7 ms·

Chinese coal consumption just fell for first time this century

95 points by ph0rque 12y ago

beefsack 12y ago
Using "this century" to describe the last fourteen years isn't incorrect, but sure feels a bit baitey.
- mikeyouse 12y ago
  There was a small dip in the mid 1990's, but this is indeed significant if true: http://www.energytrendsinsider.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Coal-Consumption.png?00cfb7 http://www.energytrendsinsider.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/0...
  - fludlight 12y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_Asian_financial_crisis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_Asian_financial_crisis
contingencies 12y ago
It's not just coal. China is frankly the future as far as energy consumption goes. They produce and consume most of the world's solar equipment, produce extensive hydropower, and lead the world in the deployment of rechargeable electric vehicles (primary scooters) by an extremely long way. To be clear, Australia, the nominal location of the source of the article, supplies much of China's natural gas and coal so has a strong economic interest in limiting such developments. A new solar technology developed at Australia's University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney, was famously ready for commercialization but when prompted the university turned down the opportunity. A smart ethnic Chinese researcher, aghast at the unthinkable degree of risk aversion of the university in the face of demonstrated efficiency gains, promptly returned to China, raised a few million, and became the world's largest solar producer virtually overnight.
- bane 12y ago
  While I dearly hope this is the result of China emerging from a very short industrial revolution analog, there's lots of reason to believe that this is merely a leading indicator for an economic downturn.
  - infinity0 12y ago
    What are those reasons?
    - crdoconnor 12y ago
      Electricity and oil consumption generally goes down during an economic downturn. China's renewable energy generation capacity (hydro, solar + wind) is about half of its coal capacity, though, and going up all the time - so I wouldn't say that it's all about the downturn. Its wind output (90 GW) is actually significantly more impressive than solar (18 GW), which is still higher than its nuclear output (15 GW). Coal is still a whopping 800GW, but I'm pretty confident that it's peaked and they can drag it down significantly over the next 25 years now that renewable energy is pretty much cost-competitive even without subsidies - we're at the point now where your model for the lifetime cost of any form of power (coal/wind/solar) basically depends upon what kind of assumptions you plug in to your cost models, and sensible assumptions usually put all of those forms of power at roughly the same cost and have done since last year. China doesn't seem averse to using subsidies to tip the market's cost balance in renewables' favor, either, whereas the US is steadily pushing subsidies and tariffs to tip the balance in favor of the oil/fracking companies. Now renewable energy is cost-competitive, politics is primariliy driving its growth (or lack thereof).
    - bane 12y ago
      There's lots of information coming out of China that as the standard of living has significantly increased, the days of cheap factory labor are over (or rather, it's spreading out to more countries rather than being super concentrated in China). There's also considerable evidence that China's housing bubble has burst along with this economic shift. But the bizarre nature of China's housing market has hidden this effect for a while. However, getting reliable statistics out of China on these matters is notoriously difficult. So some economic analysts have even resorted to hanging around coal piles and seeing if they're growing or shrinking and trying to correlate and