China’s consumption of coal has not decreased but the yearly increase in coal consumption has. China is realizing that coal is bad for the country:
But that kind of growth of coal has more than just climate impacts. It is “draining the country’s arid west of precious water resources,” as Greenpeace itself noted.And then there is the air pollution. Climate Progress has pointed out “when eight-year-olds start getting lung cancer that can be attributed to air pollution, you’ve got a problem. When smog forces schools, roads, and airports to shut down because visibility is less than 50 yards, you’ve got a problem. When a study finds that severe pollution is slashing an average of five-and-a-half years from the life expectancy in northern China, you’ve got a problem.”The response by the Chinese government has been to require coal burning be cut — in some cases sharply — in China’s heavily populated eastern provinces, as shown in this graphic from the report:
China understands the negative impact of burning coal to produce power, and yes it’s all about economics, and has become a world leader in renewable clean energy:
“By fully embracing energy conservation, efficiency and renewables, China has the potential to demonstrate to the world that economic growth is possible while sharply reducing the emissions that drive unhealthy air pollution and climate change,” said WWF’s China Climate and Energy Program Director Lunyan Lu. “This research shows that with strong political will, China can prosper while eliminating coal from its power mix within the next 30 years.”
In addition to ramping up development of renewable power sources, the world’s most populous and energy-hungry nation will need to simultaneously pursue aggressive energy efficiency initiatives to reduce electricity demand. These efficiencies, including bold standards for appliances and industrial equipment, can reduce annual power consumption in 2050 by almost half, which would set the gold standard for these products globally and make the shift to a renewables-based power system possible.
Here in the United States the fossil fuel industry and utility companies still have a lot of power. For example if you install solar panels on your house it’s going to cost you. Doug Mataconis comments:
While I suppose there might be an argument for allowing utilities to recoup costs that are legitimately incurred from the practice of selling energy back to the grid, the idea of charging people extra for doing something that reduces their dependence on the grid while at the same time increasing the amount of energy available seems rather nonsensical. As the linked article goes on to note, these types of systems benefit energy companies by helping to reduce demand on the grid during peak hours and by increasing the amount of energy available during those periods. Given that, one would think that energy companies would want to encourage this sort of thing rather than backing measures like this which could potentiallly hamper it. It’s hard not to see this as an effort by the utility companies to hamper the competition that solar and wind generated energy provide them and, of course, to make sure that they still manage to make some money out of the deal.
Electric Utilities have always been terrified of non centralized power sources and from a business point I can’t really blame them, the have billions of dollars invested transmission infrastructure that could become unneeded. They have become desperate as the cost of solar power has become competitive. But if the very survival of the planet and economic security is factored in the failure of a few electric utilities is a small price to pay.