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Surely China will pony-up for more coal?
by michaelg7x 7y ago
Surely China will pony-up for more coal?
- bamboozled 7y agoWhy would China care where their power comes from ? If renewables are cheaper, then they’ll use them. That’s it.
- michaelg7x 7y agoQuite so. I'm not sure China cares there's an environmental cost associated with coal. With no other buyers, won't that make dirty coal the cheapest?
- rafiki6 7y agoChina has a major public health and pollution issue they are actively and constantly trying to remedy. The thing is everyone is making environmental investing out to be some "moral" approach, when in reality there are real and expensive repercussions and associated long term costs with using something like coal. It might be cheap immediately, but that doesn't mean it benefits society and when it adds stress to a public health system, or causes environmental damage which requires constant government intervention to clean up messes, then it's not a great idea to go for the supposedly "cheapest" option. China has the highest output of carbon in the world, but also the largest population. They aren't net producers of energy that releases CO2. They are net consumers. That's a big and important distinction. That means they don't have any vested interest in CO2 producing energy sources and if the market can adjust to provide them energy without over producing Co2 they will respond without the costs being prohibitively more expensive they'll be all about it. China is one of the largest consumers of Solar energy for e.g.
- _-___________-_ 7y agoChina absolutely cares about the environmental cost. Perhaps more so than the USA in the current political climate...