Tag Archives: China

China, India break coal production records

From CFACT

By Duggan Flanakin

Back in April the Environmental Protection Agency issued a new final rule that will force U.S. coal-fired power plants to install carbon capture systems or shut down operations. The rule is a key part of President Biden’s pledge to eliminate all energy sources that emit carbon dioxide by 2035 in the electricity sector and by 2050 for home heating, steel production, and all other uses.

But, as Tsvetana Paraskova reported in May, the Biden Administration plan faces insurmountable problems, given that fossil fuels still provide 60 percent of total U.S. electricity generation. Coal’s share has fallen to 16 percent, while natural gas accounts for 43 percent. Coal-fired power generation is highest during summer heatwaves when wind power is intermittent. Thus, coal still supplies more electric power than wind (11 percent), hydropower (6 percent), or solar (4 percent).

The push seeks to eradicate not just coal but all fossil fuels from American society. The fly in Biden’s ointment is more like the elephant in a tiny room. Around the world, countries large and small are far more concerned about providing energy and electricity for their citizens than pursuing a fearmonger-led “crusade” to rid the planet of life-giving carbon dioxide.

Here at home, five states – North Dakota, Missouri, Kentucky, Wyoming, and West Virginia – still rely on coal for more than half their electricity generation. Data centers, artificial intelligence, and electric vehicles are using greater and greater shares of existing power, taxing utilities struggling to keep energy supply at levels sufficient to meet energy demand.

Over in Europe, where official enthusiasm for ending fossil fuels has at times surpassed that of America’s even Germany has reopened a coal-fired power plant and other European countries are pondering their own need for alternatives to Russian natural gas. EU lignite production had dropped to 240 megatons in 2020 from over 300 megatons in the 2010s.

Four EU countries mine hard coal, led by Poland and Germany, with annual production at about 150 megatons a year in the recent past. Coal still provides 70 percent of Poland’s electric power, while coal’s share in Germany is well above 25 percent. Coal provides about 11 percent of Russia’s electricity, making it the world’s fifth largest consumer of coal.

Prior to invading Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin had announced a new national goal to achieve net zero carbon dioxide by 2060 – long after the West’s self-imposed deadline. Other nations outside the globalist cabal based in Doha and Brussels (and Washington, DC) are even less inclined to end coal production, India and China, notably, are moving in the other direction.

Back in April, Indian Prime Minister Narenda Modi was overjoyed to report that his nation had produced over 1 billion metric tons of coal and lignite in the 2023-24 fiscal year, at nearly 100 million tons more than in 2022-23. Modi, whose nation still needs a lot more electric power to meet its first-world goals, lauded the production as “a remarkable feat and a historic milestone toward self-reliance” in a vital sector.

A new report from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) and the Global Energy Monitor (GEM) says that coal power plant permitting, construction starts, and new project announcements accelerated dramatically in China in 2022, with new permits reaching the highest level since 2015. China’s coal power capacity starting construction was six times as large as that in the rest of the world combined.

National Public Radio’s Julia Simon reports that China’s heat waves increased demand for air conditioning and dried up rivers, forcing Chinese hydropower facilities to shut down. Aiqun Yu, co-author of the CREA-GEM report, noted that high prices for liquefied natural gas due to the Russia-Ukraine war led another Chinese province to turn to coal.

The CREA-GEM report somewhat greenwashes China’s commitment to coal, claiming that the “massive additions of new coal-fired capacity don’t necessarily mean that coal use or CO2 emissions from the power sector will increase in China.” After all, China is also building wind, solar, and nuclear energy facilities and President Xi has “pledged that China would reduce coal consumption in the 2026-2030 period.”

This, the authors said apologetically, “would mean a declining utilization rate” rather than continued growth in coal-fired power generation. Surely, they say without words, China will phase out these expensive new coal plants within the next eight years. And pigs fly.

Still, the CREA-GEM team found it necessary to include some “policy recommendations” to instruct President Xi in how to stay in the good graces of the Net Zero overlords. First, they said, China must impose strict controls on new coal power capacity and reject or revoke permits to projects not necessary for “supporting grid stability” or “supporting the integration of variable renewable energy.”

Way back in 2020 UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told India it should commit to carbon neutrality by ending fossil fuel subsidies and investing in solar power. Claiming that investing in coal is “bad economics,” Guterres said India can only become a “true global superpower in the fight against climate change if it speeds up its shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy.”

Did Prime Minister Modi bow and scrape to Guterres?

