Originally published at Forbes

Tilak Doshi Contributor

I analyze energy economics and related public policy issues.

Lenin observed that “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” It might be a stretch to describe the decades since, say, the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989) to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia (2022) as “nothing happening”. But it certainly seems like the weeks since the Russian invasion on February 24^th have telescoped decades’ worth of history into an “inflection point”, a term used by President Biden in his speech to US troops in Poland on March 25^th.

The main event is this: the Russians officially notified their gas customers — on March 23th, one day short of a month from its invasion date — that the terms of trade will henceforth be in “roubles for gas” for all “unfriendly” countries (that is, those that launched unilateral financial sanctions on Russia). The EU, dependent on Russia for 40% of its gas supplies (this is higher for Germany, at 60%), has claimed that paying in roubles for gas contracts that have been denominated in euros or dollars is “against contract sanctity”; Germany and France rejected Vladimir Putin’s demand that foreign purchasers of Russian gas pay in roubles as an “unacceptable breach of contract”, adding that the manoeuvre amounted to “blackmail”.

All Out Economic Warfare

From the Russian point of view, the “roubles for Russian gas” move was inevitable. The U.S. Treasury Department announced on February 28th that it would “immobilize” Russian central bank assets that are held in the United States. Sanctions on Russia were widened as the G7 and European Union governments moved on March 2^nd to block key Russian banks’ access to the SWIFT international payment system and froze about half the Russian central bank’s $630 billion worth of foreign currency and gold reserves.

Russia’s ex-president Dmitry Medvedev and now deputy head of the security council said: “They are seizing assets of financial institutions and even of the [Russian] Central Bank, and are even talking about foreclosing these assets, about nationalising them in other words. Well, look, this is a war without rules.” As one Washington lawyer put it, the expropriation of sovereign-owned foreign exchange reserves is “the largest hammer in the toolshed” and represents an all out economic war with no holds barred.

Not only does this take away Moscow’s ability to defend the rouble. This precedent will prompt a reconsideration by finance ministries across the globe – particularly in the majority of countries that have not taken sides with the US and EU in sanctioning Russia and that may face a potential conflict with US or EU governments in the future – over where to bank their foreign exchange reserves.

Despite significant pressure from the U.S., the UAE abstained from a vote at the United Nations Security Council to condemn Russia’s invasion. Mohammed bin Zayed, de facto ruler of the UAE and crown prince of Abu Dhabi chose to keep on side with his fellow oil producer Russia in OPEC+. Key OPEC producers Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE run some of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds – will a globalist US or EU foreign policy agenda be a new risk factor in their projections?

The Russian Central Bank announced on 25^th March — two days after Putin’s “no roubles, no gas” plan was reported — that it would set a fixed price of 5,000 roubles per gram of gold. Since physical gold in international markets was at $62/gram, the arbitrage price would be (5,000/62) or approximately 80.5 roubles to the dollar. On the interbank market, the rouble traded at about 83 against the dollar, recovering sharply to pre-invasion levels after sinking to a record low of 150 roubles per dollar on 7^th March. The Kremlin indicated on 30^th March that all of Russia’s energy and commodity exports — crude oil, refined products, metals, timber, wheat and fertilizers — could be priced in roubles.

The ‘Globalists’ vs the ‘Nationalists’

In global commodity markets, it may well be that an “era of regional currencies is coming”, and confidence in the dollar reserve currency is “fading like the morning mist” as Medvedev puts it. At a stroke, the US and EU expropriation of Russian central bank reserves made US dollars and euros worthless to Russia. A new bifurcated financial world order is taking shape, and only tough negotiations or a tit-for-tat escalation will determine the balance between the U.S. and EU-dominated international trade structure that came out of the Bretton Woods system (the “globalists”) and the group of resource-based countries that will have currencies backed by commodity exports (the “nationalists”) and access to payment systems not subject to the whims of international corporations.

Financial sanctions by the globalists on a nationalist Russia led to Putin’s economic “nuclear” counter strike with the “no roubles, no gas” plan. This was a simple message to Germany which has no immediate substitute to piped Russian gas on which it is heavily dependent. In response, Germany’s government on Wednesday activated the first phase of an emergency law to prepare the country for possible gas rationing. Can Russia withstand the loss of rouble or gold-denominated revenues from export shutoffs more easily than Germans without delivered gas molecules for electricity and heat? One can speculate whether Russia will up the ante now by gas supply reductions or shutoffs to Europe if it refuses to pay in roubles (or gold) before winter is fully over or wait for the showdown in winter 2022/23.

