China To Plow $361 Billion Into Renewable Fuel By 2020 (indiatimes.com) 117
China will invest $361 billion in renewable power generation between 2016 and 2020, the National Energy Administration (NEA) said Thursday, as the world's largest energy market pushes to shift away from coal power. From a report: The investment will create over 13 million jobs in the sector, the NEA said in a blueprint document that lays out its plan to develop the nation's energy sector in a five-year period. The NEA repeated its goal to have 580 million tonnes of coal equivalent of renewable energy consumption by 2020, accounting for 15 percent of overall energy consumption.
Coal IS a renewable fuel (Score:1)
Re:Coal IS a renewable fuel (Score:5, Informative)
Coal IS a renewable fuel...given a couple million years or so. :)
Actually, it is NOT renewable. About 360 million years ago, plants figured out how to make lignin. But it wasn't until about 300 million years ago that fungi figured out how to digest it [scientificamerican.com]. The intervening 60 million years was when most coal formed, as undigested plant matter piled up. Unless we wipe out all the fungi, large scale coal formation is unlikely to recur. It was a one-time thing.
Re:Coal IS a renewable fuel (Score:4, Informative)
+1 Very interesting... I had no clue. Wish I had mod points for you.
Re:Coal IS a renewable fuel (Score:5, Interesting)
+1 Very interesting... I had no clue.
Some other interesting trivia for fellow fungiphiles: As the plants sucked CO2 out of the atmosphere, and failed to rot because of the lignin, CO2 levels dropped below 300ppm and oxygen levels soared to over 35%. This is believed to be a major cause of the Karoo Ice Age [wikipedia.org], which lasted for about 100 million years.
Whenever I hear the canard that "life finds a way", I like to point out the 60 million years when life failed to "find a way" to digest lignin, despite ample piles of energy rich food available. When the first fungus finally "found a way", it was not an elegant enzyme that carefully dismantled lignin. Instead, it just blasted the lignin with oxygenated free radicals, and then slurped up the resulting hydrocarbon soup. It have heard biochemists describe it as "untieing a knot with a flamethrower". Today, 300 million years later, all known lignin digesting organisms can be traced to that single breakthrough, and they all still use the same method.
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Both very very interesting posts, Shanghai Bill. I wish I had mod points. I have been in the microbial biotech world for a decade now and I didn't know this.
Re:Coal IS a renewable fuel (Score:4, Interesting)
I have been in the microbial biotech world for a decade now and I didn't know this.
I am actually a software guy myself, but my daughter is a biotech major in college and we frequently talk about this stuff over dinner ... and speaking of dinner and lignin-consuming fungus, my Chinese wife is stir-frying some mu-er ("wood ear"), right now. If you are used to "normal" mushrooms (which cannot digest lignin), mu-er can taste funny, and some people complain that it is too "slimey", but I love the stuff. If you have never tried mu-er, please give it a try the next time you are in a Chinese restaurant, but take a moment to consider that these little black fungus are the reason the earth escaped becoming a permanent frozen wasteland, devoid of higher lifeforms.
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Some other interesting trivia for fellow fungiphiles: As the plants sucked CO2 out of the atmosphere, and failed to rot because of the lignin, CO2 levels dropped below 300ppm and oxygen levels soared to over 35%.
And a corollary: When we burn fossil fuel, we are releasing this carbon and using up the oxygen that was made available to life, when the carbon was stored, back then. Only this time, it will not be stored again - at least not by that process, no matter how many trees we plant. We really do have to stop burn fossil fuels - or otherwise come up with a way to store it permanently away again.
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Thanks for the concise reply, I was going to say the same thing. Oil was produced in a similar way, massive blooms of algae in the ocean (when algae first evolved) died and were deposited on the ocean floor and covered in sediments before they could be digested by other life. These algae deposits turned into crude oil and because life has now evolved to consume the dead algae before it can be deposited into sediment oil will not be produced again.
Re:Coal IS a renewable fuel (Score:5, Funny)
Well, now that we know what to do, we just need the plan and the willpower to execute it. How about:
1) We'll build a WALL to keep the fungi out of America
2) We'll DEPORT any fungi still left in America
3) We'll make any country still producing fungi PAY FOR OUR DAMN WALL
4) America is great again
Now, who's with me?
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OTOH, if you like your fungi, you can keep your fungi.
