GWPF Newsletter - New Coal Boom: Global Decarbonisation Efforts ‘Stall’

Coal Power Booming In China & South Asia

In this newsletter:

1. Global Decarbonisation Efforts ‘Stall’, Pushing Climate Goals Out Of Reach
EurActiv, 19 September 2019

2. The New Coal Boom: China Plans 200 New Coal Power Plants
Reuters, 19 September 2019 


3. Coal Power Booming In China & South Asia
Power Engineering, 18 September 2019

4. Fossil Fuel Divestment Has ‘Zero’ Climate Impact, Says Bill Gates
Financial Times, 17 September 2019 

5. Cure Your Child’s Climate Terror With Facts And Logic
Caroline ffiske, The Conservative Woman, 18 September 2019

6. And Finally: Climate Censors Under Siege Down Under
Jo Nova, 19 September 2019 

 Full details:
 
1. Global Decarbonisation Efforts ‘Stall’, Pushing Climate Goals Out Of Reach
EurActiv, 19 September 2019

Global decarbonisation efforts will need to be seven times greater if the world is to stand a fair chance of limiting global warming to 1.5C, according to a new PwC report which found decarbonisation has slowed to its lowest level since 2011.



PwC UK’s latest Low Carbon Economy Index (LCEI), published today (19 September), found that reaching the Paris Agreement’s 2C limit for global warming would require the global economy to reduce its carbon intensity by 7.5% every year up to 2100. The report notes that this is five times faster than the current decarbonisation rate of 1.6% – less than half the decarbonisation rate witnessed in 2015 (of 3.3%), when the Paris Agreement was introduced.

In order to meet the more ambitious target of the Paris Agreement – limiting global warming to 1.5C which has been requested by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC’s) special report – decarbonisation rates must reach 11.3% annually. That is seven times greater than the current rate, which has slowed to its lowest level since 2011.

Global emissions actually increased by 2% in 2018, due to a 2.9% increase in energy demand. The report warns that extreme heat and cold weather patterns contributed to this growth in demand, and will likely exacerbate decarbonisation efforts in the future. In total, 69% of the increase in energy demand was met by fossil fuel production.

Global carbon emissions will rise to a new record level in 2018, making the chances of reaching a target to keep temperature increases to 1.5 or 2°C “weaker and weaker every year, every month,” the head of the International Energy Agency (IEA) has said.

PwC UK’s director of climate change and co-author of the LCEI Jonathan Grant said: “It’s worrying that progress on climate seems to have stalled. There’s a huge gap between the rhetoric of the ‘climate emergency’ and the reality of policy responses around the world which have been inadequate.”

Full story
 
2. The New Coal Boom: China Plans 200 New Coal Power Plants
Reuters, 19 September 2019 

China’s total planned coal-fired power projects now stand at 226.2 gigawatts (GW), the highest in the world and more than twice the amount of new capacity on the books in India, according to data published by environmental groups on Thursday (Sept 19).



The projects approved by China amount to nearly 40 per cent of the world’s total planned coal-fired power plants, according to the Global Coal Exit List database run by German environmental organisation Urgewald and 30 other partner organisations.

The new China projects would be more than Germany’s existing installed power capacity of around 200 GW by the end of 2018.

The environmental groups said in a press release on Thursday that worldwide 400 of the 746 companies in their database were still planning to expand their coal operations.

The companies include miners and power generators, and account for 89 per cent of the world’s thermal coal production and nearly 87 per cent of the world’s installed coal-fired power capacity. Of the total, 161 are Chinese.

China, the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, will be the focus of attention at next week’s United Nations summit on climate action in New York, with Beijing promising more ambition when it comes to tackling global warming.

Full story
 
3. Coal Power Booming In China & South Asia
Power Engineering, 18 September 2019

Coal-fired power continues its sustained and even growing hold in developing nations.



News reports indicate that China and India are both ramping up coal-fired generation capacity despite environmental concerns globally. A story on the QuartzIndia website cited India Ratings and Research figures showing that nation importing up to 73 million metric tons of coal in the current fiscal year ending March 2020.

If the current pace of coal imports holds sway, the growth would be about 19 percent year over year, the highest annual rise in five years, according to the story. Several coal-fired power generators in India have preferred to stick with their resource, raising tariffs to deal with higher prices.

A story in the South China Post reported that China will increase investment in fossil-fuel power projects in southeast Asia even as outside financiers back away over sustainability worries. Another report earlier this year in Engineering & Technology, citing a newer study by several environmental watchdogs, claimed that China could add 290 GW of new coal-fired capacity this year-that is more than 10 percent higher than the entire U.S. existing coal-fired generation fleet of about 261 GW.

India’s neighbor Bangladesh also is banking on more coal-fired power, according to the Dhaka Turbine in June. A United Nations report stated that Bangladesh is planning to triple its coal-fired generation capacity to more than 18,000 MW and 35 percent of its electricity mix by 2041.

Full story
 
4. Fossil Fuel Divestment Has ‘Zero’ Climate Impact, Says Bill Gates
Financial Times, 17 September 2019 

Climate activists are wasting their time lobbying investors to ditch fossil fuel stocks, according to Bill Gates, the billionaire Microsoft co-founder who is one of the world’s most prominent philanthropists.

Those who want to change the world would do better to put their money and energy behind the disruptive technologies that slow carbon emissions and help people adapt to a warming world, Mr Gates told the Financial Times.

“Divestment, to date, probably has reduced about zero tonnes of emissions. It’s not like you’ve capital-starved [the] people making steel and gasoline,” he said. “I don’t know the mechanism of action where divestment [keeps] emissions [from] going up every year. I’m just too damn numeric.”