Beyond the immediate tactics in the face off over the Russo-German roubles/gas issue is the possible dissolution of the unipolar global financial system under a dollar/euro hegemony and a multipolar one taking shape. The “globalist” camp has within its arsenal the world’s leading banks and financial institutions including the Wall Street hedge funds and multilateral agencies such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Its leading technocratic elites are represented by the likes of the World Economic Forum (the “Davos crowd”), the International Energy Agency (IEA), the UN’s climate change bureaucracy, the Silicon Valley behemoths, and the international mainstream and social media.

The dollar-euro complex is undergirded by the vast US Treasury bills market and under the Biden administration, quantitative easing (QE), modern monetary theory (MMT), trillions of dollars for “build back better” and other debt-financed spending sprees, and the inflationary US Federal Reserve purchases of debt (when others don’t want to lend) seem to be acceptable propositions. The rallying ideas of the globalist camp include the environmental, social and governance (ESG) and “stakeholder capitalism” models but above all is the “fight” against the “climate emergency”.

“Expert advisors” such as the UN Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the IEA have called for the immediate halting of new investments in fossil fuels in favour of renewable energy technologies. But the current oil and gas price surge and Europe’s energy crisis this winter has led the IEA to reverse its usual green posture and ask Russia in September to “do more to increase gas availability to Europe and ensure storage is filled to adequate levels in preparation for the coming winter heating season.”

Unlike the US Federal Reserve and its massive credit-creating powers, the Russian Central Bank will not be, nor is it capable of, supporting its currency beyond what is accruable from its trade balance as a commodity exporter. In the “nationalist” camp, a resource-based global currency system will emerge, with rouble, yuan, and rupee convertibility tied to the value of fossil fuels, agriculture, metals and other primary commodities exported by resource-rich countries and increasingly demanded by resource-poor developing countries. China, India and Russia are exploring alternatives to the US-dominated SWIFT inter-bank payments system.

India struck a deal recently for 3 million barrels of crude oil at discounted prices from Russia for delivery in May, and is looking to secure more supplies in the weeks ahead. As one local oil analyst put it, “If Russia is offering oil at a cheaper price and the trade is between rupee and rouble, then looking at the national interest and leaving aside the geopolitical aspect, India should definitely buy the discounted oil”. A move by Saudi Arabia to conduct at least part of its oil sales to China in yuan, for example, could signal the beginning of the end of the petrodollar, one of the pillars that support the status of the US dollar as the reserve currency of the world.

Globalism and Its Critics

There seems little reason for most developing countries to be much engaged with the globalist agenda of the EU’s Green Deal (or Biden’s Green New Deal) or with the “Great Reset” and the “4^th Industrial Revolution” espoused by Klaus Schwab of the WEF. As opposed to the globalists’ futuristic visions, the “nationalists” – which includes the vast majority of countries outside the OECD group — occupy rather prosaic “20^th century” ambitions: promote economic growth to meet rising aspirations of people for a middle class lifestyle or face the consequences of domestic social and political turbulence. This means continued and rapid growth in fossil fuel use and increased access to affordable energy (electricity and clean cooking fuels such as LPG) for energy-poor citizens. “Renewable energy” technologies, as the Germans have now found out, have not been an alternative to dependence on fossil fuel imports.

For the developing countries — accounting for 80% of the global population — climate treaties to “fight climate change” can be negotiated in global forums so long as the UN ensures financial support needed for “climate mitigation and adaptation”. After last year’s COP26 Glasgow conference, India made clear that its climate commitments are conditional on the availability of $1 trillion in climate finance. This is an order of magnitude above the sums talked about in the 2015 Paris Agreement. Since 2015, it has strived unsuccessfully to reach $100 billion annual target for financial transfers from OECD countries to all developing countries put together. For economic planners in China and India, economic growth takes priority over meeting climate targets. This means going up the energy ladder which today’s developed countries already climbed since the 19^th century Industrial Revolution and includes expanded coal mining for power generation.

It would seem that Lenin’s observation that “decades” can happen in “weeks” during particular historical junctures seems apt for events since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The “rules-based international order” bit the dust after the US and EU financial sanctions on Russia essentially expropriated the country’s foreign exchange reserves. To be sure, rumours of the death of the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency have been exaggerated to date, perhaps out of wishful thinking. But we now only have to wait and see if, in the coming weeks, the rise of a multi-polar world with regional currencies and competing commodity trading blocs mark the beginning of the end of dollar hegemony and the long-lived Bretton Woods system.