Guterres in the same year went all the way to Beijing to “urge” China to stop funding coal projects, because (OMG!) the Paris climate agreement goals will slip out of reach without China’s cooperation. There, too, he begged the “economic superpower” to genuflect, whispering that “the way in which China restores growth will have a major impact on whether we can keep 1.5C within reach” in the post-pandemic world (spoken at the height of the pandemic!).

Was President Xi so flattered by the former Prime Minister of Portugal that he immediately stopped all future plans for new coal-fired power plants in China?

Back in November 2021, forty-something countries, including coal-reliant Poland, Vietnam, and Chile, all committed to shift away from coal. The U.S. and 19 other nations would only pledge to end public financing for “unabated” fossil fuel projects abroad by the end of 2022.

What would happen if only the West and its friends abandon fossil fuels?

Mainstream Media Ignores Two Big Stories That Run Counter to the Net Zero Narrative

From The Daily Sceptic

BY CHRIS MORRISON

Food production in China is soaring, helped by slightly warmer temperatures and higher levels of carbon dioxide, while cows grazing on wetland pasture actually reduce emissions of the ‘greenhouse’ gas methane, partly by gobbling up decomposing, methane-emitting plants. Just a couple of stories, based on recent scientific research, that readers would have missed in the Net Zero-promoting mainstream media. Alas, environmental correspondents do not cover such uplifting scientific material.

In a recently published paper led by UCLA postdoctoral science researcher Di Chen, it was discovered that the “main factor” affecting China’s crop yields was local air temperature change. “When the air temperature in China is high, the yield will show an increasing trend, and vice versa,” it said. Elsewhere, two agroecology researchers in the United States found that on ground that is regularly water laden, the majority of methane was released from decomposing plants and animals. As a result, removing feeding cows resulted in higher methane emissions. Of course, such a finding has enormous implications for water-laden countries like Ireland, whose cow belching-obsessed policy berks are planning to spend £600 million removing 200,000 cows from some the world’s greenest and lushest pastures.

The above graph shows the enormous rises in Chinese yields for staples such as rice, maize and wheat measured by hectogram per hectare. The researchers note that improved agricultural management has had a part to play, although yields started to rise even during the instabilities of the immediate post-Mao period. The scientists also note that there is no obvious increasing trend in precipitation, while China’s air temperature and the global CO2 rise “have the same trend as crop yield”. Recent lower levels of Arctic sea ice are considered an ”indirect process”, but the conclusions of the paper are clear. Warming extends the growing season and reduces damage from the cold. Increasing CO2 improves the photosynthetic rate of crops, improves growth rates and dry matter content, and thus improves food production.

This ‘denial’ of counter-narrative climate science takes many forms in mainstream media, activism and politics. Mostly, it’s achieved by omission, a fate that can befall anything that isn’t useful for Net Zero promotion. Any suggestion that the climate is relatively benign compared to recent periods, with a little extra warming and a top up of CO2 from levels so low they’re approaching danger point, is countered with hysterical claims of boiling and collapse. One bizarre omission, covered in detail in the Daily Sceptic, is the rapid, and accelerating, greening of the planet.

The evidence for the greening of the Earth from atmospheric CO2 “is now too obvious to deny”, said a group of scientists from the CO2 Coalition in a recently published paper. The graph above that accompanied their words, compiled from satellite data from 1982-2012, is a stunning demonstration of the wonders of CO2 plant nourishment. In fact, another recent paper Chen et al (2024) found greening had actually accelerated over the last two decades.

All this greening might be a wonder of nature, but it is just how biology works, although it remains largely unpublicised because of Net Zero hysteria. In the detailed CO2 Coalition paper, the scientists sought to explain why the nutritional value of the world’s most abundant crops “can and will remain high as atmospheric CO2 concentrations increase towards values more representative of those existing throughout most of Earth’s history”. The existing level of atmospheric CO2 is noted to be “much less than optimum for most plants”.

Meanwhile, interest in the carbon cycle on cattle farms has been growing following scientific experiments on the Buck Island ranch, 150 miles northwest of Miami. Comparing gases emitted by pastures grazed to those un-grazed, suggests that livestock is a net carbon sink. The Heartland Daily News reported that when cattle graze on land, the plants prioritise root growth over the plant matter above the surface. “The deeper the roots, the more plants sequester carbon in the soil through the photosynthesis process,” it said.

Cattle are part of a carbon cycle. If you just model the emissions coming from the animal “you’re missing the rest of the ecosystem” commented Dr. Vaughn Holder, Global Beef Research Director at Alltech. Aside from reducing emissions from wetlands, livestock animals increase global food security by eating inedible plants and turning them into edible proteins for humans, i.e., their bodies. In addition, farmed animals eat a lot of food by-products that humans can’t or prefer not to eat, such as the pulp left after extracting the juice from oranges. Holder observes that composting such materials increases emissions five times more than feeding it to dairy cows, while disposal in landfill creates 50 times more emissions than giving it to the animals.

