China To Build 43 New Coal-Fired Power Plants
By Paul Homewood
And still they build more:
China is planning to build 43 new coal-fired power plants and 18 new blast furnaces — equivalent to adding about 1.5% to its current annual emissions — according to a new report. The new projects were announced in the first half of this year despite the world’s largest polluter pledging to bring its emissions to a peak before 2030, and to make the country carbon neutral by 2060.
The news shows that at least some in China are prioritizing economic growth over emissions reductions — although some analysts say they are still optimistic that China will reach its climate targets. “There is this desire in the Chinese political and economic system to keep on building, to continue the infrastructure fever,” says Li Shuo, a senior global policy adviser for Greenpeace in Beijing.
The report on China’s new coal plants was written by the Helsinki-based research organization the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) and the U.S. group Global Energy Monitor (GEM) and released on Aug. 13. It came just days after the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published an alarming report that concluded human-caused climate change is an “unequivocal” reality. U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres called the IPCC report a “code red for humanity.”
China is leading the world in new coal power plants, building more than three times as much new coal power capacity as all other countries in the world combined in 2020. It isn’t alone in its reliance on coal, however. China and four other countries, India, Indonesia, Japan and Vietnam, account for more than 80% of the coal power stations planned across the world, according to a June report by the think-tank Carbon Tracker.
But it’s not all bad news. China has pledged to reduce its energy intensity — measured by comparing total energy consumed to GDP — and its carbon intensity — the carbon-dioxide produced per dollar of GDP — by 2025. Chinese President Xi Jinping said in April the country will also reduce coal use beginning in 2026.
Despite the development of coal power plants, China is a renewable energy leader, accounting for about 50% of the world’s growth in renewable energy capacity in 2020
https://time.com/6090732/china-coal-power-plants-emissions/?mc_cid=4013cbbc49&mc_eid=870a48a53b
The gullible greens still try to convince themselves that China really is going to cut emissions eventually. They cling on to the pledge of reducing energy and carbon intensity, but they really ought to realise that this is a meaningless promise, as all maturing economies do this as they expand into consumer goods and services. This does not mean though that energy consumption will actually decline, simply that the economy will grow faster than energy use does.
Then there is the nonsense about China being the world’s leader in renewable energy. Naturally, given the size of their economy, everything thing they do is big. But the sad reality is that wind and solar power still only contributed a paltry 4% of China’s energy last year.
As for Xi’s “promises”, we might recall that Senile Joe actually believed the Taliban.
The report reckons that these new coal plants and blast furnaces will add 150 million tonnes to China’s CO2 emissions. This is roughly half the UK’s total emissions.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
If China is expected to manufacture and deliver a large percentage of the world’s goods, it has to generate the power to do so as well as supporting its own population. If some people don’t like it, don’t buy the goods.
It is our duty as planetary stewards to raise the carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere to a level that sustains healthy plant life.
Record Indian harvests.
Going to need them to balance the very poor south american harvests that the record cold this year has damaged.
Send Gail Bradbrook to China with her XR table and see how much notice Xi takes of her – assuming she can persuade the police to let her go.
She can drive there in her diesel car.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/08/23/extinction-rebellion-founder-admits-drives-diesel-car/
It is very important to China’s energy strategy that the Paris Agreement should not fail and that the West should continue to hamper itself . Hence Beijing’s promises. Meanwhile provide electricity to the world’s poorest and gain their gratitude.
T
Yes. china promises to reduce coal use starting in 2026. This will be easier to do if they double their coal use between now and then!
I have to admire how well the Chinese look after their national interests. Shame our govts in the West only want to destroy the well-being of their citizens.
Today on Talk Radio, a guest (probably from XR) was challenged about the failure to protest outside the Chinese Embassy, given China’s ever-increasing emissions. The somewhat cowardly response was to appeal for carbon tax on Chinese goods entering the UK.