infer larger macroeconomic notions from that. So a reduction in coal usage, could be a leading indicator of trouble elsewhere in the markets. It won't show up in most of the rest of the market immediately as inventory still exists to sell. Note: China has a robust, mixed, coal reduction energy plan, with a huge emphasis on replacement via nuclear. Last I read it was on the order of 350GW of nuclear in the long-term plans. Which is huge. So this could just be that, but the percentage of existing non-coal energy infrastructure is very small, not statistically significant yet compared to the 800+GW of coal power China is producing. Again though, it's very hard to get reliable statistics for just about anything in China. It's getting better, but it's very difficult to analyze the country when local administrators just make up numbers to look good.
lukasm 12y ago
Or maybe Chinese economy is short of breath after years of debt stimuli.
- akfanta 12y ago
  Yep, because nothing good will ever come out of China. /s
- lmg643 12y ago
  Agreed. This is like a press release from the department of not-getting-the-joke. It is known that China "misstates" GDP and a variety of economic metrics on a regular basis. Don't take my word for it - thank WikiLeaks: http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/12/06/us-china-economy-wikileaks-idUSTRE6B527D20101206 http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/12/06/us-china-economy-w... China's economy is slowing and the electricity consumption is the best un-manipulated evidence we have. As the above commenter references, this slowdown is likely the result of the credit spigot getting turned off.
lnanek2 12y ago
Bizarre they bring up hydropower not accounting for it, but don't mention nuclear power at all. Where other countries ran from nuclear power, China embraces it: http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Country-Profiles/Countries-A-F/China--Nuclear-Power/ http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Country-Profiles/Countries... 20 reactors now, 28 in construction, 58 by 2020, 150 by 2030. Seems like a poorly researched article.
westiseast 12y ago
Anecdotally, I have to be very cynical that an uptake in "green energy" technology is the cause. I live in Fuzhou and almost never see solar panels in use anywhere, and electric bikes are being replaced by cars owing to increasing wealth and government policies discouraging their use. China is investing in green technology so it can be no1 producer, not as no1 user.
kurthr 12y ago
Reading the article, it's interesting that it doesn't seem to match up well with the Economist article from last year: http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21583245-china-worlds-worst-polluter-largest-investor-green-energy-its-rise-will-have http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21583245-china-worlds... TheEconomist seems to show CO2 (and coal consumption) tripling and rising steadily over a period where the article shows it slowing down in 2007-11. I don't know which is correct, but now I don't particularly trust either of these.
malandrew 12y ago
How trustworthy are the sources for these statistics? I don't know anything about how reliable numbers from the China National Coal Association are, but I was under the impression that data from the China National Bureau of Statistics should generally be treated as suspect. Is there a way to independently verify that consumption actually fell?
Zigurd 12y ago
Do not underestimate advanced renewables in the medium to long term, but the only thing that can scale fast enough to displace coal in an energy market as gigantic as China is nuclear. China might be able to simply import nuclear technology. But it is also possible that China's nuclear power program will fund the development of new safer, less-expensive reactor designs. That could help the world even more than cheap solar panels.

