By Paul Homewood
China is building 300 new coal power stations around the world, according to NPR(National Public Radio), who I gather are the US equivalent of the BBC:
China, known as the world’s biggest polluter, has been taking dramatic steps to clean up and fight climate change.
So why is it also building hundreds of coal-fired power plants in other countries?
President Xi Jinping hosted the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing over the weekend, promoting his signature foreign policy of building massive infrastructure and trade links across several continents.
The forum, attended by leaders and delegates of nearly 40 countries, came amid growing criticism of China’s projects, including their effect on the environment.
Xi took the highly unusual step, for him, of meeting with international journalists, during which he repeated the slogan that he is committed to "open, clean and green development."
Yet China’s overseas ventures include hundreds of electric power plants that burn coal, which is a significant emitter of the carbon scientifically linked to climate change. Edward Cunningham, a specialist on China and its energy markets at Harvard University, tells NPR that China is building or planning more than 300 coal plants in places as widely spread as Turkey, Vietnam, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Egypt and the Philippines.
Days before the forum with its "clean and green" theme, the latest Chinese-built coal plant opened in Pakistan.
The plants are significant investments at a time when most nations of the world, including China, have committed to fighting climate change. "When you put money down and put steel into the ground for a coal-fired power plant," says Cunningham, "it’s a 40- or 50-year commitment."In one sense, China’s push for coal is not surprising: China knows how to build coal plants. It is the world’s largest coal consumer, drawing more than 70 percent of its electricity from coal, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
But facing overwhelming pollution levels, China has restrained the growth of its coal industry — at home.
For many years, four huge electric power plants burned coal within the capital city, Beijing, contributing to the city’s choking smog. But within the past four years, all four stopped burning coal.
The naivety of most of the media never ceases to surprise me!
Why they believe every word Xi Jinping says amazes me, especially when few people trust western politicians to tell the truth.
The NPR have also fallen for the “closing coal plants in Beijing” trick. Despite shutting old plants like these, because of real pollution, new plants are more than replacing lost output.
BP Energy Review
NPR then go on to repeat the usual nonsense about how coal power will soon become uncompetitive against renewables.
But if they are nothing else, the Chinese government are realists.
They have the expertise to build coal power plants, they have the coal to supply them, and above all they have the finance.
Constructing coal plants as part of its Belt and Road strategy makes perfectly good business sense to China, as well as building influence with its client states.
As for the climate? Well, we know the answer to that!
via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
April 30, 2019 at 12:48PM
Iowa Climate Science Education 
Reblogged this on Climate- Science.
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