The increasingly picky diets that urban greens want to foist on the rest of us have little place for meat. Greenhouse gas emissions are a convenient scare to remove an ingredient that has been an essential and healthy part of the diet since homo sapiens emerged as a distinct omnivorous species. But if you can’t remove meat just yet, take it out on the cows and force them to wear special King Charles-endorsed masks to capture some of those evil extrusions. 

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.

London To Buy 100 Electric Buses From China

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t Philip Bratby

From TimeOut

Cleaning up London’s air is clearly on the agenda of London’s newly re-elected mayor Sadiq Khan – and those emission-reducing ambitions were recently re-affirmed with the news that the city’s ‘Boris Buses’ are getting the boot.

And wow, we’ve got more London bus news. The Mayor just approved a deal between Go-Ahead Group (a UK transport company) and Chinese automaker BYD to build over 100 electric double-decker buses for London’s streets.

Each of the buses will apparently cost around £400,000, which is supposedly around £100,000 cheaper than what can be offered by UK suppliers.

However, the deal is not without its controversy. According to City AM, back in 2021 the United Nations wrote to BYD stating it had ‘received information’ that the company’s supply chain involved ‘alleged forced labour, arbitrary detention and trafficking of Uyghur [Muslims] and other minority workers’.

In response to that, TfL’s head of bus business development Tom Cunnington said: ‘We have been assured by the manufacturer that no unethical practices have taken place and would act immediately if provided with evidence to the contrary.”

https://www.timeout.com/london/news/london-is-getting-a-brand-new-fleet-of-electric-double-decker-buses-052024

We’ve been assured? Well BYD would say that, wouldn’t they!

I suppose we should not complain that TfL are saving money. The real question is how much cheaper would a diesel bus have been?

One US study suggested diesel would be about two thirds the price of an electric bus, while Wright, who make buses, quote typical costs from between £250,000 and £500,000.

I suspect though that TfL would have been bragging if they had actually saved money, so I think we can assume they have paid well over the odds.

Warming Temperatures In China The ‘Main Factor’ Explaining Rising Crop Yields

From NoTricksZone

By Kenneth Richard

In what shouldn’t even be news, scientists have discovered warmth and rising CO2 are beneficial to crops, whereas cold and falling CO2 lead to declines in crop production.

Scientists have determined the “main factor” directly improving post-1960 crop yields across China is a warming climate (Chen and Sun, 2024). Warming expands the growth area for late-maturing plant varieties, reduces damage from cold temperatures, and extends growing seasons.

The authors point to a link between warming, declining sea ice, the Arctic Oscillation, and East Asian winter monsoons. Then they extend these relationships to crop growth trends in China.

Rising CO2 and its photosynthesis enhancement is another factor driving China’s rising food production.

“The effect of Arctic sea ice on Chinese crop yield is an indirect process, while the main factor that really affects China’s crop yield directly is the local air temperature change. When the air temperature in China is high, the yield will show an increasing trend, and vice versa. [T]he change in thermal conditions may also reduce the low temperature and cold damage and increase the area of late-maturing crop varieties.”

“Besides, CO2 is an essential element of crop photosynthesis and a major climate change scenario construction indicator. Increasing CO2 concentration in the Earth’s atmosphere can increase the photosynthetic rate of crops, which directly stimulates crop growth and increases the dry matter content, resulting in increased food production.”

Image  Source: Chen and Sun, 2024
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The Electric Car Revolution is Coming Crashing Down

From The Daily Sceptic

BY WILL JONES

The state-subsidised electric car market has crashed in China and the country is trying to dump the vehicles on the West, but the same is happening here as well. For manufacturers it’s going to be a blood bath. Ross Clark has the details in the Spectator.

China is often characterised as a copycat when it comes to industry and technology but in one way it has proved to be a pioneer. It was China which saw the first boom in electric cars – and it was China that was the first to suffer when demand for them collapsed. The vast graveyards of unsold vehicles found in Hangzhou and other Chinese cities are the result of a huge, subsidised push to manufacture electric vehicles, demand for which has never caught up with supply. Ride-share services bought the vehicles– in a rerun of the great cycle-share fiasco of 2018, which led to piles of unused and unwanted bikes. But private buyers have been notably less keen.