95 points by ph0rque 12y ago

beefsack 12y ago

Using "this century" to describe the last fourteen years isn't incorrect, but sure feels a bit baitey.

mikeyouse 12y ago
There was a small dip in the mid 1990's, but this is indeed significant if true: http://www.energytrendsinsider.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Coal-Consumption.png?00cfb7 http://www.energytrendsinsider.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/0...
- fludlight 12y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_Asian_financial_crisis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_Asian_financial_crisis

contingencies 12y ago

It's not just coal. China is frankly the future as far as energy consumption goes. They produce and consume most of the world's solar equipment, produce extensive hydropower, and lead the world in the deployment of rechargeable electric vehicles (primary scooters) by an extremely long way. To be clear, Australia, the nominal location of the source of the article, supplies much of China's natural gas and coal so has a strong economic interest in limiting such developments. A new solar technology developed at Australia's University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney, was famously ready for commercialization but when prompted the university turned down the opportunity. A smart ethnic Chinese researcher, aghast at the unthinkable degree of risk aversion of the university in the face of demonstrated efficiency gains, promptly returned to China, raised a few million, and became the world's largest solar producer virtually overnight.

bane 12y ago
While I dearly hope this is the result of China emerging from a very short industrial revolution analog, there's lots of reason to believe that this is merely a leading indicator for an economic downturn.
- infinity0 12y ago
  What are those reasons?
  - crdoconnor 12y ago
    Electricity and oil consumption generally goes down during an economic downturn. China's renewable energy generation capacity (hydro, solar + wind) is about half of its coal capacity, though, and going up all the time - so I wouldn't say that it's all about the downturn. Its wind output (90 GW) is actually significantly more impressive than solar (18 GW), which is still higher than its nuclear output (15 GW). Coal is still a whopping 800GW, but I'm pretty confident that it's peaked and they can drag it down significantly over the next 25 years now that renewable energy is pretty much cost-competitive even without subsidies - we're at the point now where your model for the lifetime cost of any form of power (coal/wind/solar) basically depends upon what kind of assumptions you plug in to your cost models, and sensible assumptions usually put all of those forms of power at roughly the same cost and have done since last year. China doesn't seem averse to using subsidies to tip the market's cost balance in renewables' favor, either, whereas the US is steadily pushing subsidies and tariffs to tip the balance in favor of the oil/fracking companies. Now renewable energy is cost-competitive, politics is primariliy driving its growth (or lack thereof).
  - bane 12y ago
    There's lots of information coming out of China that as the standard of living has significantly increased, the days of cheap factory labor are over (or rather, it's spreading out to more countries rather than being super concentrated in China). There's also considerable evidence that China's housing bubble has burst along with this economic shift. But the bizarre nature of China's housing market has hidden this effect for a while. However, getting reliable statistics out of China on these matters is notoriously difficult. So some economic analysts have even resorted to hanging around coal piles and seeing if they're growing or shrinking and trying to correlate and infer larger macroeconomic notions from that. So a reduction in coal usage, could be a leading indicator of trouble elsewhere in the markets. It won't show up in most of the rest of the market immediately as inventory still exists to sell. Note: China has a robust, mixed, coal reduction energy plan, with a huge emphasis on replacement via nuclear. Last I read it was on the order of 350GW of nuclear in the long-term plans. Which is huge. So this could just be that, but the percentage of existing non-coal energy infrastructure is very small, not statistically significant yet compared to the 800+GW of coal power China is producing. Again though, it's very hard to get reliable statistics for just about anything in China. It's getting better, but it's very difficult to analyze the country when local administrators just make up numbers to look good.

lukasm 12y ago

Or maybe Chinese economy is short of breath after years of debt stimuli.

akfanta 12y ago
Yep, because nothing good will ever come out of China. /s
lmg643 12y ago
Agreed. This is like a press release from the department of not-getting-the-joke. It is known that China "misstates" GDP and a variety of economic metrics on a regular basis. Don't take my word for it - thank WikiLeaks: http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/12/06/us-china-economy-wikileaks-idUSTRE6B527D20101206 http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/12/06/us-china-economy-w... China's economy is slowing and the electricity consumption is the best un-manipulated evidence we have. As the above commenter references, this slowdown is likely the result of the credit spigot getting turned off.

lnanek2 12y ago

Bizarre they bring up hydropower not accounting for it, but don't mention nuclear power at all. Where other countries ran from nuclear power, China embraces it: http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Country-Profiles/Countries-A-F/China--Nuclear-Power/ http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Country-Profiles/Countries... 20 reactors now, 28 in construction, 58 by 2020, 150 by 2030. Seems like a poorly researched article.

westiseast 12y ago

Anecdotally, I have to be very cynical that an uptake in "green energy" technology is the cause. I live in Fuzhou and almost never see solar panels in use anywhere, and electric bikes are being replaced by cars owing to increasing wealth and government policies discouraging their use. China is investing in green technology so it can be no1 producer, not as no1 user.

kurthr 12y ago

Reading the article, it's interesting that it doesn't seem to match up well with the Economist article from last year: http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21583245-china-worlds-worst-polluter-largest-investor-green-energy-its-rise-will-have http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21583245-china-worlds... TheEconomist seems to show CO2 (and coal consumption) tripling and rising steadily over a period where the article shows it slowing down in 2007-11. I don't know which is correct, but now I don't particularly trust either of these.

malandrew 12y ago

How trustworthy are the sources for these statistics? I don't know anything about how reliable numbers from the China National Coal Association are, but I was under the impression that data from the China National Bureau of Statistics should generally be treated as suspect. Is there a way to independently verify that consumption actually fell?

Zigurd 12y ago

Do not underestimate advanced renewables in the medium to long term, but the only thing that can scale fast enough to displace coal in an energy market as gigantic as China is nuclear. China might be able to simply import nuclear technology. But it is also possible that China's nuclear power program will fund the development of new safer, less-expensive reactor designs. That could help the world even more than cheap solar panels.