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Tilak Doshi

I have worked in the oil and gas sector as an economist in both private industry and in think tanks, in Asia, the Middle East and the US over the past 25 years. I focus on global energy developments from the perspective of Asian countries that remain large markets for oil, gas and coal. I have written extensively on the areas of economic development, environment and energy economics. My publications include “Singapore in a Post-Kyoto World: Energy, Environment and the Economy” published by the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (2015). I won the 1984 Robert S. McNamara Research Fellow award of the World Bank and received my Ph.D. in Economics in 1992.

No country has ever powered itself entirely on wind and solar; no country ever will. And the reason is very simple: sunset and calm weather.

Pressed on the inherent intermittency of wind and solar, the acolyte starts muttering about “storage” as if it were a thing. It isn’t and, for reasons of physics and economics, will never be. As Francis Menton spells out below.

No Amount Of Incremental Wind And Solar Power Can Ever Provide Energy Independence
Manhattan Contrarian
Francis Menton
15 March 2022

Here’s the single most important function of this blog: Saying the things that are patently obvious but that just can’t be said these days in polite society. Yes, it’s The Emperor’s New Clothes every day here at Manhattan Contrarian.

With war raging in Ukraine following Russia’s invasion, there is a renewed concern in many quarters for “energy independence.” Until recently, the sophisticated countries of Europe had thought the whole idea to be passé. They built large numbers of wind turbines and solar arrays, while simultaneously banning fracking for natural gas and shuttering electricity plants that used coal and even those that used no-carbon nuclear. Suddenly, at the very worst possible time, they found themselves completely dependent on Russian gas for heat and reliable electricity. In the U.S. it’s not nearly so bad (yet), but the combination of the Ukraine invasion with the Biden administration’s resumption of Obama’s war on fossil fuels has also left the U.S. vulnerable to an oil and gas price spike on world markets, whose supply side has been artificially reduced by government hostility to production of fossil fuels.

So what’s the answer? If you are a member in good standing in American media/academia/environmentalist/Democratic Party society, the answer is obvious: Just build more wind turbines and solar arrays until you have enough. These facilities will count as “domestic” electricity generation, and therefore will quickly lead to “energy independence.” What could be easier?

So permit me to say the blindingly obvious: No amount of incremental wind and solar power can ever provide energy independence. Electricity gets consumed the instant it is generated. Electricity is consumed all the time, and therefore must be generated all the time. Indeed, some of the peak times for electricity consumption occur on winter evenings, when the sun has set, temperatures are very cold, the wind is often completely calm, and the need for energy for light, heat, cooking and more are high. During such times, a combined wind and solar generation system produces zero power. It doesn’t matter if you build a thousand wind turbines and solar panels, or a million, or a billion or a trillion. The output will still be zero.

And calm winter nights are just the most intense piece of the problem. A fully wind/solar generation system, with seemingly plenty of “capacity” to meet peak electricity demand, will also regularly and dramatically underproduce at random critical times throughout a year: for example, on heavily overcast and cold winter days; or on calm and hot summer evenings, when the sun has just set and air conditioning demand is high.

And thus it is time for a roundup of recent calls for massive building of wind and solar facilities in order to achieve energy independence.

From UK think tank Carbon Tracker, March 2: “It makes no sense to lock countries into fossil fuel dependent power grids over the medium term, . . . . Instead, Europe could rapidly reduce its reliance on Russian gas (and fossil fuels more broadly) by accelerating the implementation of . . . investments in renewable energy technologies as well as focusing on energy efficiency measures.”

From Sammy Roth at the LA Times, February 26: “[D]oubling down on oil and natural gas isn’t the answer [to dependence on Russia], some security experts say — and neither is energy independence. The war in Europe adds to the urgency of transitioning to clean energy sources such as solar and wind power that are harder for bad actors such as Russia to disrupt, those experts say.” (The article primarily relies on an “expert” named Erin Sikorsky of the Center for Climate and Security.)

From MarketWatch, February 26: “As grim as the reality of a conflict in Ukraine may be, economically, it may serve as a major catalyst for Europe’s decarbonization efforts, forcing governments to invest in earnest in greater zero-emissions renewable energy sources and the electrification of cars and homes. Doing so could secure energy independence from a Vladimir Putin-led Russia that’s proving to be a greater security threat by the day, say green-energy proponents and other global market-watchers.”