Where China leads, the rest of the world seems doomed to follow. With China’s manufacturers struggling to sell their electric cars at home, last year they started shipping them in large numbers to Europe – where many are now accumulating in ports at Rotterdam and Antwerp. The window in which to sell them may prove small, as the EU is considering measures to prevent the ‘dumping’ of cheap Chinese cars in Europe. The Biden administration has already taken action, increasing tariffs on cars imported from China from 25% to 100%. While that may put paid to Chinese imports, it won’t do anything to alleviate unsold stocks of U.S.-made electric cars. The great electric revolution that was promised just three years ago is already failing – and it will bring the car manufacturers down with it.

If there ever was a real-world demonstration of the old proverb ‘you can lead a horse to water…’, it is electric cars. Elon Musk’s visionary work with Tesla panicked the old combustion engine firms, which set themselves ambitious targets to phaseout petrol completely: Fiat, Ford, Jeep, Nissan and Lexus by 2030, Vauxhall by 2028, Jaguar by 2025. One of the most dramatic announcements came three years ago when Hertz declared that a quarter of its entire rental fleet would be electric by 2025. “The new Hertz is going to lead the way as a mobility company,” it said. It certainly did lead the way – into headlong retreat.

At the time, Hertz signed a $4 billion deal with Tesla and announced plans to buy 175,000 EVs from General Motors. In January it went into reverse and said it would instead start selling 20,000 EVs (later raising this to 30,000). It has pledged to “re-invest a portion of the proceeds from the sale of EVs into the purchase of internal combustion engine vehicles”. Its share price (down 80% since the Tesla announcement) has made it a case study.

In Britain, things don’t look much better. The slowing EV momentum led Rishi Sunak to drop his target of banning new petrol car sales by 2030 and push it back to 2035. The number of electric cars sold to drivers (as opposed to companies) was falling by 20% as of last month. The U.K.’s market for EVs is being propped up by fleet companies which, spurred on by Government incentives, now buy five in every six EVs sold.

They’re not even cost-effective, says Clark: “Not only are EVs themselves 40% more expensive to buy than petrol cars, but they are also costlier to run. The average charge for refuelling at a rapid charger is 22p per mile, compared with 17p for petrol.”

Worth reading in full.

Asia Embraces Coal as the U.S. Rejects It

SHANXI, CHINA -NOVEMBER 25: (CHINA, HONG KONG, MACAU, TAIWAN OUT) Coal is piled up as it is sorted at a coal mine on November 25, 2015 in Shanxi, China. A history of heavy dependence on burning coal for energy has made China the source of nearly a third of the world’s total carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, the toxic pollutants widely cited by scientists and environmentalists as the primary cause of global warming. China’s government has publicly set 2030 as a deadline to reach the country’s emissions peak, and data suggest the country’s coal consumption is already in decline. (Photo by Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

From Watts Up With That?

By Vijay Jayaraj

Vietnam and other Asian countries are on a coal spree! Given the dynamics of energy use in the rapidly developing industrial sector there, it is no surprise that these nations have backpedalled on big promises made at international climate conferences to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels.

Vietnam’s projected 2024 growth rate for Gross Domestic Product (GDP) stands at 5.8%, the sixth highest in Asia. Among the biggest contributors to GDP is the industrial sector (38 percent), especially manufacturing. S&P Global has noted a considerable improvement in Vietnam’s manufacturing sector in the fourth quarter of 2023 and is expecting Vietnam to perform well this year.

Electricity is a cornerstone to manufacturing operations in Vietnam. In 2023, coal produced more than 40% of all electricity in the country, while the country’s abundant hydro reserves contributed around 30%. Natural gas accounted for about 10%.

However, 2024 is expected to see a shortfall in hydroelectric generation because of less rainfall. Simultaneously, electricity production with natural gas is being complicated by forecasts of higher gas prices. Bloomberg reports that state-run PetroVietnam Gas “recently decided not to purchase a cargo for June due to high offer prices.”

So, the heavy lifting to meet power demand must now come from coal. The country is urging coal miners to maximize production before demand reaches peak in the summer months. The country’s prime minister has asked for an increase in coal exploration as well, signalling a sustained interest in medium to long-time reliance on coal.

Vietnam’s move to increase coal use was inevitable. It cannot continually risk a huge demand-supply gap whenever dams go dry or gas prices skyrocket. The growth rate of power demand from expanding industries is increasing at a fair pace, and energy security is critical in ensuring manufacturing’s positive trend.