To achieve this, the UK would need to devise a defendable method to ensure all imports are taxed in an even-handed manner. I should think this would involve calculating the “emissions intensity” of individual goods and services from each country. That’s going to be a complicated task. There would need to be some level of acceptance from individual nations, otherwise these taxes would antagonise and probably invite reprisals.
A carbon border tax would be expensive for Brits who would be the ones who pay the tax, leading to an unwelcome increase in UK inflation at a time of economic uncertainty.
Other than those not-so-minor points, the idea is truly outstanding for its simplicity.
@ Jordan,
To take that idea at face value couldn’t China circumvent such a tax by redirecting goods from China via a third party country?
eg The Netherlands is credited with huge trade with UK simply by shipping passing through their gigantic port network.
It’d also be a nightmare to administer.
Let’s be honest the entire ‘carbon’ industry is a racket from top to bottom. Scams everywhere. Such a scheme would just invite more scam artists, with many at government level.
To trace the “emissions intensity”, the UK would need to carry out an audit on the manufacturing process behind imported goods (and maybe services too). It might then be necessary to trace goods (or components) back to country of origin to stop game playing such as passing goods through an intermediary country to obtain favourable treatment. This would be important to make sure trading parties accept they are being taxed proportionately. And if they disagree, there could be tensions and retaliation.
As you correctly say, it would be a complete nightmare.
To some extent, the same will be true for any system of “carbon taxation”. Taxation works best where there are definite auditable steps in financial transaction. An audited/recorded point of payment is typical in modern bureaucracies (e.g. VAT and income tax).
CO2 emissions do not meet this test, and therefore any system of “carbon taxation” requires a whole new scheme of auditable administration to record and audit chargeable “carbon transactions”. This has then to be enforced to avoid cheating. It makes for a messy expense. The EU ETS imposed a significant additional administrative burden on emitters, and the same will apply to the transposed UK system.
Taxing something just makes it more expensive for consumers and the government gains revenue that it will not pass back to consumers in lower taxes elsewhere. Taxing “carbon” is just another way of collecting money off consumers. It won’t make UK manufacturers tool up to make the taxed Chinese goods because our energy and labour costs are so high that we cannot cannot compete with China even if the carbon tax is 100%.
Stop importing from China…. harder than it would seem, ‘assembled in UK’, ‘built in the UK’, but with some intense investigation…. originated in China!
The political class are naive in the extreme if they trust China, soft colonisation of the third world and beyond is their goal, Green policy…. Xi must be laughing at the dumb ‘green’ policies pursued by the rest of the world.
Not a breath of wind, oops I mean green electricity tonight! Madness, madness.
Now we are expected to believe that not only have the Taliban embraced moderate Islam, but they’ve gone green too!
At COP26, we’ll all be looking forward to “pressing the flesh” with Afghanistan’s new kids on the block. Important to maintain the consensus.
How much opium will the Taliban donate to the love-fest? Will they be donating any to the Green Climate Fund? Or will they donate only terrorism?
More evidence that China is preparing for a reliable energy future. They seem to understand that this climate emergency frenzy is misplaced and that more CO2 is not a bad thing. As Philip pointed out… it’s needed to make the Earth greener.
The ChiComs allow Greenpeace an office in Beijing!?! Bet it isn’t allowed to advertise doom and gloom in China.
The purpose presumably is to suggest projects and stunts the Chinese might like to fund, and to alert them to opportunities for a bit of politicking.
Don’t forget that China was very quick to give sanctury to Maurice Strong, when even the UN was looking for him (after the Iraq cash for oil scheme inexplicably was found to be a few millions short.)
Since then of course, Xi Jinping made a great gift to the World with his special virus that kills, in particular, the very old, the very sick, males and apparently those not of East Asian extraction. Even our own government would find much to enjoy there. Think of the death duties and care savings!
The CCP went out of its way to send planes full from Wuhan around the world (notably to Lombardy in Italy, No. 1 European terminus for the Belt and Road initiative.) Internal travel of course banned.
