executive director of Probe International and author of The Red and The Green: China’s Useful Idiots, published by the Global Warming
Policy Foundation.
4) Reds and Greens:
China’s useful idiots
Richard W. Rahn, The Washington Times, 14 December
2020
Environmental NGOs
like Greenpeace, World Wildlife Fund and the Natural Resources Defense
Council, being dupes or worse, sing the praises of the world’s largest
polluter.
Two decades ago, most economists — including me — believed that as a
country became richer it would likely become more democratic and more
protective of basic human rights and liberty. After all, we had seen
South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Chile and most of the countries of
Eastern Europe go through that progression.
China was expected to follow the same path. Economic liberties were
greatly expanded, and by the 1990s, political power appeared to be
increasingly decentralized, and the yoke on essential freedoms seemed to
be lightening. But then, the great reversal occurred, particularly after
President Xi Jinping gained more and more power.
Freedom of expression, religion, assembly and so forth have all been
curtailed. Hong Kong’s independence has been destroyed, despite the
treaty with the U.K. It is estimated that more than a million Turkic
Uighur Muslims are in re-education camps. Neighboring countries like
Taiwan are increasingly threatened — and China unleashed the
COVID-19 virus on the world without explanation as to its source.
Canadian economist, Patricia Adams, who is an expert on China’s
environmental policies, has just written a report, published by The
Global Warming Policy Foundation, titled “The Red and the Green: China’s Useful Idiots.” Ms.
Adams notes that most foreign advocacy organizations — including human
rights groups and even aid organizations — have been extremely restricted
or banned. The relatively few still allowed are now effectively
controlled by the Communist Party of China — with both their activities
and expenditures being overseen by government officials.
The Chinese have perfected the art of saying one thing while acting in a
totally contrary manner. This is, of course, not unique to the Chinese;
many American politicians have long done the same thing — as recently
exhibited by some in government handing down draconian restrictions
because of COVID-19 while ignoring those same restrictions, such as
dining in fine restaurants without anyone wearing a mask. Or useful idiots,
like Congressman Eric Swalwell, California Democrat, attacking President
Trump over non-existent Russian collusion, while he himself apparently
was engaged in a close personal relationship with a Chinese spy.
The Chinese leadership mouths all of the slogans of the environmental
activists, takes their money and proclaims partnerships, while at the
same time greatly expanding the number of coal-fired power plants.
Environmental lobbies like Greenpeace, World Wildlife Fund and the
Natural Resources Defense Council, being dupes or worse, sing the praises
of the world’s largest polluter — because of China’s “good intentions” as
contrasted with their actions. China now has planned or has under
construction more coal-fired power plants than rest of the world combined.
At the same time, the U.S. has been greatly reducing its dependence on
coal-fired plants, by shutting down many of them.
As would be expected, many in the mainstream media are the last to catch
on to reality. They heap praise on the environmental lobbies who are in
bed with the Chinese and their American funders, including the William
and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and
the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, to name a few.
As an aside, all of the founders of these foundations were pro-American
Republicans. David Packard was even defense secretary at one point.
Having had the pleasure of meeting each of them decades ago, I have
little doubt that if they were still with us, they would be appalled at
how the highly paid managers of these foundations were spending their
legacy in support of the biggest human rights abuser on the planet.
Li Zou, a Chinese national, is the CEO and president of Energy Foundation
China (which is supported in part by U.S.-based environmental groups).
The organization is under control of the Chinese government. Li Zou was a
key member of the Chinese negotiation team for the Paris Climate
Agreement.
Full post
5) Francis Menton: Where is the
criticism of China from environmentalists?
Manhattan Contrarian, 14 December 2020
You undoubtedly are aware that the international environmental movement
has almost entirely been taken over and consumed by the climate change
scare; and you also cannot help but be aware of the constant drumbeat of
attacks by environmentalists on the U.S. government, particularly under
President Trump, for its failure to reduce carbon emissions sufficiently
to “save the planet.”
At the same time, you are a reader of the Manhattan Contrarian.
Therefore, you know that China is not only not reducing its own carbon
emissions, but instead has well more than tripled them over the past twenty
years (during which period U.S. emissions have declined modestly
by about 15%); and today China is in the midst of a new round of massive
expansion of its fossil fuel energy generation capacity, particularly
with respect to the most carbon-intensive fuel, coal.
