“Green conundrum” | David Dodwell

Sources at OWiD

It’s the likes of the above chart that prompted ex Labor PM, Tony Blair recently to note -- correctly --

 “Don’t ask us to do a huge amount when, frankly, whatever we do in Britain is not really going to [affect] climate change.“ 

What’s the point of the UK impoverishing itself to achieve a “Net Zero” C02 emissions, when China is doing what it’s doing in the chart above. 

China in 2021 has CO2 emissions 47% higher than the United States and the EU combined!

China CO2 emissions 33 times those of the U.K. 

Australia total CO2 emissions per year are < than China’s annual CO2 emission increase!

My spreadsheet of various Compound Annual Growth Rates for fossil fuel emissions, since 1950, here. 

David Dodwell weighs in yet again on this climate change issue. And seems to give China a pass for building two new coal station per week. Because, he thinks, they’re there for backup in case renewables don’t deliver. Sure, perhaps. But I suspect they’re also being used for everyday electricity generation. I can hardly imagine China has hundreds of coal-fired stations sitting idle waiting to be fired up when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind  doesn’t blow. 

I noted China’s obsession with energy security -- a not at all a “curmudgeonly”view, imo -- a while ago, via Ross Clark. 

Gas is not something they ought be stopping.

Final para Dodwell above: no China will not soon give up burning coal. And no, it’s not a “global pacesetter” in reducing CO2 emissions: despite its huge push into renewables, it continues to increase emissions. See Our World in Data, at the top. 

China could be using more Gas-fired backup. It now imports more Gas than coal, so that ought feed through to lower emissions in due course, as Gas has about half of coal’s. That’s despite the Green’s trying to ban Gas as well, because, well... “perfection is the enemy of action”. 

Moving to fracked Gas is what got the US to reduce its CO2 emissions, despite not being a party to the Kyoto or Paris protocols. 

Hong Kong meantime also reduced CO2 emissions, partly from Nuclear -- we get Nuclear electricity from two stations in China --  and partly from changing coal fired stations to natural gas. If Australia had done the same it would already be at the target that it’s set for itself by 2030.