From Watts Up With That?
Essay by Eric Worrall
China is apparently doing such a good job at transitioning to renewables, we should all ditch democracy and copy their example.
Capitalism Can’t Solve Climate Change
BY BRETT CHRISTOPHERS
MARCH 20, 2024 9:00 AM EDTChristophers is professor at Uppsala University in Sweden, and author The Price Is Wrong: Why Capitalism Won’t Save the Planet and Our Lives in Their Portfolios: Why Asset Managers Own the World
…
Veiled by discussion of headline global trends in new renewables capacity investment is the fact that almost all the incremental progress is currently being made in one country: China. …
…
While China surges ahead, the rest of the world remains stuck.
This raises a crucial question. What is different about the development of solar and wind resources in China from the rest of the world?
The main answer is that in China, such development is capitalist in only a very limited sense. Certainly, the entities centrally involved in building out new solar and wind farms in China are companies. But almost all are state-owned. Take wind. Nine of the country’s top 10 wind developers are owned by the government, and such state-owned players control in excess of 95 percent of the market.
…
Add to this the fact that the banks financing all the new renewables development in China are generally also state-owned and directed, and a stark reality comes into focus. This is essentially central planning in action.
…
Why are renewables returns so low? Numerous factors conspire to drive down profits, but one is particularly important: competition. … There is no OPEC-like cartel in renewable electricity.
…
The alternative? To face a growing risk of climate catastrophe.Read more: https://time.com/6958606/climate-change-transition-capitalism/
The reality is Chinese central planners have made a colossal mess of their economy, because of their incompetence, economic mismanagement and Covid lockdowns. For at least 30 years the Chinese Government has been keeping interest rates too low to encourage development, but the result has been enormous resource misallocation and huge asset bubbles. The Chinese realestate bubble has popped, creating a catastrophic mess of bad loans in their realestate sector. Even worse, Chinese regional governments have for years been creating fake economic growth to meet central targets by issuing government bonds, and many are now likely bankrupt.
One day soon Chinese people will realise most of their investment savings have been lost by incompetent and corrupt bank managers and government officials, or even worse, that their savings are still in the bank, but have lost all their value. There have already been minor bank runs and collapses, though so far the Chinese government has somehow contained the situation, my guess is by printing more money to rehydrate the failed banks.
And of course there is the other side of China’s energy policy which Professor Brett Christophers conveniently ignores – China’s massive investment in new coal capacity.
China is not a model to copy. At least Professor Brett Christophers admitted renewables are unprofitable, but Chinese government officials directing banks to invest in unprofitable renewables is not helping China’s beleaguered banks to balance their books, and has almost certainly exacerbated the Chinese Communist economic crisis.
Professor Brett Christophers is right that the free market has not produced the climate outcomes he wants, but this is because the free market is driven by demand. People just don’t want expensive unreliable energy. The communist part of our economies, government subsidies for green energy and other boondoggles, is not something to be admired, it is something to be excised, like the political tumor it is.
Let us hope the 2024 election cycle delivers us the politicians we need, to set our societies right.
Update (EW): Anyone who is curious why China is building wind and solar AND coal, the answer is they are building wind turbines because Xi Jinping told them to build wind turbines.
In 2021, Xi wanted to pimp China’s emissions record in time for the next COP conference, so he issued strict district level energy quotas, demanded more wind turbines and solar, and ordered a transition to renewables.
The order for quotas was obeyed, but Xi forgot to tell everyone to reduce their energy use, to ensure the quotas lasted until the end of the year. As a result, China burned through their quotas and ran out of energy by July 2021, and much of the Chinese economy shut down for a few weeks while people waited for new orders from the Communist Central Committee.
The central committee did the only thing possible, but it took time for news of the crisis to filter through the communist bureaucracy and for a decision to be made – they relaxed the coal quotas.
What other evidence do we have the wind turbines are a political stunt? In 2023, the BBC broke the news that China is firming their wind and solar farms with coal plants.
This might seem a total absurdity, until you consider that commands from Xi Jinping and the Central Committee cannot be disobeyed, mid level officials can lose their life disobeying an order from a senior communist.
But the Chinese have had thousands of years practice at creative re-interpretation of the orders of the emperor.
So the commands to use green energy are being obeyed – but they firm the wind turbines and solar panels with coal, because this is the cheapest option for firming renewables, and nobody told them not to.
This isn’t the first time Xi Jinping’s communist regime has messed up the energy market. Shortly before the winter of 2017, Xi Jinping ordered coal plants be shuttered and everyone convert towns and cities to heat buildings with gas. The gas conversion was performed, but nobody checked whether the gas would be available – or more likely, people who were aware of the problem didn’t dare disobey the gas conversion order, even though they knew it would lead to disaster. As a result, in 2017 home and school heating failed throughout Northern China, and kids were forced to attend school in unheated classrooms, in the middle of a winter in which temperatures dipped well below 0F / -18C.
This is what I mean by Chinese Communist energy policy and economic incompetence. This is the incompetence and callous disregard for ordinary people’s priorities which Professor Brett Christophers appears to want the West to embrace.