Posted on 05/23/2011 1:59:00 PM PDT by socialism_stinX
China is currently facing its worst energy crisis in years.
It's so bad that their central planners must be having sleepless nights in Beijing worrying if the lights are about to go out and the factories will stop pumping out goods.
Huge swaths of central China, including the financial center, Shanghai, are likely to face power cuts this summer as energy demand peaks.
This is how the state-controlled China Daily newspaper summed up the situation: “Power shortages that gripped many parts of the country in recent months could herald the worst energy crunch in years amid growing concerns that economic growth may suffer.”
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Let a hundred windmills bloom!
Henceforth, all Little Red Books will come with an attached tire-pressure gauge!
Thomas Friedman had no comment.
Awww, that’s too bad.
Give free-markets a try.
I thought China was building a lot of new nuclear power plants. I guess they aren’t building them fast enough to keep up with demand. Too bad we aren’t building a lot more of them too. We will regret it one day, maybe soon too.
I think we will regret the pace of China's building nuclear plants. Plants like that can't be built quickly. Add to that the inferiority of Chinese steel and twenty years down the road looks disastrous.
When you also put into the equation the problems China faces as it tries to wean itself off heavily polluting coal-fired power stations to improve its environmental record while at the same time not being prepared to pay market rates for the electricity being supplied to the state, thus hindering investment, the numbers don’t add up.
What is this "environmental record" to which the author refers? Who says China is trying to "wean itself off of coal"? Since when do the Chinese care what anybody thinks about anything?
This all sounds like B.S. to me. The Chinese need electricity to run their economy. They are sitting on plentiful coal reserves and have plenty of coalminers and coal-fired power plant builders. So what really explains the electricity shortage there, assuming there actually is one?
Power is in short supply, seemingly, because of the drought. But China has always suffered from drought. Apparently the central planning geniuses put all their eggs in hydro and, it is not working out. A burgeoning superpower grows on cheap, abundant energy of all kinds. This includes electricity from various sources, motor fuels, gas and coal. China is running low on several of these, and will continue to do so, especially if it follows central planning.
The other problem in China, and it might be bigger than a lack of energy, is a shortage of potable water for people, for agricultural use, and for industrial use. There is a way out of this one, but they don't seem to be following it. Abundant supplies of fresh, clean water is also basic to a large industrial power. You cannot have a modern, growing economy without it. China doesn't have it.
Based on this article, the energy shortage is caused by drought which has reduced hydroelectric power production. I remember reading an article years ago that said China was moving towards hydroelectric power and away from new coal-fired plants in an effort to clean up the air in China. So apparently they have some concern for air quality in China.
Saying that electricity shortages in China are caused by drought is like saying that starvation in Ireland was caused by potato blight. In each case the real causes are the factors that resulted in over-reliance on a single source for a critical good, and the factors that prevented the oncoming shortage from being anticipated and avoided. This article just doesn’t tell the story beyond “Rain stopped, economy died.”
And, the Chinese are buying up all the thermal coal they can get from Indonesia and Australia. They can pay for it.
Inflation was, some say, the real cause of the protests.
.. and inflation is now a very serious issue once again -- along with a myriad of other existential threats to the commies; and there's even a new one: the worst energy crisis in years.
Golly gee.. and Red China is going to pass us as a super power by next Tuesday afternoon, around Tea time?
Would not China be burning coal?
All of China's coal fired power plants are running flat out and, because of the problem with hydropower, its still not enough. They have a number of oil fired power plants that the keep as backup (they can't afford to burn oil when there are other sources of electricity) that they will have to bring back online until the crisis is over.
Because oil fired electricity is more costly than coal/hydro power, the act of burning oil for electricity will make their inflation problem worse.
They in fact do, a whole bunch. And their environmental genuflecting notwithstanding, thay are commissioning a thousand megawatts of coal fire generation every 10 days. And if you look at their published capacity additions over the next 10 years intend to keep up that pace. And “renewables” well let’s just say it looks good in the western news media but don’t make much juice. No fools, the Chinese.
One of the under-appreciated causes of the Tiananmen Square protests was the widespread presence of foreigners in China for the first time starting in about 1986. Prior to that virtually all foreign tourists had been confined to tightly-controlled organized tours. In about 1986 the Chinese began issuing visas to individual travelers and China instantly became the go-to destination for Western backpackers. By 1989, and for the first time in Chinese history, tens of thousands of young educated Chinese had seen and met young Westerners and could see and hear for themselves just how poor their prospects were in comparison to those of their foreign counterparts. In the face of this disparity of outlook, the benefits of a more liberalized political and economic system became immediately and personally apparent to these young Chinese.
I think you're right. I read an article a few months ago that China was slapping together coal plants as quickly as possible. THEN an article came out saying how far ahead the Chinese are with their clean-coal initiative.
Frankly there have been so many POSITIVE articles about China lately and how they are just leaving the West in their dust, that I think we being hit by a major propaganda campaign.
How about, you have a choice. Make sure your population has energy or cut whatever possible to get that blue water navy operational.
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