From Energy Monitor, March 7, reporting on statements from two think tanks called Ember and E3G: “Policies to further accelerate the roll-out of solar and wind power, and therefore reduce Europe’s reliance on Russian gas, will not have any impact in the immediate term. ‘But renewables growth can be much higher than planned from 2024–25 onwards, provided the policy framework is put in place right now,’ says Moore [of Ember]. . . . In a briefing whose release coincided with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the think tank E3G also advocates a ‘fast expansion of renewable energy and interconnections for the power sector”, which aims at “reducing structural gas dependence for system balancing.’”

From Scientific American, March 9, reporting on a statement from Frans Timmerman, chief “climate” official of the European Union: “The [EU’s] plan lends support to a package of legislation that aims to cut Europe’s greenhouse gas emissions 55 percent by 2030, and it would also ease European concerns over its energy security, said E.U. climate chief Frans Timmermans. ‘Renewables give us the freedom to choose an energy source that is clean, cheap, reliable and ours,’ he told reporters yesterday.”

There is essentially an infinite supply of such completely ignorant statements out there on the internet if you choose to spend some time collecting them. The quoted statements and dozens or hundreds more of same just blithely assume, or assert without basis, that sufficient numbers of wind turbines and solar panels can liberate us from fossil fuels, without ever mentioning or discussing the issue of energy storage.

Continuing with what is completely obvious but unmentionable in polite society: Since combined wind and solar power facilities regularly produce no power at all when it is most needed, a wind and solar generation system will either be (1) dependent on fossil fuel backup, or (2) dependent on storage for backup, or (3) both. If it is taken as given that the whole idea is to move away from fossil fuel backup, then everything comes down to storage. A fossil-fuel-free system based on wind and solar generation is completely useless without sufficient storage to cover all times of insufficient simultaneous generation.

To propose energy independence based on wind and solar without fossil fuels, you must, repeat must, address storage. How much is needed? How much would that cost? What loss of energy will be incurred on the turnaround between charge and discharge? Is the cost feasible? How long must the energy be stored between generation and consumption? Do batteries or other storage devices exist that can store energy for such a period without most or all of it draining away? Has there ever been a demonstration of the feasibility of a fossil-fuel-free system based only on wind, solar and storage?

Try to find any mention of these issues in any of the pieces linked above, or in any of the many others you might find advocating more wind and solar facilities as the solution to dependence of Russian gas supplies. As to the feasibility and cost of a wind/solar generation system without fossil fuel backup, consider prior Manhattan Contrarian posts from February 1 here, and January 22 here.
Manhattan Contrarian

New paper in Advances in Climate Change Research

Li-LiSun ^a1, Hui-JuanCui, ^a Quan-ShengGe ^b

^a Key Laboratory of Land Surface Pattern and Simulation, Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
^b University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China

Received 19 August 2021, Revised 1 November 2021, Accepted 10 February 2022, Available online 16 February 2022, Version of Record 23 March 2022.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.accre.2022.02.002 Get rights and content

Under a Creative Commons license Open access

Abstract

China has pledged to peak carbon emissions before 2030 and strive to achieve carbon neutrality before 2060. However, the significant variations of provincial carbon emissions make it unclear whether they can jointly fulfill the national carbon peak and neutrality goal. Thus, this study predicts the emission trajectories at provincial level in China by employing the extended STIRPAT (Stochastic Impacts by Regression on Population, Affluence, and Technology) model to see the feasibility and time of reaching peak carbon emissions and carbon neutrality. We found that most provinces can achieve peak emission before 2030 but challenging to achieve carbon neutrality before 2060, even considering the ecological carbon sink. The provincial neutrality time is concentrated between 2058 and 2070; the sooner the carbon emission peaks, the earlier the carbon neutral will be realized. The aggregated carbon emissions at provincial level show that China can achieve its carbon emission peak of 9.64–10.71 Gt before 2030, but it is unlikely to achieve the carbon neutrality goal before 2060 without carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS). With high CCUS development, China is expected to achieve carbon neutrality in 2054–2058, irrespective of the socio-economic scenarios. With low CCUS development, China’s carbon neutrality target will be achieved only under the accelerated-improvement scenario, while it will postpone to 2061 and 2064 under the continued-improvement and the business-as-usual scenarios, respectively.

