The Oil Drum: Europe

61 comments on Carbon emissions: China no longer has any excuse to wait

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Engineer-Poet on June 23, 2007 - 10:52am

China has partially floated its currency. It is now appreciating by about 5% per year.

Against a depreciating dollar. This is an excuse, not progress.

China may allow the RMB to strengthen by 7.5% per year
At 7.5% per year, the 40% reduction is handled in about 5 years.

If China allows it. Float it and it would happen at once.

By 2020, China should hve 42% non-coal energy versus about 20% now.

And the 58% will be far larger than the 80% is today. Even growing at just 3%/year, China's use of coal would climb roughly 6%; at 5%/year, it would climb 37%. China's claimed growth has been on the order of 8%/year, which would increase its coal use by 97% by 2020 (1.08^13*.58/.80).

China is already emitting more CO2 than any other nation on earth. The whole world needs to start those curves going down, NOW.

China is closing the smallest and dirtiest coal plants and is making somewhat cleaner bigger coal plants.

The key word being "somewhat". Not only are they unscrubbed powdered-coal combustion plants instead of IGCC which would be simpler to sequester, China is building a new one every week.

We have a climate emergency brewing. Construction of all coal-fired plants should be suspended worldwide. TXU's cancellation of most of its proposed coal-fired additions needs to be followed by the rest. If there's a need for peak power to serve A/C demand, let's build solar-powered A/C. Texas has more than enough sun.

has the US shutdown any of its dirtiest coal plants ? No. They have grandfathered protections in to let them continue to pollute.

Said plants have been fought by the EPA and their neighbors for years, and only kept open by skullduggery on the part of the utilities. Closing them should be among the first things we do, along with mandatory DSM for loads like A/C to keep demand in line with supply.

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advancednano on June 25, 2007 - 1:00pm

>Against a depreciating dollar. This is an excuse, not progress.

I don't understand. The USA is the only country allowed to manipulate its currency ? They manipulate with the permitted means of printing money (expanding money supply) and running deficits in budgets and trade.

United States coal rush
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/09/AR200703...

First new coal plant (to go with the 600 the US already has)

MidAmerican Energy Holdings' new coal plant in Iowa. Due to start up this spring, it will probably be the next coal-fired generating station to come online in the United States. A dozen more are under construction, and about 40 others are likely to start up within five years -- the biggest wave of coal plant construction since the 1970s.

Companies say the new coal plants are better than old ones, though both use the same approach: pulverizing coal, then burning it in huge boilers to power giant turbines. The new $1.1 billion MidAmerican facility will be one of the nation's biggest, with 790 megawatts of capacity. Its boilers and pulverizers will devour 400 tons of coal every hour, 3.5 million tons a year, Sokol says. Combined with an existing plant next door, it will require a fresh train of coal every 16 to 17 hours; each train will be nearly 1.5 miles long and lug 135 cars about 650 miles from Wyoming's Powder River Basin.

So in spite of some people with good intentions and complaining about it the reality is that the US is adding a lot of coal power again and it is pretty much all pulverized coal, no sequestering and no IGCC.

Yes, China will add 300GW of coal by 2020 on top of the 480GW it has now and China has 4 times the US population.

China should look at ways to reduce that coal addition even more, but for the US to say it has any moral authority in any clean energy matter is BS.

==currency again
The currency game is also one where the US has gamed the system in the past as well. Went off gold standard when France kept cashing in for gold in the 70s. Now the US borrows trillions around the world (a lot of it from China) and tries to devalue its debt. Notice both China and Japan (big debt holders) have both devalued currency to prevent their debt from being devalued.

Why don't I borrow 1 trillion British pounds from you and pay you back with US dollars ? What you won't take it ? Float your currency you swindler so I can make you take the 40-50% haircut.

Yes, China will let the currency appreciate slowly but not because people in the USA are whining about it but because of a longer term plan to deal with their own financial adjustments.

For coal, if some country takes the lead and buys the earliest tech for cleaning up coal, eating the early costs and learning curve then it will be easier for others to follow.

====If the world collectively screws up the CO2 situation then we will just have to make fake volcanoes and dump a bunch of sulphur or crushed earth to lower the temperature.

====
http://advancednano.blogspot.com

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Engineer-Poet on June 27, 2007 - 7:09pm

The USA is the only country allowed to manipulate its currency ? They manipulate with the permitted means of printing money (expanding money supply) and running deficits in budgets and trade.

