Is China Serious About Climate Change?
By Paul Homewood
In his above interview with the BBC, Prof Ian Boyd, DEFRA’s outgoing Chief Scientist claimed that the Chinese government was very worried about the climate and was taking it very seriously.
This is a very common self delusion amongst Boyd and his ilk. And self delusion is exactly what it is.
There are a couple of factoids that they rely on to convince themselves and each other.
Firstly, absolute capacity and generation numbers. They point to the fact, for instance, that China’s wind power capacity is 184 GW, compared to 22 GW in the UK. But’ of course, this ignores the fact that China is a much bigger country, and that it’s electricity generation is 21 times that of the UK’s.
Secondly, they like to quote how quickly renewable energy is expanding in China. Wind power, for example, grew by 20% last year. Yet 20% of very little is still very little.
So, a few facts that summarise the real situation:
1) In the UK last year, renewable energy (excl hydro) supplied 32% of our electricity. In China the figure was 9%.
2) Although wind and solar power generation grew by 121 TWh in China last year, thermal power (almost wholly coal) expanded by 324 TWh:
https://chinaenergyportal.org/en/2018-electricity-other-energy-statistics/
3) Whilst wind and solar capacity increased by 17 and 53 GW respectively last year there, this will only add about 83 TWh annually, because of the inherent inefficiency of renewables.
Thermal power, however, added 44 GW, which on current plant loading should add 193 TWh a year.
https://chinaenergyportal.org/en/2018-electricity-other-energy-statistics/
4) Since 2010, wind and solar power’s share of China’s electricity generation has risen from 1.1% to 7.6%. At this rate, it will still only account for 17.4% by 2030.
Here in the UK, it is already running at 21%.
5) As far as all primary energy consumption is concerned, renewable energy in China still only accounts for a tiny 4.4%.
6) The proof of the pudding of course lies with emissions of carbon dioxide themselves.
There, the message is abundantly clear. While Britain’s have been gradually declining, China’s continue to grow, in the last two years alone by 3.3%.
BP Energy Review
Ian Boyd must surely be aware of all of these numbers. So why does he persist in shutting them out of his mind?
Has he been beguiled by what Xi and other Chinese leaders have been saying? He must be an idiot if he has.
If there is one thing we should all know by now, you cannot trust anything the Chinese Communist Party says. They will act in their own interest alone, and nothing else.
It is truly sad, and a little frightening, that any scientist should ignore the facts in such a way, and believe what politicians tell him instead.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Reblogged this on Climate- Science.press.
Carbon Brief also informs – China has 128GW of coal plant under construction, plus a further 70GW planned
Yes. China is building about 450 new coal plants; and hundreds more overseas. Clearly CO2 and “Climate Change” is not high on the agenda in Beijing.
I suspect Boyd gave up doing real science years ago.
China is serious about making a few £Quid off the global warming scam.
While gullible & suicidal govts, read UK, Germany, etc etc will destroy their coal plants & put up birdkiller windmills & useless solar, China will manufacture & charge for the abominations.
John Doran.
It seems that there is a bubble of self, well one can’t say conscious, but confirmation of belief in the Left wing and in Universities. One is required to believe and like Pavlov’s dogs is rewarded for the correct reaction.
One of my gripes is the poltically correct idea that Gideon Mantell discovered dinosaurs (because Gideon was the son of a boot maker, and therefore “genuine” working class) in the teeth of the evidence. Even Attenborough has fallen in line, despite evidence in writing that Buckland was aware (although reluctant to upset the Church) at least 6 years before Mantell.
That Mantell was financially better off than many of his compatriots, a snob and thoroughly objectionable, has been discarded although readily discoverable by some research. And, of minor concern, is that he hadn’t a clue about what he had found. But that is becoming the politically correct version of history.
So anything that comes out of University ranks has to be filtered before it is accepted.
China has been steadily increasing its coal fired power quotient since 2000; as the western world is backing off to save the planet. The world’s coal fired power station capacity is around 2 million MW, of which China accounts for half. Only India and the rest of Asia are increasing capacity by adding a further half million MW capacity. The rest of the world’s capacity is either falling or is flat
For example, Australia’s coal fired capacity (officially one of the highest carbon polluters per head in the world) is less than 25,000 MW.
Australia is shutting down a handful of coal fired power stations to achieve a carbon zero target, while China and India are opening more and more coal fired power plants; China, a further 1170 and India 450.
Who is not paying attention to this disparity?
The Australian Government
A lot of the AGW converts may be motivated by money, in one way or another.
Paul
I agree with most of your critique of the climate change industry but your view on China is over simplistic. Of course they will act in their own self interest. China has a massive population that is rapidly urbanising. They are changing from a kerosene and wood burning bicycle riding population to a car driving flat dwelling one. And they are entitled to. Their cities used to be badly polluted by kerosene stoves and heaters, now they are in apartment blocks that need electric and gas heating. The only way they can meet demand without bankrupting themselves is immediate building of coal fired power stations which produce much less pollution than a billion kerosene stoves. I don’t think they are poisoning their own population as a matter of policy, it is a question of difficult choices.
That’s the point I’m making Phil
Their overriding objective is to increase their electricity and energy supply, in order to keep growing their economy.
I don’t see CO2 as a poison, and I doubt if they do either!
I agree this is a very important message. Those who believe that CO2 is causing dangerous climate change must realise that unilateral action from the UK would have no effect on world CO2 levels. I had This letter published in my local paper this week. I urge others to do something similar to counter all the propaganda that is being pumped out daily.