Keywords

China’s carbon neutralityPeak emissionProvincial emissionCCUSSTIRPAT

1. Introduction

In 2015, the Paris Agreement has set long-term temperature goals to control the global average warming at 2 °C and strive to limit it to 1.5 °C by the end of the 21st century. However, global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions continued to grow and reach a record high of 52.4 Gt CO₂e in 2019 without evidence of having peaked yet (BP, 2021). To meet the 2 °C temperature goal, all countries need to reduce additional GHG emissions of 12–19 Gt to their nationally determined contributions (NDCs) by 2030 and reach global CO₂ emissions peak as soon as possible (UNEP, 2020). Besides, carbon neutrality by the mid-21st century is required to achieve the 1.5 °C goal (IPCC, 2018). Till now, many countries have started to make new pledges to carbon neutrality or zero-emission such as the European Union (EU), Japan, the Republic of Korea, Canada, etc., who have announced goals of carbon neutrality by 2050 (European Commission, 2018; NPR, 2020; Tradelink Publications, 2020 Canada Government, 2020).

China contributed 26% of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2019 (UNEP, 2020). As the first developing country to submit NDCs, the Chinese government committed to reaching peak CO₂ emissions before 2030 and striving to achieve carbon neutrality before 2060 in September 2020 (The Chinese Foreign Ministry, 2020). According to Climate Action Tracker (CAT, 2020), if China achieves its announced goal of achieving carbon neutrality before 2060, it would lower global warming projections by around 0.2–0.3 °C, closer to the 1.5 °C warming limit of the Paris Agreement. Whether China can fulfill its carbon peak and neutral commitments is of great significance to the realization of the Paris Agreement. Compared with some developed countries whose emissions have peaked such as Canada, United Kingdom, and Japan, China’s carbon emissions are in a growth phase. The proposal of carbon neutrality by 2060 implies that China will have a shorter time to implement large-scale emission reduction after peaking around 2030 (Huang and Zhai, 2021). The timing of carbon emissions peak directly determines the available time and the amount of emission reduction to be completed from carbon peak to carbon neutrality (Hu, 2021). There is no doubt that achieving carbon neutrality in such a short period would be a great challenge for China and lack of lessons can be learned from the developed countries’ experiences (Yu et al., 2021). Therefore, the investigation into China’s peak and neutrality path would be of great importance to the world by providing a new possibility and could be informative for other developing countries, like India, whose GHG emission still rises and is highly likely to become the next largest emitters after China (Jiang et al., 2019). In that sense, it is of global significance to focus on China’s carbon peaking and carbon neutralization and to design a clear emission reduction roadmap as soon as possible, especially the provincial roadmap.

Confined by different population distribution, resource endowment, and socio-economic development, the reduction potential of carbon emissions vary considerably across China’s provinces (Zhang et al., 2020). More developed regions have lower energy intensities, higher energy efficiencies, and advanced emission reduction technology, facilitating an earlier peak of emissions (Li et al., 2017a, Li et al., 2017b; Du et al., 2017; Su et al., 2014). For example, As one of the low carbon pilot cities in China, Beijing has announced that its carbon emissions peak in 2020 (Cui et al., 2020). On the other hand, Guangdong, another developed province, will achieve peak CO₂ emissions in 2020–2025 (Huang et al., 2013; Cheng et al., 2015) or is unlikely to peak before 2030 (Wang et al., 2019). Chongqing will achieve peak CO₂ emissions by approximately 2030 (Liang et al., 2014) or shortly after that (Liu et al., 2017). Some undeveloped western provinces like Shanxi, Shaanxi, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia are expected to reach peak CO₂ emissions between 2025 and 2035 (Dong et al., 2017; Li et al., 2017a, Li et al., 2017b; Zhou et al., 2016). The difference in the peak time of carbon emissions across provinces are noteworthy. Different research predicted highly variable peak times even for the same province, ranging from 2 to 14 years. Shi (2020) predicted the peak of CO₂ emissions in Shandong and Hebei would occur by 2025. But, Wang et al. (2021) believed Shandong is probably to reach carbon peaks after 2030 and even to 2045 due to its high energy intensity and low renewable energy utilization, while Hebei is probably to peak before 2026 relying on geographical advantages (affected by advance low-carbon technology in Beijing). It is primarily attributed to applying different methods and selecting various socio-economic drivers behind carbon emissions (i.e., population, GDP per capita, and energy intensity). Besides, some emission reduction plans were sorted out in provincial 14th Five-Year Plan. For example, Beijing and Tianjin have formulated policies to accelerate the energy structure reform and promote clean and efficient utilization of energy.

