Jo Nova makes the telling point that communist China merely gives lip service to the climate change agenda, championed by the West, and in any case, the UN and other organisations define China as “developing,” and hence free from the impositions the globalists are imposing upon Western countries. In fact, China is, unlike the West, accelerating its building of coal-fired power stations, clearly indicating that emperor Xi had no intention of keeping his pledge to phaseout coal. China is building six times more cola fired power plants than the rest of the world, around two such plants per week, which is an extraordinary achievement:
https://energyandcleanair.org/publication/china-permits-two-new-coal-power-plants-per-week-in-2022/
The Chinese seem to reject, among themselves, the climate change alarmism of the West, or perhaps just don’t care whether it is true or not, seeing industrial development as primary. If there are environmental problems, technology will patch them up at some point. It seems to me, even as a China critic, that they are totally correct here. The West is slowly discovering the illusion of so-called renewable energy resources, but not before severely damaging industrial decline occurs. Hopefully, sanity can be restored by the defeat of crazed Western environmentalists. While we still have an economy.
“Two and a half years ago President Xi promised to “strictly control coal-fired power generation projects” in China. Before this solemn pledge the CCP had approved a blockbuster 54 gigawatts of coal fired power plants in just two years. Afterwards, to show how committed they were to Net Zero principles and international agreements, they *only* approved 131 GW. As President Xi promised — he’s “strictly in control” (of a massive increase). He’s also strictly in control of the world’s manufacturing.
After being deceived, the UN, Greenpeace, and Joe Biden promptly did nothing at all — it’s not like the future of life on Earth is at stake. And John Kerry somehow saw only “agreement” and “hope”.
When faced with this environmental catastrophe, the BBC told the world about China’s green power surge instead, and only mentioned the coal in passing as an aside. China had spawned a world record in coal plant construction, but apparently these coal plants are not so bad because many are built on renewable parks, “partly as backup for all the new wind and solar farms”. As if CO2 emissions are neutralized just by the presence of the sacred talisman of “renewables”. It’s a religion.
Meanwhile the International Energy Agency (IEA) — a kind of mini UN energy bureaucracy — predicts China’s peak coal will happen next year. Righto.
Apologists, all of them for planet destroying polluters.
Just for comparison: Australia has one 1,000 MW plant in the “pre-permit” stage. (Collinsville). A whole gigawatt of dreamtime coal plant. It’s so “pre” that even though it was suggested four years ago, and awarded $4m for a feasibility study, no feasibleness has been announced. In the same years, China built about 300 coal plants.
All this data on coal plants comes not from overpaid academics, Ministries of Energy, or publicly funded “news” broadcasters. None of them, apparently, give a toss about actual CO2 emissions. Instead, this was done by some NGO’s who are paid to be perplexed but at least they are honest in their confusion.
These people believe propaganda put out by both the UK and by China, and are caught in the headlights, genuinely surprised…
China Pledged to ‘Strictly Control’ Coal. The Opposite Happened.
Lauri Myllyvirta, Byford Tsang, Foreign Policy
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.
By many measures, China is the front-runner in the global clean technology race. Its renewable energy investments accounted for 55 percent of the global total in 2022. Just two Chinese companies have captured over half of the world’s electric vehicle battery market, and 60 percent of electric cars sales in 2022 occurred in China.
Someone should tell them that “half the worlds renewables” only made 7% of China’s total energy needs.
All the back up coal plants made 57%.”