
Chinese coal consumption just fell for first time this century - ph0rque
http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/chinese-coal-consumption-just-fell-first-time-century-49062
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contingencies
It's not just coal. China is frankly the future as far as energy consumption
goes.

They produce and consume most of the world's solar equipment, produce
extensive hydropower, and lead the world in the deployment of rechargeable
electric vehicles (primary scooters) by an extremely long way.

To be clear, Australia, the nominal location of the source of the article,
supplies much of China's natural gas and coal so has a strong economic
interest in limiting such developments.

A new solar technology developed at Australia's University of New South Wales
(UNSW) in Sydney, was famously ready for commercialization but when prompted
the university turned down the opportunity. A smart ethnic Chinese researcher,
aghast at the unthinkable degree of risk aversion of the university in the
face of demonstrated efficiency gains, promptly returned to China, raised a
few million, and became the world's largest solar producer virtually
overnight.

~~~
bane
While I dearly hope this is the result of China emerging from a very short
industrial revolution analog, there's lots of reason to believe that this is
merely a leading indicator for an economic downturn.

~~~
contingencies
_China emerging from a very short industrial revolution analog_

You could rephrase that as _China rapidly refactoring the lion 's share of
global industrial production and doubling down the profits to realise the true
potential of modern infrastructure_ with arguably greater accuracy and
outlook. Arguably... but definitely there's some truth to it in areas such as
energy sustainability.

That said, the economic challenges in China are real, but they do have the
best possible toolset: centralized governance with a capable medium term
planning capacity that is unencumbered by election terms, technical prowess, a
population and capital base that make extremely large projects and investments
feasible, and a population that has endured great hardship in living memory
but emerged with concrete benefits such as mass literacy and for the most part
improved material wealth. Those factors alone give them a tremendous degree of
options.

I'm not an apologist: they certainly do put a foot wrong pretty often, and
people do get sidelined and mistreated. Overall, however, the job they are
doing is an extremely difficult one and the outcomes insanely impressive. It
is a country that - at least to me - is in modern times one of the greatest
wonders in human history.

~~~
eru
> [...] and a population that has endured great hardship in living memory but
> emerged with concrete benefits such as mass literacy and for the most part
> improved material wealth.

Sort-of. The concrete benefits came when they stopped the greatest self-
inflicted hardships.

~~~
contingencies
Agreed, there was definitely a lot of needless suffering. Most places go
through that at some point though... look at America's war against drugs,
pharmaceutical industry out of control and gun laws for instance. Or the great
depression. The communist period was China's way out of what had in some
measurable senses degenerated in to a highly insular and corrupt feudal
aristocracy punctuated by armed, roving wardlord bands and extreme religious
groups declaring the nth coming of the lord... so you could look at it as an
extended great depression for the average Joe, not really too far from more
familiar experiences in America, without being too far off the mark. Much of
China was something a lot more like poorer parts of like India a hundred years
ago... people dying on the street.

------
lukasm
Or maybe Chinese economy is short of breath after years of debt stimuli.

~~~
lmg643
Agreed. This is like a press release from the department of not-getting-the-
joke.

It is known that China "misstates" GDP and a variety of economic metrics on a
regular basis. Don't take my word for it - thank WikiLeaks:

[http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/12/06/us-china-
economy-w...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/12/06/us-china-economy-
wikileaks-idUSTRE6B527D20101206)

China's economy is slowing and the electricity consumption is the best un-
manipulated evidence we have. As the above commenter references, this slowdown
is likely the result of the credit spigot getting turned off.

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westiseast
Anecdotally, I have to be very cynical that an uptake in "green energy"
technology is the cause. I live in Fuzhou and almost never see solar panels in
use anywhere, and electric bikes are being replaced by cars owing to
increasing wealth and government policies discouraging their use. China is
investing in green technology so it can be no1 producer, not as no1 user.

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lnanek2
Bizarre they bring up hydropower not accounting for it, but don't mention
nuclear power at all. Where other countries ran from nuclear power, China
embraces it: [http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Country-
Profiles/Countries...](http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Country-
Profiles/Countries-A-F/China--Nuclear-Power/)

20 reactors now, 28 in construction, 58 by 2020, 150 by 2030. Seems like a
poorly researched article.

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kurthr
Reading the article, it's interesting that it doesn't seem to match up well
with the Economist article from last year:
[http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21583245-china-
worlds...](http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21583245-china-worlds-worst-
polluter-largest-investor-green-energy-its-rise-will-have) TheEconomist seems
to show CO2 (and coal consumption) tripling and rising steadily over a period
where the article shows it slowing down in 2007-11. I don't know which is
correct, but now I don't particularly trust either of these.

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Zigurd
Do not underestimate advanced renewables in the medium to long term, but the
only thing that can scale fast enough to displace coal in an energy market as
gigantic as China is nuclear.

China might be able to simply import nuclear technology. But it is also
possible that China's nuclear power program will fund the development of new
safer, less-expensive reactor designs. That could help the world even more
than cheap solar panels.

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malandrew
How trustworthy are the sources for these statistics? I don't know anything
about how reliable numbers from the China National Coal Association are, but I
was under the impression that data from the China National Bureau of
Statistics should generally be treated as suspect. Is there a way to
independently verify that consumption actually fell?

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beefsack
Using "this century" to describe the last fourteen years isn't incorrect, but
sure feels a bit baitey.

~~~
mikeyouse
There was a small dip in the mid 1990's, but this is indeed significant if
true:

[http://www.energytrendsinsider.com/wp-
content/uploads/2013/0...](http://www.energytrendsinsider.com/wp-
content/uploads/2013/08/Coal-Consumption.png?00cfb7)

~~~
fludlight
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_Asian_financial_crisis](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_Asian_financial_crisis)