You might imigine trusty Dr. Shi Zhengli (Bat Woman) has been happily concentrating on her knitting for the last 20 months and that it was just a coincidence that the “Indian” Delta variant showed up just across the Chinese border from where there was a live border war in progress.
Nothing to see here, I’m sure China will meet all their promised reductions over the next forty years. Access to Afghan Lithium resources will only be helpful!
Naturally, the XR and other GangGreen types will remind us of how wonderful Communism will be here as well, when they are in charge.
Thanks to all our Beloved Leaders, we won’t have long to wait.
The good news is that the earth itself is the intelligent creature Gaia that knows how to fight climate change and so we humans are off the hook. So go ahead and fire up all those coal fired power plants.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2021/08/25/gaia-vs-climate-change/
According to climate reanalyzer the 2m global temp. anomaly (cf 1979-200) has now dropped to 0.0C.
But Summit Greenland just had its first time evah/unprecedented rain/melt the MSM widely wildly reported (of course it is just rare, not unprecedented).
But yet again this shows that the global average temperature (whatever that is) has little relationship with massive local positive temperature anomalies/heat waves/weather.
“…anomalies…”
It is indicative of our intellectually bankrupt times, that any men who actually predicted the present increase in these anomalies, using reasons from cogent, but non-main-stream science, are, still either misunderstood or totally ignored.
A sensible person notes evidences of success, and pays more attention to the consistently successful man, when he speaks again, than to the serial screw-up.
As the, now hardly remembered, proverb states:
“One word to the wise – is sufficient.”
Under WTO rules what you apply to one nation you must apply to all unless there is a trade agreement. You would think following Brexit this would be widely understood but with companies bleating about the controls now applied to UK goods entering the Single Market following the UK leaving and becoming a Third Country, it appears not. Any carbon tax applied to Chinese goods would have to be applied to everyone else. This is the problem the EU face if they try to impose one to prevent manufacturing moving outside the EU in response to costs being increased by global warming taxes and rising energy costs.
We supposedly have a trade agreement with the EU. The problem we have run into is that tariff-free does not necessarily mean duty-free. (Or is it the other way round? I can never remember!) And, as most of us who warned against Brexit said at the time, it’s not tariffs that are causing the trouble; it’s the non-tariff stuff.
But the “carbon tax” would be a whole order of magnitude more complex. See Jordan’s comments above.
And I have grave doubts as to whether those demanding such a tax know the difference between carbon and carbon dioxide and are clueless as to the essential nature of both substances. We already know they can’t tell the difference between coal for heating/power generation and coking coal, a (currently) essential ingredient in steel manufacture.
The West’s whole climate policy is based on what the IPCC says but didn’t the Chinese dictate the terms of reference for the IPCC, via Maurice Strong who now lives in China, so that it can only look at research papers that deal with man influenced CC. If so it was a great idea to weaken the West’s economies and allow China a free run. Would explain China’s reluctance to join the CO2 attacks. Are my recollections right?
Right enough except that Strong died six years ago. Whether he was actually acting as a mouthpiece for the ChiComs is open to debate of course.
Has anyone seen Strong’s body?
Are we sure he didn’t just leave a pair of pumps and a towel on a river bank?
I’m sorry, but I wouldn’t trust anything the CCP said any more than I’d believe BBC news.
On the other hand, whilst I think that Putin and Xi are very much chips off the evil Uncle Joe and Mao Zedong blocks, they certainly aren’t daft.
Imagine as a thought experiment, you go into a pub on quiz night for a decent prize.
You can either join Xi & Vlad, or the combined brainpower of Boris, Sleepy Joe, Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron Ursula von der Leyen & Justin Trudeau.
Which team will you join???
An optimistic take: These new Chinese and Indian coal fueled electricity generating power plants will have modern smoke-stack- scrubber technology, with basically only water and carbon emissions resulting.
Yes, the Chinese are certainly building modern, clean plants, to replace their dirty ones