China's Coal Dependency
A China analyst advises that
dethroning coal from its dominant position in China’s energy hierarchy will be exceptionally difficult, even assuming optimistic scenarios of deploying other energy sources.
What does this realistic outlook imply?
Therefore, it is imperative to simultaneously focus on developing clean coal and carbon technologies.
The Chinese don’t give a rat’s arse about the War on Carbonâ„¢.
Their weakness is that they think our leaders are acting rationally. This makes them think that there is some hidden factor, something they don’t understand, that is making our leaders want to destroy our way of life and force us to move backwards to a pre-industrial state.
I suspect China cares about the War on Carbonâ„¢ only as a public relations issue. If they can get the greens defending China in the western media it will take the spot light off the human rights abuses.
What is carbon emissions? Soot? Graphite? Diamonds?
Keith,
CCS is a pipe dream. Barring some breakthroughs in separation technologies, it isn’t going to happen in China on anywhere near the scale that is needed for climate stabilization.
You should have quoted the next paragraph in the article.
“Barring the emergence of game-changing technologies, it is evident that there is no silver bullet in tackling China’s immediate energy conundrums. As a result, policymakers are relying on a multiplicity of tactics that involve fuel diversification, renewable deployment, resource-based taxes, and energy price reforms. So too will China have to increasingly focus on demand-side management as millions enter the middle class and alter their energy consumption patterns and covet personal autos.”
I know you’ve got a thing for the TBI fairy-dust solution, but it simply isn’t the solution that you think it is. More importantly, there is a real opportunity cost to consider. The $10 billion that you spend on CCS R&D is $10 billion you don’t spend on more promising energy alternatives (e.g. biomass, geothermal, tidal, solar thermal, etc.)
#4
“..More importantly, there is a real opportunity cost to consider…”
LoL…..what is the “opportunity costs” for shutting down western industry and sending it wholesale to China?