this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2024
67 points (92.4% liked)
Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.
5289 readers
502 users here now
Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.
As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades:
How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world:
Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:
Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
ROFL
There are some indicators that Chinese coal consumption might have peaked a couple months back. Not definite yet, but a very real possibility
Chinese coal is so much more complicated than people give it credit for.
Provincial leaders don't want to risk looking bad by having to import electricity from other provinces so they build coal plants then have hilariously low usage rates. They're basically building coal peaker plants comma but the overall Chinese economy/party wants them to be building solar and other renewable tech because China is the manufacturer of that tech.
The result is that they're building more power plants that have increasingly low utilization rates. Declining utilization rates even as they build more of them. Basically because of stupid internal politics. Again, they're using coal as peaker plants. Which is unimaginable to someone versed in US energy policy but that's because we forget that the capital cost of construction largely doesn't matter in China.
The far larger concern with Chinese coal is not their domestic policy, it's their foreign industrial policy - it's the outside markets they're getting hooked on coal.
Long-term it's a problem that will take care of itself ignoring climate catastrophe. Because, again China builds the renewable tech. They want the world buying from the long term. And I guess they see some short-term Merit in unloading bargain coal but they're going to make a lot more selling PV. The issue is that we don't have time to wait for that long-term.
Ironically the best policy to curtail Chinese coal is almost exactly what the US is doing - heavy investments in renewables. Hit those prices with learning curves to make fossils even less competitive than they already are. Make it so even the bargain tech doesn't make sense for those developing nations to use.
Why doesn't the Chinese federal government just ban new coal developments?