In the Developing World, Coal Is Still the King
“The Western view of the world is centered around themselves. [Believing] the rose-tinted views [expressed by Western elites] that ‘the West would like India to succeed’ is plain naiveté.”
Krishnamurthy Subramanian, Chief Economic Advisor, Government of India
For decades, Western bankers, beholden to United Nations “sustainable development” goals, have held virtual veto power over African development and have impeded infrastructure construction in other cash-poor developing nations. No longer.
To the consternation of central planners (and highly paid environmentalists) the UN’s veto power has recently been significantly compromised. China, India, and even African and other Asian nations are building coal-fired power plants and developing coal resources much faster than the U.S. can shut its own plants down. The great master plan to save the planet via a worldwide ban on fossil fuels is being systematically undermined by the hungry.
According to Indian journalist and engineer Sudhanva Shetty, “coal is likely to remain king” in India till 2030 – and beyond. The reason: coal caters to more than half of India’s domestic energy needs. State-owned Coal India on March 10 announced plans for expansion of 24 existing coal mining operations and up to eight new “greenfield” coal mines.
Coal continues to account for about 56 percent of India’s total primary energy consumption. Despite 2020 demand being slowed by the COVID pandemic, coal use in India is expected to increase by 3.8 percent in 2021.
China, too, is planning significant increases in investment in coal energy over the next five years, according to a government released in early March that Agence France-Presse says includes “only modestly increased renewable ambitions.”
Last year, China built enough coal-fired power plants to provide 38.4 gigawatts of electricity, far surpassing the 8.6 GW lost from retiring older coal plants. Nikkei Asia notes that this increase is the equivalent of 30 new nuclear facilities, “suggesting that coal will remain king in China for the foreseeable future.”
China promises no more that up to (just) 20 percent of its energy will be from renewable sources by 2025 –the goal was 15 percent in 2020. China’s plan, while paying homage to “carbon neutrality” by 2060 (30 years behind Western goals), signaled “little urgency” in cutting greenhouse gas emissions, let alone total energy consumption.
President Xi Jinping says that China will hit peak emissions by 2030, but there are no guarantees. Even during the COVID lockdown in 2020, China’s CO2 emissions were 1.5 percent higher than in 2019, and with a predicted 6 percent economic growth in 2021, China again will have a net increase in CO2 emissions.
China’s strong post-pandemic recovery has been boosted by heavy investment in infrastructure that could
Article from LewRockwell