As quoted by me in a post just a couple of days ago, from the Global Energy Monitor, June 2020:
"China currently
has 249.6 gigawatts (GW) of coal-fired capacity under development (97.8
GW under construction and 151.8 GW in planning), a 21% increase over
end-2019 (205.9 GW). The amount of capacity under development (249.6 GW)
is larger than the [entire] coal fleets of the United States (246.2 GW)
or India (229.0 GW)."
So then surely the major environmental organizations must be coming down
hard on China? Wrong. Indeed, many of them are full of praise for China
for its “climate leadership.” Sure, China gives plenty of empty lip
service to Western climate orthodoxy; but could these environmentalists
really be so dense as to be fooled by that, even as information as to
China’s soaring emissions and hundreds of new coal plants is readily
available (if not widely publicized by the CCP)?
If you want some insight as to what is going on, a good place to start is
a new report out from the Global Warming Policy Foundation by Patricia
Adams titled “The Red and Green: China’s Useful Idiots.” (Full
disclosure: I am a member of the board — recently elected chairman! — of
the GWPF’s American affiliate.). Ms. Adams documents how Beijing is able
to use permission to operate in China as a lever to suppress any and all
criticism of the regime:
"Following a 2017 law governing foreign NGOs, most foreign
advocacy organisations . . . were either extremely restricted or
effectively banned. Prior to the NGO law, some 7000 foreign organisations
operated in China. Today that number is 553. . . . Fewer than 4% of
the 553 organizations that remain are what a Westerner would consider an
environmental group, and all do Beijing’s bidding.
As with other foreign organisations still permitted to operate in the
country, green groups must be formally sponsored by a designated state agency
or government department. However, despite the name, the sponsor is not
passive, but instead is responsible for monitoring and supervising the
environmental groups’ work, sometimes even working hand-in-glove with
them on joint projects. Supervision also includes ‘regulatory talks’ and
inspections of premises. Foreign NGOs are required to submit annual plans
for projects and use of funds to their sponsor for approval. Foreign
organisations must also agree to close supervision by the Ministry of
Public Security. Failure to comply with the provisions of the NGO
law can result in seizure of assets, detention of staff, and a ban
on future efforts to work in the country for five years, all without any
recourse to appeal..."
Full
post & comments
6) Frank Furedi: Narratives of
Existential Threats in the Climate and Covid Era
2020 Annual GWPF Lecture, 16 December 2020
Click on image to
watch the full lecture
Frank Furedi: Narratives of
Existential Threats in the Climate and Covid Era (pdf)
Frank
Furedi is a sociologist and social commentator. He is Emeritus
Professor of Sociology at the University of Kent in Canterbury. Since the
late 1990s, Frank has been widely cited about his views on why Western
societies find it so difficult to engage with risk and uncertainty. He
has published widely about controversies relating to issues such as
health, parenting children, food and new technology. In his recent
book How Fear Works: Culture of Fear in the Twenty-First
Century (2019), Furedi seeks to explain two interrelated themes: why
has fear acquired such a morally commanding status in society today and
how has the way we fear today changed from the way that it was
experienced in the past?
7) And
finally: Climate activists lose legal battle to stop Heathrow’s
third runway
Sky News, 16 December 2020
The Supreme Court
overturns a previous Court of Appeal ruling in a case brought by Friends
of the Earth and others.
Climate activists have lost a long-running legal battle to stop a third
runway at Heathrow.
The Supreme Court has overturned a previous Court of Appeal ruling in a
case brought by Friends of the Earth and others against Heathrow Airport.
The court was asked to consider if the government’s failure to take into
account the UK’s climate commitments rendered the planned third runway
unlawful.
Tim Crosland, of the campaign group Plan B, said the original decision by
former transport secretary Chris Grayling to support the expansion made a
“mockery” of the government’s commitment to show international leadership
in the face of a climate emergency. […]
The government and developers have stepped back from the legal process,
saying they do not support a further appeal of the case.
Lawyers for Heathrow Airport Ltd told the court that the firm, which owns
and operates the airport in west London, still wishes to go ahead with
the expansion project.
It is the latest in 17 years of wrangling over whether or not to build a
third runway at Heathrow.
Prior to becoming prime minister, Boris Johnson had vowed to “lie down in
front of bulldozers” to stop it being built.
The decision is seen as hugely significant because it could influence
other legal challenges on policies that aren’t seen as being compatible
with tackling climate change.
Full story
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