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Coal IS a renewable fuel...given a couple million years or so. :)
Actually, it is NOT renewable. About 360 million years ago, plants figured out how to make lignin. But it wasn't until about 300 million years ago that fungi figured out how to digest it [scientificamerican.com]. The intervening 60 million years was when most coal formed, as undigested plant matter piled up. Unless we wipe out all the fungi, large scale coal formation is unlikely to recur. It was a one-time thing.
Well then, we just need to genetically engineer a plant to produce lignin2.
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All those Chinese coal mining jobs will now come to the US.
That's good news, the Mexican immigrants will heartily welcome the new manual labor jobs coming to the US. This should lower their unemployment.
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Why? Because we oppose growing food (corn) and then mandating that we use it as a motor fuel (alcohol)? Or because we figure that there just might be issues competing with the rest of the world economically if we persist in mandating the use of renewables when the rest of the world doesn't? OR Because we believe that market based solutions to these issues are more efficient than government interference though oppressive regulations?
Re:Part of Trump's plan (Score:5, Insightful)
Because we oppose growing food (corn) and then mandating that we use it as a motor fuel (alcohol)?
Most environmentalists don't view this as an optimal solution either, FWIW.
Or because we figure that there just might be issues competing with the rest of the world economically if we persist in mandating the use of renewables when the rest of the world doesn't?
Well, not China, apparently, and there might be issues if we don't as well, considering the lifetime cost of renewables is about to go under that of fossil fuels, and already is in markets we could be exporting renewable energy products to.
Because we believe that market based solutions to these issues are more efficient than government interference though oppressive regulations?
There we go, we have a winner. Dumb faith in mythical "market based solutions" certainly qualifies as dumbass.
Re:Part of Trump's plan (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? Because we oppose growing food (corn) and then mandating that we use it as a motor fuel (alcohol)?
Ethanol subsidies are pushed by Red State Republicans. Most environmentalist think the subsidies are a waste of money, and may even be energy negative.
Which state grows the most corn?
Which state holds the first presidential primary?
If you answer these two questions, you will understand why we have ethanol subsidies.
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Free market? Unless we find a way to legislate the ownership of air at a molecular level, there will always be some resources that are communally owned. When the production of a good impacts upon these resources and the act of compensation is not reflected in the price, this hinders human progress. A country that embraces these practices will inevitably trail behind those that don't.
Just we we need government jurisdiction and infrastructure to manage the idea and agreement of private ownership (you can rela
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Who says they are a long term solution? I will say though that they are THE solution for the rest of my and my children's lifetimes. There is a reason they are so popular....
I seriously doubt it. Renewables have come down in price and are in many markets already the cheapest energy sources. The EIA anticipates that solar will become by far THE CHEAPEST energy source in 10-20 years.
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Have you seen the price of Natural Gas lately? Apparently not...
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It is the most anti-American un-Democratic Hateful thing I've heard since Obama's speech where he denounced Jesus and declared war on Christmas.
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Whatever the Party says it is.
Re:What is... (Score:4, Insightful)
1) Grow enough rice to feed the peasants
2) Have them do manual labor, including growing rice
3) Goto 1
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Presumably they're talking about something like this: [greentechmedia.com] Using renewable energy to synthesize liquid fuels for storage and transport. They can either work in conjunction with carbon capture or simply harvest CO2 from the air. I've heard of several ways to do it, but thus far it's mostly still in the lab. I haven't seen any "grid-scale" deployment. Apparently the Chinese intend to be first.
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Yeah, I was expecting to read about bio-diesel.
take a lot of coal-burning (Score:2)
Good for China (Score:5, Insightful)
Good for China, and good for us: the sea level rises for everybody equally, no matter which country is at fault. Today, the U.S. and China [wri.org] emit vastly more greenhouse gases than the EU, India, and Russia combined. Those two countries have a responsibility to the rest of the world to get their houses in order.
China is doing something about it, albeit first steps. The U.S., by contrast, is being run buy delusional nuts who think global warming is some kind of scam. Makes me ashamed to be an American.
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America is the third most populous country in the world. We also enjoy an educational and technological legacy of the post-Sputnik era. So we have a great deal of momentum; we're going to be an important innovator for decades to come.
The problem is that Americans today see technological leadership as a birthright, not a national objective -- the way we did in the 1960s. While I think we can take significance as granted through mid-century at least, I don't think we can take leadership for granted.
