Much ink has been spilled painting China as the leader of the UN climate alarmist nations. They are painted as abandoning fossil fuels and building “renewable” energy sources such as wind and solar. They have built some, but Patricia Adams argues in a new report that the primary emphasis in recent years has shifted to building fossil fuel power plants.
They have learned what everyone else has learned, that “renewables” are not a very efficient way to produce usable energy. She argues that the Chinese Government is primarily interested in continuing its rapid economic growth and the electric power supplies needed to make that possible, and reducing conventional pollution, and has quietly returned to emphasizing fossil fuel growth rather than renewables.
Under the Paris “Treaty” there is nothing to stop them even though China was one of the leaders in arguing for the “Treaty. “The main change is that they are deemphasizing coal and emphasizig natural gas. But their major fossil fuel resources are in coal rather than natural gas, so there is a limit to how much they can do in that respect. China has a conventional air pollution problem which is made worse by burning coal, but limited natural gas reserves.
China has understandably made increasing oil and natural gas imports a priority, with a 50% growth of gas within the last year. They have worked hard, but have lots of problems. Burning natural gas results in lower CO2 emissions, but nowhere near the zero current emissions of renewable sources. This blog has emphasized the strong evidence that increases in CO2 emissions has had no significant effect on temperatures but this is not generally accepted either by alarmists or even skeptics, and particularly by the United Nations.
The point is that when China has to choose between a combination of lower levels of conventional pollution and growth on the one hand and “renewable” ideology to decrease emissions of CO2, on the other, it has begun emphasizing increased use of fossil fuels despite the Paris “Treaty.” So there is little danger that China will become the leader in “renewables” use. China is more concerned about increasing its sources of oil and natural gas, as they should be. They certainly have not explained this change to the outside world, but we should pay attention to their actions, not their propaganda.
Most US alarmists want to waste vast sums building wind and solar sources of energy even though Asian nations, particularly China, are now increasing fossil fuel sources of energy, making the effect of the alarmists’ renewable building efforts utterly useless on the basis of their favored misunderstanding of the role of CO2 in temperature increases.
It is interesting to translate what Leftists must really mean when they applaud “leadership.”
If something is economically prudent, it does not require leadership. It just makes compelling financial sense. This is boring and does not require blather about leadership.
Leadership entails doing things that don’t help your economy, at least in the short run. Like expensive investments in wind turbines or solar arrays. Politicians who favor renewable boondoggles are leaders, saluted by the left wing media. Even Chinese communist politicians are given homages for manufacturing or installing wind and solar technologies.
As doc Carlin points out, this is unconvincing. China little invests in renewable energy at home. Babble about Leadersip in renewable generation of electricity is mere left wing political propaganda.
A nice point, predicated on seeing the big picture.
China has been all about economic growth for decades. This requires electricity from dams, nuclear power, coal, and gas. China will also make solar and wind equipment to sell to customers. But demand for such technology is modest within china itself.
The absurd UN climate change program encourages co2 emissions from China, while hobbling the economies of the EU. The yellow jackets understand how unfair this is to France.