No country releases more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere per year than China. After rising sharply for decades, last year its carbon emissions were flat. U. S. carbon emissions have been approximately flat for the last 25 years. In fairness China’s per capita carbon emissions are lower than those in the United States.
Here’s Fareed Zakaria in the Washington Post:
Coal-fired power plants are one of the nation’s leading sources of carbon-dioxide emissions, and most scientists agree those emissions lead to global warming. They also cause terrible air pollution, with all its attendant health problems and costs.
That’s one of the reasons China, which suffers more than a million deaths a year because of poor air quality, is making huge investments in clean energy. The country has become one of the world’s leading producers of wind turbines and solar panels, with government subsidies enabling its companies to become cost-efficient and global in their aspirations. In 2015, China was home to the world’s top wind-turbine maker and the top two solar-panel manufacturers. According to a recent report from the United Nations, China invested $78.3 billion in renewable energy last year — almost twice as much as the United States.
Now Beijing is making a push into electric cars, hoping to dominate what it believes will be the transport industry of the future. Already China has taken a large lead in electric cars. In 2016, more than twice as many were sold in China as in the United States, an astonishing catch-up for a country that had almost no such technologies 10 years ago. China’s leaders have let it be known that by 2025 they want 20 percent of all new cars sold in China to be powered by alternative fuels. All of this has already translated into jobs, “big league†as President Trump might say: 3.6 million people are already working in the renewable-energy sector in China, compared with 777,000 in the United States.
What do you conclude from this? I don’t conclude that from it that the United States should emulate China. I conclude that in an authoritarian country it’s a lot easier to promote government investment to maintain or increase market share, subsidizing domestic industries to shut potential competitors out.
Will China’s flat carbon emissions continue? Or are they just a sign of a struggling economy? Stay tuned.
“government subsidies enabling its companies to become cost-efficient and global in their aspirations.”
Seems that phrase needs to be unpacked. Do these subsidies provide the resources by which manufacturers were able to solve some efficiency or technological problem? Or is the government essentially paying consumers to buy the product?
I mean Spain heavily subsidized its solar industry ten years or so ago to try to be the world-leader and gave first-mover advantages, and China came in and cleaned their clock, presumably because Spain was wrong somehow.
The only way we’ll be able to out-compete China in producing low cost manufactured consumer goods is via lights-out manufacturing. The Chinese authorities are well aware of that.
Try to get a subsidy for manufacturing firms with no workfloor employees through Congress. You can practically hear the impassioned addresses against them now.
What PD said………..and also, Mr Zakaria has always struck me as dishonest. Has he reviewed China’s coal burning plant construction forecast? Tell the whole story, Fareed.
Once again we are treated to fanciful thinking. Solar and wind are fine, but for everyone on this sites lifetime it will have to coexist, and as a niche source, with fossil fuels.
BTW – we are looking at buying a place in Scottsdale, AZ (finally) and have been shown two with solar panel roofs. Impressively low ongoing energy bills, although we got some stammering on maintenance costs. One, even, (owned by an astronomer and obvious geek) has every energy efficiency gadget you can think of. But they are, heh, coyote ugly. Just awful.
Do we really know that China’s emissions are flat (or anyone else’s for that matter). I think these estimates are subject to a very large fudge factor which is further complicated by the fact that China does not provide accurate information.