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The other problem is that too many of the US public thinks that people who can innovate are snobby overeducated elites, like those people in California who think they should have some influence over who becomes President.
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Use more rhetoric. Use more insults, make the conclusions more dire, and make the deadlines for action seem nearer and less attainable.
Funny how the same people who constantly whinge about "Political Correctness" and how much we need more straight talk, turn into delicate flowers when that straight talk is pointed at them.
People who still in denial about climate science are delusional nuts. Full stop. There is an actual reality out there, and those who refuse to accept that should be marginalized and ridiculed, and should be given exactly zero voice in policy.
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You're right they should be put in re-education camps until they see the error of their ways. Preach on tovarisch!
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You're right they should be put in re-education camps until they see the error of their ways. Preach on tovarisch!
No, they should just be ignored.
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To help protect our future and environment, we generally need to cut back a bit on consumption. China has a much greater population than Canada and the United States combined so of course they are a massive Greenhouse contributor. Not only that but a lot of the things they produce aren't even for themselves but for us since their own population is not yet wealthy enough to buy all the luxuries they can get their hand on if any. While it's great that they're trying to cut back, it's embarrassing for us if
What a Goombah (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you just jealous that the "uber-commie-corporation" of China is more effective at business, and more agile at taking advantage of new worldwide trends, than your corporations?
As Trump would say, they're just better negotiators.
Don't worry, you'll soon be protected by Trump so you can buy American solar panels. Just don't complain if they're twice as heavy and half as efficient (automotive sector I'm looking at you.) At least you can but genuine NAPA replacement parts.
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If Trump wasn't such an idiot he would be pushing hard to develop clean energy. Mining is getting more and more automated really quickly, as is gas, oil, refineries and pretty much everything else fossil fuel related. Meanwhile renewable energy offers a huge opportunity to create jobs, like at the Tesla/Panasonic Gigafactory or doing installations of solar PV and home battery packs. Someone has to build those wind farms and upgrade the energy grid.
But no, his friends are in coal and oil and gas, so better h
WRONG. (Score:2)
Don't worry, you'll soon be protected by Trump so you can buy American solar panels. Just don't complain if they're twice as heavy and half as efficient (automotive sector I'm looking at you.)
Are you an idiot? American companies make the highest efficiency solar panels in the world. That's a fact. They're more expensive, but that's changing. Look up the efficiency of sunpower's solar and then check out the efficiency of any chinese manufacturer. I'll wait.
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China isn't doing it because they're environmentally conscious, they're doing it because that's where the MONEY is. They're miles ahead of the US in solar, decades ahead in nuclear adoption - having taken the renaissance that we failed to do, catching up in wind....and in 10-20 years when they have a stranglehold on the world's supply of generation supply and are seen as the world's "energy country" like the U.S. is now a "services country" ...
Well, hindsight is 20/20, and a new brand of politicians in the
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Renewables aren't quite (but will very soon be) more profitable than coal/oil in terms of cost/MW. China has been dumping money into solar/wind/nuclear for almost a decade now, long before it was even remotely economical. They play the long game because their population is tired of being able to only see 2 feet in front of them and their leadership knows climate change has human causes and severe negative consequences.
Renewables just happens to be reaching economically advantageous levels nowadays thanks, i
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That's an over-simplification, but that's the gist of it, IMO.
Renewables & efficiency cheaper since the 1970 (Score:3)
if you account for externalities like pollution, risk, defense, and so on. See Amory Lovins' research. That has been an economic tragedy from market failure of the last few decades. Markets don't work well when people don't pay the true price up front but can instead privatize benefits for themselves and socialize costs to other people. For example, some companies in the Midwest got cheaper electricity from coal, but I can't eat fish around where I live because they are contaminated with mercury from Midwe
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China isn't doing it because they're environmentally conscious, they're doing it because that's where the MONEY is.
Seriously, why on Earth would you even think that? Reports have been coming from China for many, many years about their pollution problem, and even in recent days there have been articles of the heavy air pollution alerts for multiple days in a row [seattlepi.com]. It's a problem that they have been working hard to fix [nytimes.com]. Here's a quote from the first article:
So I really do wonder why you tho
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Meanwhile the new 'Dear Leader' of the USA sticks his orange head into the sand and says
"Gimme Coal, Black Shiny Coal"
Now that he's about to nuke the EPA and has 'Big Oil' in his cabinet the USA is well on the way to becoming the Environmental Leper of the world.
