Great, I love the Chinese train network. But unfortunately, as of today, it is mainly coal-powered. And they are still building more and more coal-fired power plants:
I read and analyze a similar piece with same/similar title from foreign affairs. Maybe the exactly same article, but I did not verify.
Disclaimer: I grew up in China and moved to US at age 24 in 2008.
The article exhibits the typical myopic viewpoint of US news reporting. Take the coal powered energy, in the context of carbon emissions.
China constantly broadcast her energy policy, there were never goal to reduce coal consumption, because there are cheap coals in China.
In order to meet the carbon emissions targets, there are a plethora of measurements:
* Higher efficiency coal power factory, where coal can be burned in cleaner generators and produces electricity for consumption.
* Reduce the use of coal for non power use. Like my hometown in shanxi, now it's banned to burn coal for heat. People have to use something close to natural gas.
* Close less efficient coal power factory.
* Increase the use of renewable energy. The majority of the energy use increase are going to be provided by renewable and nuclear power. While coal consumption remain steady.
* Reforestation and environmental projects to restore the natural carbon emissions capacity.
Yet, these articles constantly slam on the non decreasing usage of coal, and pay no attention to the increased efficiency, and the shift of usage pattern from being coals directly to producing electricity.
These are more like non technical but ideology charged reporter not understanding the delicacy of large scale social and economic problem, and refuses even to read some basic public policy documents.
It's seeing a tree while ignoring the while forest.
> and pay no attention to the increased efficiency,
Other parts of the world also have efficient, modern and new coal plants, and they are also getting closed (but of course, old ones first). Even the most efficient oal-fired power plant produces huge amounts of CO2.
And in other parts of the world, this is also causing social disruptions, e. g. for the people working in oal-fired power plants. None of these challenges are unique to China. But as the worlds #1 or #2 economic power, China has a huge responsibility to do the right thing.
No, my point was that for China, they believe the right thing to do is what they are planning to do, not closing all the coal plants right now.
And the reporting we see here, gloss over the reasonings and mind bending on the idea that coal usage are not reducing.
China cannot afford reducing coal usage because there are no easy way to provide the needed power. And there are other means to offset the carbon emissions, and it's been worked on.
Of course, different nations would have different measurements to meet the carbon neutral goal, and precisely that what China are pursuing, I.e., a method that fits China's situation.
Yes, and I think people in China understand that. And critically, the officials in power understand the need to drive down carbon footprints as well. But at the same time, a lot of Chinese people are still transitioning from a rural, agrarian culture/life style, to a industrialized life style. 5 years ago my grandparents live in a rural village home. They don't use ACs in the summer, wash cloths by hand. Today, they live in a condo that is closer to 20th century standards. They started to use ACs in the summer, washing machine, hot water when washing hands, etc. Multiply by 10s of millions of people, plus a growing economy, electricity consumption will only go up.
Most recent data released by Chinese government. 2021 1-6, total electricity usage in China is 3933.9 TWH. The same period in 2019 it is 3400 THW. A gain of 15%. The country has to meet massive growing electricity demands at the same time going carbon neutral is critical.
Two weeks ago, the Baihetan dam on Jinsha river, the upper stream of Yangtz, started to generate power. It's 277 meters tall, has 16 1 Gigawatt generators. For comparison, hoover dam in its entirety is 2 gigawatt. During the past 5 years, 3 other similar sized mega dams were constructed on Jinsha river. Baihetan at 16 GW, Xiluodu at 13.85 GW, Wudonge at 10.2 GW, and Xiangjiaba at 6.4 GW. Together, these four dams will have generation capacity two times that of Three gorges dam (22.5 GW).
A few days ago, carbon trading market was operational in china. The first batch of companies included in the carbon credit scheme includes around 2162 power generation companies. They have to buy carbon credits for their coal power plants. They emit around 4 gigatons of CO2 per year. The first transaction sold 160000 tons of carbon credits, at 52.78yuan per ton. This is good step in that it adds a price to carbon emissions, and pushes the economics in favor of reducing carbon foot print. Power companies were included first because accounting their carbon emissions is relatively easy. You know their power generation per year and their efficiency. Its easier for regulatory body supervise and enforce the rules.
At the same time, carbon emission credit and trade is going to be a huge impact on a lot of industries. Power generations, steel, metal, petroleum, car, chemicals, or just any manufacturing business. It could increase business cost, reduce export's cost competitiveness, increase business burden etc. And China's most important economic strength is in manufacturing of industrial goods, and competitiveness based on cost. Carbon credit will attack this fundamental advantage, its like getting rid off your own weapon in a fight. This will reduce China's export cost advantages, and cause more manufacturing to exit the country to places with lower cost and less regulation. From an economics competitiveness stand point, the country that should least impose carbon regulations like this is China. This speaks to how serious the country is taking peak carbon and carbon neutral.
China doesn't have the national road network like the US, so they built out a train system. As far as air travel, their Comac airplane has been accused of being a copy of an Airbus. It has about 300 orders from Chinese companies and no deliveries, as far as I can tell: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comac_C919
I was not aware that it had gotten so large. That's cool. But it still doesn't run end-to-end, like ours did from the beginning. That feature lead to the development of both sides of the country.
https://e360.yale.edu/features/despite-pledges-to-cut-emissi...