Apparently you have absorbed a lot of mis– or dis–information about exchange markets. It isn't worth my time to try to educate you (nobody else is reading this by now), so I'll just say that this is how the markets are SUPPOSED to work: nations which run deficits should see their currencies fall. This makes their imports more expensive and their exports cheaper, re-balancing the system.

China's manipulations are engineered to create and maintain an imbalance. So were Japan's (along with all kinds of non-tariff barriers). They made their beds.

United States coal rush

A dozen plants in 5 years is 2.4 per year. This is about 1/20 of China's rate of one per week.

US is adding a lot of coal power

5% as much isn't "a lot".

for the US to say it has any moral authority in any clean energy matter is BS.

Which is why I said the US should close all our old, dirty plants and put a moratorium on PCC plant construction, effective immediately.

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advancednano on June 27, 2007 - 8:37pm

The US clearly has a weak dollar policy. Plenty of economists who get exchange markets say so. I understand that they are following the weak dollar policy within the "rules of the market game", but a weak dollar policy is a weak dollar policy. I understand the SEMANTICS of how the currency game is supposed to work. Also, most of the US trade deficit is with middle eastern countries for oil imports.

http://econ161.berkeley.edu/movable_type/2003_archives/002294.html

On the economic level, the signals that the U.S. Treasury is no longer in the business of trying to keep foreign holders of U.S. Treasuries from suffering lots of exchange rate risk makes foreigners' investments in U.S. Treasury bonds riskier. As a result, foreigners will invest less in U.S. Treasuries and other dollar-denominate securities. Less money flowing into the U.S. looking for securities to buy means that the supply of capital flowing through U.S. financial markets will fall. Falling supply with constant demand means a rising price. The price of capital flowing through U.S. financial markets jumps--and that price is the interest rate.

http://www.americaneconomicalert.org/view_art.asp?Prod_ID=835

http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/crisis/2003/0924strongweakdollar.htm

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/EH14Dj02.html

Coal US v China
USA
A dozen more are under construction to be completed within 5 years.
37GW of new coal within 5 years
40 others are likely to start up within five years completed by 2017.
4.5 plants per year over the next ten years.
Then accelerating to about 8 per year.
The US plants will be bigger.
So it looks like about 100GW of new coal power by 2020 versus 313 GW of new coal power for china by 2020. So the US will be adding more like 30%.

150 total from 2007 to 2030
http://archive.mailtribune.com/archive/2007/0312/biz/stories/11mar_coalr...

The US has less energy growth now.

Existing 2005 generation
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat2p2.html

From 2009 onwards it is mostly coal that the US is adding
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat2p4.html

Clearly the US cannot add 200% coal versus total energy added. But what they will be adding is mostly coal from now to 2020 and into 2030.

China
313 GW of coal 2007-2020.
50% of new power is coal from 2007-2020

We are both agreed that the US and China should both get off of coal and stop adding more.

I am just saying that the USA needs to do more before it has the moral authority to say "china stop adding so much coal and get off coal...just look at what we/USA are doing as an example of leadership".

Right now the US can say "China stop adding so much coal and get off coal...don't look at what we/USA are doing which is adding mostly coal and using mostly coal" although the US can say for awhile we were adding natural gas. China don't you have pipelines with natural gas too ?

===============
http://advancednano.blogspot.com

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advancednano on June 27, 2007 - 9:53pm

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/27/AR200509...

the IMF chief went beyond comments he made Friday at the same conference addressed by Adams. Yesterday, Rato flatly disputed claims that China was violating IMF rules against currency manipulation for competitive gain. "My information here is strictly what the [IMF] staff has given me -- that there is no evidence," he said. "There is a strong argument by the Chinese authorities that their main objective" in keeping the yuan steady against the dollar "is the stability of the economy."

http://opencrs.cdt.org/document/RS22658
The IMF Articles of Agreement prohibit countries from manipulating their currency for the purpose of gaining unfair trade advantage, but the IMF lacks effective means for enforcing that rule. The WTO has rules against export subsidies, but these are very narrow and specific and do not seem to encompass currency manipulation.

http://worldtradelaw.typepad.com/ielpblog/2007/03/currency_manipu.html
Currency manipulation . . . is [one of ] the new devil's workshop of trade policy but the Doha Round agenda is silent on these issues. Instead negotiations are locked in a tussle over farm subsidies . . . Regarding exchange rates, the WTO defers to the IMF but the IMF has no power to act. Currency manipulation is not on the Doha Round agenda.

It looks like the US can live with the currency situation, negotiate something or start a trade war over it.

======
http://advancednano.blogspot.com