Watch out for tariffs to be applied to USA goods exported to the rest of the world. Make Amercia Great... Yeah right.
Please report back on conditions (Score:2)
After your first manned mission to the Earth-like planet Venus:
http://www.space.com/44-venus-... [space.com]
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... more greenhouse gases than the EU, India, and Russia combined...
I travel to India frequently. When I see the smog in Delhi and all the dirty diesels and 2-stroke autos (auto being the term Indians use for powered rickshaws, a.k.a. tuck tucks) in Bangalore, I have a really tough time believing that the U.S. somehow produces more greenhouse gases than India. Especially with all of our regulations and how clean generally our cars and trucks and industry are.
Notice that that I'm only saying I have a tough time believing – I'm not saying I don't believe.
India needs to
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amount of smog /= amount of greenhouse gases produced.
Also, no one is letting India off the hook. Their government is actually doing more than the US.
http://indianexpress.com/artic... [indianexpress.com]
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There is little relation between "pollution" and CO2.
When you burn hydrocarbons, those carbon atoms have to go somewhere. The best scenario is that they go to create CO2, which does not cause smog, and is pretty harmless except for the greenhouse effect. US regulations ensure that as much CO2 as possible is created by combustion.
Where there is less regulation, there are motors and fires which run "dirty". Much of the carbon goes to create CO, or carbon dust, or benzene or other random chemicals. Also, in th
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China is doing something about it, albeit first steps. The U.S., by contrast, is being run buy delusional nuts who think global warming is some kind of scam. Makes me ashamed to be an American.
I'm happy that China is doing this as well, but I doubt China is doing this for the good of the planet or anything like that. China's air quality is so poor that their people are basically choking to death on it. They HAD to do something about it.
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Well, I don't know whether they're doing it because of AGW, but they certainly have good reasons [google.com] to move away from coal.
While they could probably do more in the short term by switching to natural gas, renewables hits a couple of points that are important to the Chinese government: national independence and the development of indigenous technological capabilities. Public funding for applied R&D is a lot more controversial in the US.
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Hate to break it to you but US carbon emissions have fallen faster than any other nation. The economic shift that occurred with fracked gas cut carbon emissions 20%, combined with the efficiency program implemented by Bush Jr, US energy consumption has either held level or fallen (depending on location), this has cut Coal's contribution to energy generation from 60% to 40%. In addition the rise of Wind in particular and the increasingly relevant solar sector US energy production is shifting dramatically tow
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Indeed.
Something happened in 2008.
If there's not a lot of manufacturing or other economic activity then there's not a lot of emissions.
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the sea level rises for everybody equally, no matter which country is at fault.
This is not true, interestingly.
The large ice masses have a gravitational pull that influences the sea level around them, which leads to quite wildly varying effects on sea levels when they melt; in some places the sea level actually drops as a result of the ice masses melting:
- http://sealevelstudy.org/sea-c... [sealevelstudy.org]
- http://harvardmagazine.com/201... [harvardmagazine.com]
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Per capita wise, I'd say China is still pretty efficient in terms of emission. China has more than four times the population of the USA, but less than twice the total emission of the USA's. So, should we say China is at least twice as efficient as the USA? If you apply the same per capita calculation across all the countries on that list, China is still more efficient than all of them, except India.
And Canada, with a tiny population, the total emission is incredibly high. We, as Canadians, should get off
Can't wait (Score:2)
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Easy For Them To Do (Score:1)
But hard for the USA because China doesn't care about the pollution that the production and disposal of the materials. The EPA would make mining and production operations too expensive to be competitive in the USA.
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They've been forced to start caring due to environmental riots over the last decade or so. It'll take them a while to overcome the economic inertia, but they'll get there.
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Don't worry, I'm sure Pruitt will let all sorts of stuff into your water supply so you can have a job to feed your two-headed kid and the one with the webbed fingers.
So much for... (Score:2)
So much for that bit about we can't/shouldn't do anything about global warming because China isn't so any effect on our part is pointless.
Trade deficit-funded? (Score:1)
In other words, roughly the amount of a single year's-worth of trade deficit between the US and China.
https://www.google.com/#q=us+t... [google.com]
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Dunno if you're trolling or actually referring to the Arab and other Gulf states that depend on petro-dollars. But Saudi, under its newer and younger leaders, is beginning to diversify away from fossil fuels. Their citizens are even facing a new concept called taxation.