Coal’s future burns bright despite shift to renewable energy, by Graham Lloyd. Australia will be one of the first countries to sign the Paris climate agreement to limit global temperature rises to less than 2C when Hunt attends a high-profile ceremony in New York on Friday. But more interesting than the inevitable machinations of the elite is that China is proposing that
…long-distance, ultra-high voltage power transmission lines will pave the way for power exports from China to as far away as Germany.
Liu Zhenya, chairman of State Grid, told reporters that wind and thermal power produced in Xinjiang could reach Germany at half the present cost of electricity there.
Surely the Gods are laughing at us:
Australia sees its future importing millions of solar panels and batteries from China to deliver the Turnbull government’s solar and storage revolution. Meanwhile, the Middle Kingdom [China] is planning to keep burning coal and to ship electricity to Germany, where the renewable revolution has made power so expensive it may soon be cheaper to get it from half a world away, from coal.
How the Chinese must laugh at the gullibility of the western elites, who, based on a theory about carbon dioxide with no empirical evidence and only primitive models of climate that omit vital feedbacks, destroy their own industrial base in Europe with expensive power from windmills, then import power and industrial goods from half a world away. History will laugh at these fools too, and perhaps that history will be written in Chinese.
UPDATE: Some readers had not heard before that China is planning to sell power to Germany, and it made their head spin for a moment. Western Greens assume that the Chinese just made a mistake in their projections of coal consumption:
Greenpeace likes to think that China’s future coal plant projections are the result of “dysfunctional planning systems and cheap credit’’.
No, China intend to export power to countries whose belief in the theory that carbon dioxide causes global warming makes them rely on renewables:
But the World Coal Association maintains new high-efficiency coal technology will deliver power at half the cost of gas and one-fifth the price of wind in Asian countries in the future.
According to the Financial Times, exporting power to central Asia and beyond falls into China’s “one belt, one road” ambitions to export industrial overcapacity and engineering expertise as it faces slowing growth at home.
Oddly enough, Maurice Strong, the father of the carbon dioxide theory, lived his last years in China (he died in November 2015).
hat-tip Barry Corke