The drivers of carbon emissions are detected mainly by decomposition analysis, IPAT (Impact, Population, Affluence, and Technology) model and STIRPAT (Stochastic Impacts by Regression on Population, Affluence, and Technology) model. The STIRPAT was created based on the IPAT model, and it abandons unit elasticity assumption and adds randomness to facilitate empirical analysis (Fang et al., 2019; Nguyen et al., 2019; Ghazali and Ali, 2019). Therefore, the STIRPAT model is ahead of the IPAT model for more factors are considered and integrated to analyze scenarios for emission trajectory simulation. It can help policymakers seek feasible emission reduction paths since comparative estimate factors can observe all the possible outcomes. The drivers usually include population, urbanization, economy level, energy intensity, industrial structure, and energy structure. It is found that urbanization level, economic level, and industry structure promote carbon emission, while energy intensity, technology progress, and tertiary industry proportion decrease CO₂ emissions (Wang et al., 2012, 2017; Shen et al., 2018). Besides, it is found that the driving factors of carbon emissions various across regions, even various in the same region (Inglesi-Lotz, 2018). Therefore, considering significant differences in population, economy, and carbon emissions, it is necessary to explore the driving factors of carbon emissions at provincial level.

When and how Chinese provinces will reach carbon peak and carbon neutrally remain unclear from existing literatures. To close this gap, this study aims to explore whether China can achieve its peak carbon emissions target before 2030 and the carbon neutrality target before 2060 from the provincial perspective. To that end, the STIRPAT model was applied to investigate the carbon emission drivers in China’s 30 provinces during 1995–2017 and predict their future emissions from 2018 to 2080 under different scenarios to see whether and when each province will achieve peak emissions and carbon neutrality. Finally, China’s overall carbon peak and neutrality were assessed with CCUS.

….

5. Conclusions

This study predicts the carbon emission trajectories of 30 provinces by employing the extended STIRPAT model and explore if they can achieve China’s targets of attaining peak carbon emissions before 2030 and carbon neutrality before 2060. We found that the sooner the carbon emissions peak, the earlier the carbon neutrality will be realized. Under the BAU scenario, most provinces in Group I, Group II, and Group III can achieve their peak carbon emissions in 2023–2030 but are unlikely to achieve the carbon-neutrality targets before 2060. Under the CIS scenario, all provinces can reach peak carbon emissions in 2021–2030, but only eight provinces, including Beijing and Hainan, can achieve carbon neutrality before 2060. Under the AIS scenario, all provinces can reach peak carbon emissions in 2021–2030, and roughly half of the provinces are expected to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.

China can achieve its carbon emission peak of 9.64–10.71 Gt regardless of the scenarios before 2030. However, it would be hard to achieve its neutrality goal before 2060 without CCUS, where additional carbon reduction or negative emission of 519–2631 Mt is needed. With the low CCUS development, China is likely to achieve its carbon neutrality target only under the AIS. In contrast, with the high CCUS development, China can achieve its neutrality target regardless of the scenario, with the neutrality times being around 2058 (BAU), 2056 (CIS), and 2054 (AIS).

Significant variations found in carbon reduction ratio, peak time, and neutral time in provinces suggest that socio-economic disparities should be considered when formulating targeted mitigation policies. For provinces like Beijing and Shanghai that would achieve carbon emission peak and carbon neutrality targets under one and two scenarios, improving the energy intensity is the key to quicken peak carbon emission and carbon neutrality time. For provinces like Shandong and Chongqing that would achieve peak carbon emissions but are unlikely to achieve carbon neutrality targets under one and two scenarios, it is necessary to adjust the energy consumption structure for achieving the carbon reduction target as soon as possible. For provinces like Inner Mongolia, Anhui, and Hebei that would neither achieve carbon emission peak nor the carbon-neutrality target under at least one and two scenarios, it is crucial to change the economic development pattern, control urbanization growth rate, and formulate stricter environmental regulations. Furthermore, given the contribution of CCUS to China’s carbon neutrality target before 2060, it is imperative to develop CCUS technology vigorously and design an appropriate roadmap of the CCUS strategy as soon as possible.

Read the full paper here.

From MasterResource

By Robert Bradley Jr. — April 8, 2022

Ed. Note: MasterResource has profiled the personal stories of defeated or disillusioned activists as climatism flounders 34 years after James Hansen’s testimony in 1988. From disengagement to social withdrawal to raw anger to even suicide, the true believers are in turmoil, while the climate industrial complex reaps the money, power, prestige, and confabs that come with ‘being green.’