Full story (£)
 
5. Cure Your Child’s Climate Terror With Facts And Logic
Caroline ffiske, The Conservative Woman, 18 September 2019

Frankly I can’t wait to give the kids large steaks and a lecture on being more sceptical about what they read on social media.

Apparently, psychologists are receiving a ‘growing volume of enquiries from teachers, doctors and therapists unable to cope‘. Tragically, some children have already been given psychiatric drugs as a result. The Climate Psychology Alliance (CPA) ‘is campaigning for anxiety specifically caused by fear for the future of the planet to be recognised as a psychological phenomenon’. Caroline Hickman from the CPA said: ‘The fear is of environmental doom – that we’re all going to die.’

You might think you couldn’t make this up. However, as a parent, I can tell you that none of it comes as any surprise. In front of me I have a school book which my daughter used in Year Four when she was eight. In it she has written: ‘If we destroy rainforests, there will be more global warming. Many plants and animals live in the rainforest so if the rainforests are destroyed these plants and animals will become extinct. The rainforest is home to many tribes. If the rainforest is destroyed then all of the tribes will lose their homes and be homeless’. It’s got a big tick and the words ‘Excellent work!’ – from the teacher. All the rainforests destroyed? All the animals extinct? All the tribes homeless? No wonder kids are terrified. Where is the the nuance? Or the good news – such as that deforested areas can bounce back? 

Last week a friend told me her 12-year-old daughter wants to stop eating meat – that’s British beef, to be clear – ‘because of the fires in the Amazon’. Uh? Her daughter picks up information about climate change from Instagram. My own daughters watch YouTube clips, often made by American teenagers, about how they can join the fight against climate change. A common thread is that they all need to become vegans.

I’m noticing a vicious circle whereby teenagers become vegans to help reduce climate change. (Never mind that most of the world’s agricultural land is unsuitable for crops; or the question if we all stop eating meat where will we grow the vast acreage of protein rich crops we’re going to need?) Then when they become vegan they become more depressed and anxious. It is not surprising given the evidence that vegetarian and vegan diets are linked to anxiety and depression. Then they shut themselves up in their rooms and spend yet more time on social media reading about how the world is going to end.

Frankly I can’t wait to give the whole lot of them large steaks, a lecture on being more sceptical about what they read on social media, and then send them out into the park to pick up litter and take a lead in improving the world.

But we are beset all round. My husband and I take our daughters to church on Sundays. This Sunday was ‘youth group’ where the teenagers go upstairs and spend the hour with youth leaders. Over Sunday lunch my husband asked the girls what they learned about. ‘Oh, we discussed the environment,’ they said. We did not enquire further. Perhaps we should have.

No, it never stops. But where the Daily Telegraph and the Climate Psychology Alliance get it wrong is to assume all this is mostly coming from parents. Not in my experience. Kids are bombarded with climate change fear by social media. More significantly it also comes from schools.

All I can do as a parent is push back with sound logic and facts. The most parents can do is their best to ensure that their kids will be positive and optimistic and get strong educations – mediated by them where necessary – anchored in science and reason. Such kids ought then be able to tackle the world’s problems. Yet society, the while, is doing its best to turn them into depressed heaps who console themselves with yet more social media and with ever less ability to act.

Full post & comments
 
6. And Finally: Climate Censors Under Siege Down Under
Jo Nova, 19 September 2019 

Today, for your amusement, Misha Ketchell, ex-ABC journalist, editor and ED of The Conversation scrambles to justify why banning half the population from speaking is not censorship. It’s almost a form of satire, but it’s not that clever.

He pulls out the old Argument from Authority and Ad Hom fallacies, known since Aristotle. He’s only 2,300 years behind the leading edge of rhetoric. Worse, the journalist doesn’t even understand the basics of journalism — as in, to research, present the best of both sides, and let the readers decide. Instead Ketchell, whose top scientific qualification is watching the ABC for twenty years, has decided that climate sensitivity of CO2 on planet Earth is 3.3C give or take nothing.

The biggest scandal of university research and science is there waiting to be told, but Ketchell-the-journo is 100% obedient to a collection of unaccountable foreign committee members who do unaudited work with unvalidated models.

Here come the excuses:

“There’s a good reason we’re moderating climate change deniers: uninformed comments undermine expertise”

Real experts just answer the questions, they aren’t scared of the uninformed. Why is it only climate science where we need to protect the public from know-nothing comments? Either the punters are too stupid to spot the expert, or perhaps the fake experts need to be protected from the punters?

This absolutely is about free speech

Just saying it isn’t won’t make it so:

“This is not about a denial of free speech. Media outlets have always curated the ways in which they feature audience feedback. Think about the big bags of letters newspaper editors used to sift to pick a dozen or so to publish every day. The skill was always about giving a debate a chance to be aired, to allow all sides to be heard, and then to move on.”

But Ketchell isn’t banning misinformation, he’s banning a whole class of people, even “locking their accounts”. That makes it absolutely about “free speech”. Read his words, “deniers are dangerous”. No matter what they say, how well they say it, or how qualified they are, some citizens are the unmentionables who shall have no voice sayth Cardinal Ketchell. It doesn’t get more unfree than a namecalling pogrom with no right of reply.

Full post

The London-based Global Warming Policy Forum is a world leading think tank on global warming policy issues. The GWPF newsletter is prepared by Director Dr Benny Peiser - for more information, please visit the website at www.thegwpf.com.