Similar Pattern Across Asia

Across Asia, a similar phenomenon is unfolding. The regional coal resurgence can be attributed to the rapid economic growth in these countries. China, the world’s largest coal consumer, witnessed a rise in consumption in 2024. Earlier this year, reports showed the construction of dozens of new coal plants in China. In 2023, the country accounted for 95% of construction of the world’s new coal power plants. There are a total of 1,142 operating coal-fired plants in China, which is five times more than in the U.S.

India, another major player in the Asian energy market, also saw an increase in coal imports and production. India has increased its spending on infrastructure, with an expected rebound in demand for coal-based steel and raw material manufacturing. Indonesia has 254 operational coal-fired power plants and 40 new plants under construction. Japan, too, is a big consumer of coal, being the top importer of Australian coal in recent years.

Like Australia, the U.S. has been a top source of coal imports for these Asian countries. S&P Global says, “U.S. metallurgical coal exports have seen growth fueled by Asian demand over the past few years. The potential for seaborne volumes to grow hinge on expansions in blast furnace steelmaking and met coke production in India, China and Southeast Asia.” New mines such as Arch Resource’s Leer South and the AMCI, POSCO and Itochu-led Allegheny Met’s Longview mine will play a role in meeting this demand from Asia.

It is an irony that U.S. miners are able to meet Asian needs while their own government rejects them as a fuel source for cheap electricity!

The advancement of recent emission-reduction targets for U.S. industry, as well as restrictions on the export capacity of natural gas by the Biden administration is quite astonishing in light of the ongoing expansions in fossil fuel capacity by various Asian nations.

The quality life for millions of Americans could very well decline in return for zero environmental benefit as that of Asians improves.

This commentary was first published at Real Clear Energy on May 8, 2024.

Vijay Jayaraj is a Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Virginia. He holds a master’s degree in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia, U.K.

An embargo by China could implode Biden’s Green economy

From CFACT

By Ronald Stein

USA and China trade war economy conflict tax business finance money / United States raised taxes on imports of goods from China on industry container ship in export and import logistics background

No one seems to remember the Arab oil embargo of 1973, just 50 years ago, as America’s National Security is now with China’s monopoly of critical Minerals!

In 1973, the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) imposed an oil embargo against the United States, triggering a crude oil crisis that sent the U.S. economy into a recession.

Move over OPEC, today, the “green” revolution to occasionally generated electricity from wind and solar has the world on the cusp of a Green Embargo by China that may trigger a financial crisis that could send the U.S. economy into a recession.

Fifty years ago, in the aftermath of the 1973 oil crisis in 1977, the Department of Energy (D.O.E) was established to lessen our dependence on foreign locations for America’s energy independence, but today, with its 14,000 employees and a 2024 budget of $52B, the D.O.E. continues to remain dead silent and has allowed foreign nations to take control of California, and for China to monopolize the supply chain of minerals and metals for America to achieve it’s “green” policies.

CALIFORNIA: The fourth-largest economy in the world has increased its imports of crude oil from 5 percent in 1992 to almost 60 percent of total consumption today.

California is home to 9 International airports, 41 Military airports, and 3 of the largest shipping ports in America. California’s growing dependency on other nations for crude oil poses a serious national security risk for America!

CHINA: For the transition to a “green” revolution reliance on electricity, the D.O.E. has remained silent while wind, solar, and electric vehicle policies have made America increasingly dependent on rare earth minerals and metals mined for those batteries under atrocious slave labor and environmental conditions in other countries that the D.O.E. and bureaucratic policymakers accept and encourage!

China controls a stranglehold of 80% of the global supply monopoly on rare earth minerals and metals, with the Congo in Africa a 90% source of vital cobalt.

Graphite: On a total component basis, graphite accounts for about 25% to 28% of an EV battery. Turkey has the largest reserves of graphite, followed by Brazil and China. Together, these three countries account for 66% of the estimated world graphite reserves.

Environmentalists’ vision just toward the wealthier countries on this planet that can afford the cost of regulations for the environmental movement, large batteries for electric cars, trucks, buses, and electricity generated occasionally by wind turbines and solar panels is tunnel vision that is hypocritical, unethical, and immoral.

  • China controls a stranglehold of 80% of the global supply monopoly on rare earth minerals and metals.
  • The Congo in Africa is a 90% source of vital cobalt.
  • Lithium: The Lithium Triangle, which covers parts of Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile, holds more than 50% of the world’s supply of lithium.
  • Graphite: On a total component basis, graphite accounts for about 25% to 28% of an EV battery. Turkey has the largest reserves of graphite, followed by Brazil and China. Together, these three countries account for 66% of the estimated world graphite reserves.

Today, a typical EV battery weighs 1,000 pounds and contains:

  • 25 pounds of lithium,
  • 60 pounds of nickel,
  • 44 pounds of manganese,
  • 30 pounds cobalt,
  • 200 pounds of copper, and
  • 400 pounds of aluminum, steel, and plastic.
  • Inside are over 6,000 individual lithium-ion cells.

It should concern everyone that all those “blood minerals” come from mining at locations in the world that are never seen by environmentalists, policymakers, or EV buyers.

  • For instance, to manufacture each EV auto battery, you must process 25,000 pounds of brine for lithium, 30,000 pounds of ore for cobalt, 5,000 pounds of ore for nickel, and 25,000 pounds of ore for copper. All told, just one Tesla EV battery requires the processing of more than 500,000 pounds of materials somewhere on the planet.
  • A battery for a heavy-duty electric truck can weigh up to 16,000 pounds, which is 16 times more than the Tesla battery! A single truck battery requires 8,000,000 pounds of earth to be dug up. That’s astounding – digging up 8 million pounds of earth for each truck battery!

EVs are heavily subsidized in multiple ways: through direct federal and state tax benefits to purchasers, through government loan incentives to manufacturers, and through added production costs passed on to gasoline vehicle purchasers.

Both China and Africa have minimal labor and environmental laws, resulting in extensive environmental degradation and humanity atrocities that support “clean” EV batteries. Both Lithium and Cobalt, the major components of the EV battery, are noted on The Periodic Table of Endangered Elements as having limited availability or experiencing a rising threat from increased usage.

It appears that it is both unethical and immoral to continue financially encouraging China and Africa to exploit “their” poor with yellow, brown, and black skin and financially supporting environmental degradation to “their” landscapes just to support clean EV batteries in “our backyards”!

The D.O.E.’s silence has become deafening as America approaches three and a half years into the Biden presidency—a presidency that from the outset promised an “all-government” regulatory onslaught to force a transition away from fossil fuels and to “green” electricity. The regulatory onslaught on fossil fuels has provided incentives for China to attain control of America’s green movement toward electricity!

China is positioned to influence lithium-ion battery production worldwide adversely. China has monopoly control over processed graphite, an essential component of almost all lithium-ion batteries. Virtually all processed graphite, natural and synthetic, is made in China and then exported to the battery makers worldwide.

These batteries are used universally in electric and electronic devices, from cell phones and watches to EVs and huge grid-scale backup batteries; they also have numerous essential military uses.

China is just now beginning to implement an export control program for processed graphite. By controlling exports, China could, to a significant degree, adversely influence lithium-ion battery production, such as by raising prices to selected producers or even blacklisting entire countries.

Thus, the potential adverse impact of the Chinese monopoly power is enormous. What they will do remains to be seen, but the threat is very real.”

Much has been written about China’s market power in other crucial materials like cobalt and rare earths. However, these cases are weak compared to its monopoly in processed graphite.

China is a major player in both cases, coincidentally producing about 70% of processed cobalt and 70% of rare earths. Numbers like this are nothing like monopoly control, as many other suppliers exist. China consumes most of its production because it makes a lot of lithium-ion batteries. It is a net importer of rare earths.

China’s stranglehold monopoly on the global supply of rare earth minerals and metals for the “green” movement to EVs and generating electricity by wind and solar is a clear and potential “embargo” danger to the American and World economies.

To reiterate, move over OPEC, the next foreign embargo may be a “GREEN” Embargo by China!

Please share this information with your friends to encourage energy literacy conversations at the family dinner table.

This article originally appeared at America Out Loud.

Australian “Local Manufacturing” Solar Subsidies to Go to China?

Shi Zhengrong

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

“I think you definitely need collaboration [with China]”.

The ‘Future Made in Australia’ plan for solar panels relies on a crucial ingredient: Help from China

By James Purtill May 6, 2024

Twenty-three years ago, a Chinese-Australian solar scientist moved from Sydney to Wuxi to build China’s solar panel manufacturing industry from scratch, using technology developed in Australian universities.

Shi Zhengrong became the world’s first clean energy billionaire, nicknamed “The Sun King”. China went on to dominate global solar panel manufacturing and, thanks to a mix of innovation and cut-throat competition, made solar the cheapest source of electricity in history.

Australian science graduates filled the top technology roles at the biggest Chinese solar companies. And a solar cell design developed in Australia became the global standard.

Meanwhile, Australia mostly stopped building its own solar panels.

Now, with the federal government preparing to ramp up Australia’s own tiny solar manufacturing industry, Dr Shi sees the story coming full circle.

“It’s an exciting opportunity for Australia,” he said, speaking to the ABC from China.

“I think you definitely need collaboration [with China], but I think Australia is in a better position compared to 20 years ago in China.”

…

The public reaction in the weeks since has been mixed. Many energy experts welcomed the plan as a way to ensure supply of a critical energy resource (solar will soon generate most of Australia’s electricity) and carve out a slice of a growing global industry.

But some economists and the federal government’s own Productivity Commission warned it could lead to the government wasting money by subsidising the production of panels that China can make more cheaply.

…Read more: https://johnmenadue.com/the-future-made-in-australia-plan-for-solar-panels-relies-on-a-crucial-ingredient-help-from-china/

What did we do wrong, to be cursed with such a parade of economically incompetent politicians? The government’s own productivity commission is warning it’s a bad idea, but politicians would rather listen to an Australian trained Chinese scientist who has already made billions of dollars off Australia’s economic incompetence, and stands to make billions more if this plan goes ahead.

The following article is from 2006 – why Shi Zhengrong, the Sun King, chose China over Australia;

Arise the Sun King

September 12, 2006 — 10.00am

…

Many factors, including China’s determination to attract its brightest minds back from overseas to help create new high-tech businesses, have contributed to Shi’s good fortune. His company’s rapid expansion has also been fuelled by rising global demand for solar cells, as governments in countries such as Germany and Japan, unlike here, have embraced clean energy.

“He was the right person at the right spot at the right time to move in both Chinese and Western cultures,” says Professor Martin Green, of the University of NSW, about his former student. “He was successful because of his own personal skills as a technologist and his ability to handle the managerial and political aspects of setting up and manufacturing in China.”

…

Content with his comfortable life in Sydney, he took Australian citizenship, but his homeland kept a close eye on this rising solar expert. At Chinese New Year and other festive occasions Shi was invited to celebrations at the Chinese embassy. “It was the policy of the Government to attract people like me – overseas scholars – to come back,” he says. In 2000 representatives of the Wuxi region approached him with an offer of $US6 million to establish a conventional photovoltaic solar cell manufacturing plant. Shi was sceptical that he could turn a profit in China. “The system was corrupted. I didn’t have any confidence [in returning],” he says.

He was also reluctant to give up his work on thin films – the technology of the future. But a two-week visit to China changed his mind. The infrastructure had improved and he could see that the handful of solar cell manufacturers there were losing money because of a lack of good technology.

With his experience and plentiful ideas for how to set up a plant, he realised the business could be a winner. “There was already a great demand for solar panels.”

…Read more: https://www.smh.com.au/national/arise-the-sun-king-20060912-gdoddr.html

I’m not criticising Shi Zhengrong’s choices or actions. In Shi’s place, if I had his skills and background, I might have made similar choices. He is undoubtably a brilliant scientist and a Chinese patriot who made a good decision for himself personally and for China, which made lots of Chinese people, including Shi, very rich – “the right person at the right spot at the right time”.

What I am criticising is the economic incompetence of Australia’s politicians. Shi had sound economic reasons, in addition to the subsidy cash, to relocate to China. But what is the competitive advantage which suddenly makes solar in Australia a good idea?

China dominates solar manufacturing because they have cheap coal energy. Low wages helped their competitive advantage, but the real key advantage is their low cost energy.

But Australia still has higher wages, higher energy costs, more environmental regulations and higher taxes than China. None of the economic advantages which convinced Shi to move to China have changed – China is still the more cost effective location to manufacture solar panels.

Even if you believe Australia is the better place to deploy solar panels, and there are arguments for and against this position, this doesn’t change whether China is the best place to manufacture solar panels.

If there was a real economic opportunity to manufacture solar panels in Australia, Australian businesses would be jumping all over it, leaping to fill the gap in the market. No government subsidy would be required to convince Aussie businesses to take advantage of a big profit opportunity.

The only competitive advantage Australia is publicly offering right now is lots of free money. But free government money is not enough to build a sustainable business, because solar manufacturing in Australia will dry up the moment the money stops. Giving away subsidy money with every sale of subsidised Australian manufactured goods would impoverish Australia, not give us a competitive advantage.

German solar industry collapsing: unable to make solar panels from solar power

From JoNova

By Jo Nova

About 90% of solar panels installed in Germany come from China, and earlier this year one of the last solar panel manufacturers closed in Germany. Last week, what was left of the industry begged for mercy (and subsidies) which they didn’t get. Now another German solar panel manufacturer has closed down.

For some cruel reason German factories which are close to their customers, can’t compete with distant foreign factories which have access to slave labor, fossil fueled shipping and cheap coal fired electricity?

The bigger question, seemingly, is how did the country that invented the printing press, diesel engines, and the theory-of-relativity get fooled by such a stupid ploy? Someone told them they could save the world with unreliable energy, so they converted their generators to unreliable ones, only to discover that they can’t afford to use unreliable generators to make the unreliable generators they need to keep saving the world?

The only government stupider than Germany is the one that has already seen how badly this worked out and announces they’re going to do the same thing. Australia is not only ten years too late, but China has flooded the market to the point where people are using solar panels as garden fences, and we have our own glut of solar power at midday.

The last hope of the German solar industry was a government mandated “bonus” for people who bought German solar panels.

April 23rd:

German solar industry warns “last chance” for sector’s renaissance could be missed

Benjamin Wehrmann CleanEnergyWire

Carsten Körnig, head of solar power lobby group BSW,  …added that the solar industry was disappointed by the decision to leave out a “resilience bonus” for installations made in Europe. Given the stiff competition between producers in the U.S. and Asia for securing a share of the market in solar panel production, Körnig said including the bonus in the package would allow Germany to achieve greater supply security for the important future technology, adding that it is “perhaps the last chance for a renaissance of Germany’s solar industry”.

April 30:

Solarwatt becomes second solar PV producer to halt production in Germany in 2024

 Carolina Kyllmann CleanEnergyWire

Solar panel manufacturer Solarwatt is set to halt production of solar photovoltaic (PV) modules in its factory in Dresden, business daily Handelsblatt reported. “Under the current circumstances, running a production facility here in Germany is extremely difficult economically, and we cannot justify this,” Solarwatt head Detlef Neuhaus told the newspaper. The plant with an annual production capacity of 300 megawatts (MW) will close “for the time being” at the end of August, with 190 jobs directly affected by the shutdown.

China generates 60% of its electricity with coal, while Germany uses 32% coal, and 30% solar-and-wind power. What should Germany do, bring back coal, or get some slaves?

Solar panels are now in the “top five” worst slave industries in the world, yet still barely any of the morality-police care. They’re apparently too busy atoning for slavery they didn’t cause that doesn’t exist anymore to worry about slaves that are alive today.

Ford lost $1.3 billion in a quarter, a loss of $132,000 on every EV sold

From JoNova

By Jo Nova

Rutger van der Maar

Remember when Ford was just losing $38,000 on every EV? Those were the good days

The biggest star in the automotive world at the moment is a black hole, and it’s swallowing whole industrial giants. It’s hard to imagine a faster way to sabotage whole nations than to disguise your spies as academics and environmentalists. Then get them to convince the government to command a whole new market into existence in a highly technological field with the wave of a legislated wand.

These numbers are astronomical:

Ford just reported a massive loss on every electric vehicle it sold

By Chris Isodore, CNN: Ford’s electric vehicle unit reported that losses soared in the first quarter to $1.3 billion, or $132,000 for each of the 10,000 vehicles it sold in the first three months of the year, helping to drag down earnings for the company overall.

Ford, like most automakers, has announced plans to shift from traditional gas-powered vehicles to EVs in coming years. But it is the only traditional automaker to break out results of its retail EV sales.

We can only wonder what’s happening at other companies.

The EV unit at Ford sold 10,000 cars in the first quarter this year, which is 20% fewer cars than they did a year ago. It’s that bad. In fact it’s worse. Those cars were also discounted. So the revenue mostly went beyond the event horizon — and fell an astonishing 84%.

Ford is expecting losses in the order of $5 billion for the full year. Their aims now are so low, they just hope one day to sell the cars for enough to cover the cost of making them, perhaps. They can’t hope to cover the millions spent on R&D in the foreseeable future. Indeed, even covering the costs in a market with a price war is said to be “very difficult”.

Meanwhile, two days earlier the IEA chief said the EV revolution was rolling on just fine:

CNN readers must be confused.

The electric car revolution is on track, says IEA

[CNN] Global electric vehicle sales are set to rise by more than a fifth to reach 17 million this year, powered by drivers in China, according to the International Energy Agency.

In a report Tuesday, the IEA projected that “surging demand” for EVs over the next decade was set “to remake the global auto industry and significantly reduce oil consumption for road transport.”

So the global EV market is being powered by “drivers in China”, like these drivers perhaps who left their brand new EV’s rotting in fields in China. That would be imaginary drivers?

Chinese EV’s rotting in a field

The propaganda never ends.

As Stephen Wilmot said in The Wall Street Journal last year, if  Ford just canned the EV unit, its adjusted operating profit would be 50% higher. Surely that beckons…

Hat tip to Marc Morano  @ClimateDepot