“If you are honest and practical, the theory and data are out there to challenge your beliefs and even change your mind–and your life. You do not need to fight depression or withdraw. There is life and optimism in climate- and energy-realism.”

The title of the NYT article is: A Climate Warrior’s Journey From Summit Talks to Street Protests (New York Times: March 29, 2022). It is the story of the despair and resurrection (temporary?) of a climate activist. As such, it is a window to the world on the futile fight against carbon dioxide and energy density.

Not only is there an open-ended tripartite fossil fuel boom several decades after climate alarmism was birthed (in 1988), there also is a growing residue of planetary waste and destruction from industrial wind turbines, solar slabs, and batteries packs galore. Real environmentalism, anyone?

There is greenwashing and corporate cronyism run amok–just what could be expected from trying to artificially manage a market of inferior energy choices (the politically correct being economically incorrect).

After a high-profile career as an international lawyer and negotiator, Farhana Yamin decided “we cannot rely on lawyers and diplomats alone.” Her story as recounted by the Times is reproduced with my comments in green (yes, green as in energy density).

————————–

It took 20 minutes for police officers to unglue Farhana Yamin from Shell’s offices in London. It was April 2019 and Ms. Yamin was one of many protesters from the global environmental movement Extinction Rebellion occupying the streets of central London and calling on the British authorities to take climate action.

Comment: Gluing herself to an office building? We are dealing with an unstable person who will not reconsider climate alarmism and the perils from inferior energies.

But unlike other protesters, some of whom had always been anti-establishment, Ms. Yamin had spent most of her life not only believing in the system but working at its top levels. “My life and my work is a dance between an insider and an outsider,” she said.

Comment: The nutty outsider was a nutty insider. A smart, professional nutty person.

Her experience as an insider goes back more than 30 years. Ms. Yamin, 57, is an internationally recognized environmental lawyer and a respected adviser to developing countries and small island nations like the Marshall Islands, working on their behalf at the international level.

Comment: Many years on a false cause dulls the intelligence and revs up the emotions. She did not choose well at the beginning, a methodological flaw.

She is also a leading author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and was a key architect of the Paris climate agreement. Ms. Yamin is widely seen as responsible for securing, through behind-the-scenes diplomacy, a central element of the pact: The goal of net-zero emissions by midcentury.

Comment: The heralded IPCC? She discredits what is widely recognized as a political, special-interest, religious group with some good science buried deep in the physical science report.

After the agreement, though, as Donald J. Trump rose to power in the United States and other countries continually delayed strong action on climate change, she said her faith in institutions began to crumble. “I was naïve about what we could achieve,” Ms. Yasmin said of her intellectual journey. “I’ve learned we cannot rely on lawyers and diplomats alone.”

Comment: Energy density more than Donald Trump is the foe of forced transformation to the energies that consumers do not naturally want.

That journey started when Ms. Yamin was studying law in her 20s. Growing up as a Pakistani immigrant in England who experienced racism, Ms. Yamin knew she wanted to spend her career fighting injustice. When she embarked on an internship with a small environmental law firm in 1991 as a recent Oxford graduate, Ms. Yamin knew she had found her calling. “I never looked back,” she said. “I was optimistic.”

Comment: Did she study physical science critically? Did she assess energy physics and the unique characteristics of electricity as an economic good? Did she understand opportunity-cost economics? Good intentions are not enough….

Since then, Ms. Yamin has attended nearly every major international climate conference, but she is best known for her work at the negotiations that led to the Paris Agreement.

Comment: A party-goer with a big carbon footprint? Lots of confirmation bias at those meetings … has she ever attended a Heartland conference, say, to consider differing views?

She had spent years working with academics, civil society groups and lawyers to make net-zero emissions — the idea of using reductions, carbon capture and carbon offsets to ensure that no additional greenhouse gases are added to the atmosphere — the rallying call of the 2015 conference. “Farhana was among a handful of collaborators who was willing to step up and champion this quest,” said Bernice Lee, a research director on sustainability at Chatham House, a London research organization.

Comment: If fighting injustice was her goal, why side with global government on public policies relying on coercion? Why energy imperialism against Africa? India? China?

But just months after Ms. Yamin achieved one of the biggest victories of her career, she said, things took a turn for the worse. By 2016, some Western countries were seeing a rise of nationalism and a growing distrust of international institutions, with Britain voting to leave the European Union and Donald J. Trump threatening to pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement if elected. “I felt that the whole multilateral world, the international framework for human rights, was just collapsing around me,” Ms. Yamin said.

Comment: Energy density drives consumer-voters, and consumer-voters drive politics. Energy was one of the reasons Trump pulled the upset–and why Biden’s crash-climate agenda will reverberate at the polls this November and beyond.

When, from a meeting room at a United Nations climate conference in Marrakesh, Morocco, Ms. Yamin watched Mr. Trump win the election, she was despondent. She felt that her 30-year career as a government lawyer and climate negotiator had amounted to nothing. “All of it was going up in smoke,” she said. “I couldn’t tell my clients, I couldn’t lie to the Marshall Islands, that we would fix this.” Ms. Yamin took a year off, spending most of her time in nature therapy classes and camping in the wilderness for weeks at a time.

Comment: This bit of realism and honesty is a start to reconsider the very premises of climate activism, which is resulting in the world of all worlds for the anti-fossil-fuel activists: a carbon-based energy boom and a mess from wind, solar, and batteries.

During her time off, Ms. Yamin began reading about other social movements, like the anti-apartheid campaign and the suffragist movement, that used social mobilization and nonviolent resistance to advance their causes. “I felt that the climate movement was almost unique and fragile, relying mostly on insider tactics and not on movement building,” she said. “It wasn’t relying on the full sets of tools.”

Comment: Bad choice. Yamin should have studied climate science (models and feedback effects in particular); plant biology (CO2 fertilization effect); climate economics (benefits of warmth, precipitation); and Public Choice (government decision-making).

It was this idea that reignited Ms. Yamin’s passion for climate and helped her get back to work. Instead of returning to climate diplomacy, Ms. Yamin joined the nascent Extinction Rebellion movement, a decentralized group that uses nonviolent action and civil disobedience, in 2018.

Comment: Doubling down on failure by joining the nut wing–not good at all. And a path to further demoralization and radicalism.

Initially, Ms. Yamin became the leader of Extinction Rebellion’s political team, using her knowledge of the diplomatic terrain to help the movement be more strategic in its activism and get more funding. Even in her new activist role, though, Ms. Yamin felt she was relying too heavily on her intellectual skills instead of putting her body on the line. When an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report was issued in October 2018, Ms. Yamin was reading the report as activists filled Parliament Square in London. As she saw pictures of young people refusing to move and waiting to be arrested, she thought, “I want to be with them.”

Ms. Yamin spent the following two years working with Extinction Rebellion, organizing and protesting alongside other activists. She stepped down from her role with the group in 2020 because of disagreements with other leaders. Ms. Yamin said she believed the movement was not focused enough on climate justice.

Comment: Climate justice? Could that include affordable, reliable, accessible energy for the masses?

Since then, Ms. Yamin has been charting a new path, one that does not depend on institutions or activist groups. At COP26, the latest United Nations climate summit, held last year in Glasgow, Ms. Yamin worked as hard as she always has at these events, eager to defend the legacy of Paris. But rather than spend her days in the negotiating room, surrounded by what she calls a “toxic positivity,” Ms. Yamin focused on movement-building and listening to vulnerable people who spoke outside the conference center.

Comment: How about ringing a few doorbells outside of COP to understand energy and real people? Enough of the exaggerators and prop protesters.

She said she left Glasgow heartbroken, both by the outcome of the conference and the stories she heard from marginalized communities about climate impacts. “I could almost cry. We keep pushing the deadlines out,” she said. “At what point do we say, ‘Enough?’”

Comment: Predictable. COP 26 was a ruse, a carbon-fest of elites. COP 27 will be worse.

For her next chapter, Ms. Yamin said she wants to work directly with frontline communities of color in Britain and help to mobilize the cultural sector to become more engaged in climate issues. “We need the cultural sector and the creatives to help us imagine our way out of the crisis,” she said. She also wants to educate philanthropic organizations on climate justice to help get more money to frontline communities. Her goal is to make sure every pocket of society is fighting the climate crisis. “Everyone should have ‘activist’ on their C.V.,” she said.

Comment: Tripling down on failure? How about become an energy advocate for human betterment. Alex Epstein has a new book coming out, Fossil Future. Read it for liberation.

When asked how she feels looking back at her career, Ms. Yamin paused. “I’m proud of my achievements,” she said. “But I can’t keep carrying on doing that in the face of known indifference.” She added, “I’m much more honest now.”

Comment: If you are honest and practical, the theory and data are out there to challenge your beliefs and change your mind–and your life. You do not need to fight depression or withdraw. There is life and optimism in climate and energy realism.