If China is serious, why are they laughing at us behind our backs and treating us like fools!
You would prefer that they laughed in our faces and treated us like the fools we (our governments) are?
That’s a neither.
Speaking personally, yes I would. Being made to look foolish in the eyes of the global public by a nation renowned for 1000s of years of technical achievement might make us, the public, and, more importantly, our political and media leaders, think again about the proposed policies re: climate change.
Public humiliation and ridicule is the only thing that will stop our climate obsessed politicians. Unfortunately it may not be in the best interests of China to prevent our self -immolation.
China will play the game and produce and lay out all of the solar panels suckers around the world will buy. Meanwhile they keep building coal fired power plants. They like to put other countries at a disadvantage.
Manmade Global CC are the biggest scams sinceCommunism.
“If there is one thing we should all know by now, you cannot trust anything the Chinese Communist Party says.”
So no different from our Democratic government who are all owned by there financial backers. Most members have multiple directorships and other business ties. Busy in parliament setting the rules that the companies they will work for benefit from.
In China they execute government fraud, Here you may get sacked but are lined up with some nice advisory position before being invited back into the government. Not blacked balled from the club but applauded for showing you are the right type of person.
Prepared to do anything to personally enrich yourself.
Of course the same is true of certain high up China party officials. But it is at least a more dangerous game to play.
The following, I believe, sets out how major developing countries view the West and the climate issue:
(https://www.eurasiareview.com/05062019-china-and-india-will-watch-the-west-destroy-itself-oped/)
The whole article is worth reading.
Paul, are you sure about the 32% for the UK last year?
As I downloaded GridWatch and their total including Hydro was only 26% and when I downloaded it this years in March it was 25% ytd.
Gridwatch does not include the embedded wind power, which adds about a third onto the wind numbers
I still don’t think that will get to 32% without Hydro, where do you get your figures from?
BP give 105 TWh for renewables excly hydro, out of a total of 333 Twh
These are the same figures from BEIS:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/electricity-section-5-energy-trends
Don’t forget the numbers also include biomass, at about 8%
According to Gridwatch Biomass was 5.85%.
So what is happening with the conversion to Twh?
I downloaded the 5 minute values from gridwatch and they do not match those values.
Hydro was 1.16%
Wind was 14.32% + 1/3 would be around 19%
Pumped hydro was 0.86%
Solar was 3.96%
Something odd about it all.
Playing the Game
China will play the game and produce and lay out all of the solar panels suckers around the world will buy. Meanwhile they keep building coal fired power plants. They like to put other countries at a disadvantage.
According to the chart you provided, in 2018 China installed about 50 GW of coal and nuclear capacity; 65 GW of wind and solar. That does seem to signal a real policy trend no matter what.
As usual, Would be interesting to see the actual power generated as opposed to the name-plate capacity. That might change minds in Beijing.
No Thermal + Nuclear was 370GW year on year from the top graph.
Wrong … Look at the chart !!!
“Newly Installed Generation Power”
2018
Thermal 41.1 (GW)
Nuclear 8.8
Wind 21.
Solar 47.7
With so much still invested in coal, clearly the Chinese leadership doesn’t buy the Climate Change propaganda… apparently they see some value in having “Renewables” in the mix… but that will change once they see the vast inefficiencies in those modes.
The point that you are missing is that the Installation from the table is not the same as the output for the chart.
Due to the Intermittency of Wind and Solar the Installation has to be 3 to 5 times that of Thermal to get the same output for direct comparison.
No AC… I even noted that discrepancy between new capacity and actual output in my comment and wondered when Beijing would figure this out …. BECAUSE over the past two years, the Chinese have invested MORE (name plate) capacity in renewables than Coal and Nuclear– as the chart states… all you have to do is simple arithmetic … How much the renewables contributed to production is a very different matter … it will be interesting whether Beijing continues investing so much in renewables in the face of massive, documented inefficiences remains to be seen. But teir current investment sterategy seems obvious. New coal installations in the pike may change the balance however.
According to http://www.globalcarbonatlas.org/en/CO2-emissions, as at 2017, China produced 28.32% of total global emissions of CO2, Asia as a whole produced 48.7%. The UK produced 1.1%. The US produced 15.1% of the global total.
According to https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-worlds-coal-power-plants, China coal operations in 2018 were 48% of the global total. They have a further 20% planned or under construction.
Why didn’t St Greta go to China and tell them they must switch everything off? She would be very welcome in Beijing I’m sure.
Recently it has been become common to ask how we get China, and indeed India, to do something about their CO² emissions, short of war. This is a half arsed.attempt to show that we.don’t need to.
It’s not science, it’s just to support a.religious sgenda.
Paul
You may find this commentary off the BP global CO2 emissions data useful:
https://edmhdotme.wordpress.com/global-man-made-co2-emissions-1965-2018-bp-data/
Thanks for bursting Sir Ian’s bubble. He is truly an idiot if he thinks the Chinese are serious about climate change. We trust the Red Chinese as far as we can throw them.
truly we are just p*ssing in the wind.. Maybe someone should stand upwind of Boyd and Harrabin and demonstrate this
Another report where the journalist and it seems the authors of the “study” don’t really understand what’s happening out there:
Chinese Belt and Road plan ‘may result in 2.7C warming’
https://www.climatechangenews.com/2019/09/02/chinese-belt-road-plan-may-result-2-7c-warming/
An extract:
Only 28% now? Not if China, India and South Korea (and more) are included – they’re already at over 40%. It seems Greenpeace may be better informed: