Has China Faked Its Coal Data?

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By Paul Homewood

 

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From Radio Free Asia:

 

China has claimed big gains in energy efficiency for 2016 despite coal and steel production that covered cities in smog during the second half of the year.

Official figures from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) have offered a murky mix of partial data, unexplained results and apparent discrepancies in accounting for the country’s energy use in a year of lower economic growth.

In its statistical communique released this month during China’s annual legislative sessions, the NBS said that energy use per unit of gross domestic product dropped by a substantial 5 percent last year, although several key indicators rose.

The measure of energy intensity fell almost as much as the 5.6-percent improvement recorded for 2015. But electricity consumption increased by 5 percent in 2016 compared with a much weaker gain of 0.9 percent a year before, according to the National Energy Administration (NEA).

The numbers pose a puzzling question with several implications for China’s economy and the environment.

How could the country have made such an advance in energy efficiency at a time when power consumption climbed by such a large amount and GDP grew by 6.7 percent, the slowest pace in 26 years?

Other energy figures from the NBS may only add to the mystery.

According to the official data, consumption of crude oil also rose 5 percent and natural gas increased 8 percent, but coal use fell 4.7 percent in a big decline for China’s main fuel.

The reported reduction in coal use for the third year in a row has been hailed by environmentalists, raising hopes that consumption may have peaked in 2013.

On March 17, the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) credited China’s reduction in coal demand for helping to avoid an increase in global greenhouse gas emissions for the third consecutive year.

China’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions fell 1 percent in 2016, while U.S. emissions were down by 3 percent, the IEA said.

The major drop in coal consumption accounts for China’s official calculation that total energy use rose by only 1.4 percent, far less than GDP, allowing the NBS to claim greater efficiency.

Source of confusion

But the coal numbers by themselves have been a source of questions and confusion.

In reporting the percentages for coal, oil and gas, the NBS has provided no actual tonnage or volume figures, making the rates impossible to check or compare.

In an analysis, the environmental group Greenpeace cited conflicting readings of the data on China’s low-quality coal.

While the NBS reported a 4.7-percent drop in coal use based on undisclosed tonnage, it also claimed that coal’s share of total energy use fell from 64 percent in 2015 to 62 percent last year.

The share numbers imply that coal consumption fell 1.3 percent based on the energy content of the fuel rather than physical tonnage, Greenpeace calculated.

"The difference can be due to either a major improvement in coal quality or data discrepancies," the Greenpeace analysis said.

The NBS has not explained why it reported percentage figures without the tonnage or volume details.

The uncertainty casts doubt over the validity of the efficiency figures.

The NBS estimates may also be in conflict with what actually happened in the coal market last year.

Government agencies have acknowledged missteps in pursuing cuts in coal production overcapacity too aggressively last year, leading to sudden shortages and a price spike before the winter heating season began.

After berating coal companies for moving too slowly on closing excess mining capacity, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) reversed course and authorized more production as supplies ran low and prices climbed by more than 70 percent.

Similar moves in the steel industry spurred smelters to restart idled production as price incentives took hold, adding to coal demand and urban smog.

While the effects on market prices and air quality were evident, official reports of coal production and consumption continued to show declines.

A study released by Greenpeace’s East Asia affiliate in February found that publicized cuts in the steel industry included previously-closed plants. Production capacity actually rose as smelters reopened to profit from higher prices, the study said.

Inspectors from the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) and the State Administration of Work Safety (SAWS) have reported numerous violations by manufacturers operating in spite of shutdown orders.

A Chinese worker sorts coal on a conveyor belt near a coal mine in Datong, northern China’s Shanxi province, Nov. 20, 2015. Credit: AFP

Doubts about estimates

Although actual coal use is hard to quantify from such anecdotal evidence, the reports also raise doubts about NBS estimates that coal production last year fell by a whopping 9.4 percent.

If production had declined at double the rate of the drop in consumption, it would imply much tighter supplies.

China energy experts have been unable to substantiate the official figures.

"Those coal consumption numbers certainly don’t make sense on the surface, and I’m not completely sure how to interpret them," said David Fridley, staff scientist for the China Energy Group at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California.

"Nor can I account for the source of the decline. Cement, steel and thermal power were all up in 2016, and they were the main sources of decline in 2015," said Fridley by email.
Fridley noted that the NBS communique is a "flash," or early, estimate and may be subject to revisions.
He also suggested that coal consumption could have fallen in sectors and uses such as district heating that have yet to be reported, although the frequency of winter smog alerts argues otherwise.
"I guess the only thing for certain is that China reported another year of coal consumption decline—period," said Fridley.
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This is not the first time doubts have been raised about the accuracy and integrity of China’s energy and emission statistics, for instance here and here.

And there is an additional problem, in that the regions in China cannot always be relied upon to send truthful statistics to the Central Government.

What is clear is that the Chinese Communist Party only has the interests of the country, and ultimately itself, at heart, and will do all it can to further them.

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March 29, 2017 at 03:30AM

Purely Energy

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Ethan Siegel provides an informative primer on energy physics:  Is There Any Such Thing As Pure Energy?  It is useful background for anyone interested in energy and climate science. Some excerpts below.

What is the nature of Energy?

Energy plays a tremendous role, not only in our technology-rich daily lives, but in fundamental physics as well. The chemical energy stored in gasoline gets converted into kinetic energy that propels our vehicles, while the electrical energy from our power planets gets converted into light, heat and other forms of energy at our homes. But this energy always seems to exist as merely one property of an otherwise independently-existing system. Must it always be so? Alex from Moscow writes in with a question about energy itself:

“Does pure energy [exist], maybe very shortly before turning into a particle or a photon? Or is it just a useful mathematical abstraction, an equivalent that we use in physics?”

At a fundamental level, energy can take on many forms.

Mass = Energy

The simplest, most familiar form of energy of all is in terms of mass. You don’t normally think in terms of Einstein’s E = mc2, but every physical object that’s ever existed in this Universe is made of massive particles, and simply by having mass, these particles have energy.

Mass in Motion = Kinetic Energy

If these particles are moving, they have an additional form of energy as well: kinetic energy, or the energy of motion.

Particles Linked Together = Binding Energy

Finally, these particles can link together in a variety of ways, forming more complex structures like nuclei, atoms, molecules, cells, organisms, planets and more. This form of energy is known as binding energy, and is actually negative in its effect. It reduces the rest mass of the overall system, which is why nuclear fusion, taking place in the cores of stars, can emit so much light and heat: by converting mass into energy via that same E = mc2. Over the 4.5 billion year history of the Sun, it’s lost approximately the mass of Saturn from simply fusing hydrogen into helium.

Massless Particles in Motion = Restless Kinetic Energy

The Sun itself gives another example of energy: light and heat, which comes in the form of photons, which are different from the forms of energy we’ve considered so far. There exist massless particles as well — particles with no rest energy — and these particles, like photons, gluons and (hypothetically) gravitons, all move at the speed of light. However, they do carry energy in the form of kinetic energy, and, in the case of gluons, are responsible for the binding energy inside atomic nuclei and protons themselves.

Energy is Always Conserved

Energy comes in a variety of forms, and some of those forms are fundamental. A particle’s rest mass energy doesn’t change over time, and in fact doesn’t change from particle to particle. It’s a type of energy that is inherent to everything in the Universe itself. But all the other forms of energy that exist are relative. An atom in an excited state has more energy than an atom in a ground state, and that’s due to the difference in binding energy. And if you want to make that transition to the lower-energy state? You have to emit a photon to get there; you cannot make that transition without conserving energy, and that energy needs to be carried by a particle — even a massless one — in order to make that happen.

Energy is Relative to the Observer

Perhaps an oddity of this is that photon energy, or any form of kinetic energy (i.e., the energy of motion), is that its value is not fundamental, but rather is dependent on the motion of the observer. If you move towards a photon, you’ll find its energy appears greater (as its wavelength is blueshifted), and if you move away from it, its energy will be lesser, and it will appear redshifted. Energy is relative, but what’s interesting that for any observer, it’s always conserved. No matter what the interactions are, energy is never seen to exist on its own, but only as part of a system of particles, whether massive or massless.

Dark Energy

There is one form of energy, however, that may not need a particle at all: dark energy. The form of energy that causes the expansion of the Universe to accelerate may very well be energy inherent to the fabric of the Universe itself! This interpretation of dark energy is self-consistent and matches the observations of distant, receding galaxies and quasars that we see exactly. The only problem? This form of energy, as far as we can tell, can neither be used to create or destroy particles, nor can it be inter-converted to and from other forms of energy. It seems to be its own entity, disconnected from interacting with the other forms of energy present within the Universe.

Conclusion

So the full answer to the question of whether pure energy exists is:

• For all of the particles that exist, massive and massless, energy is only one property of them, and cannot exist independently.
• For all of the situations where energy appears to be lost in a system, such as through gravitational decay, there exists some form of radiation carrying off that energy, leaving it conserved.
• And that dark energy itself may be the purest form of energy, existing independent of particles, but as far as any effect other than the expansion of the Universe, that energy is inaccessible to everything else in the Universe.

As far as we can tell, energy is not something we can isolate in a laboratory, but only one of many properties that matter, antimatter and radiation all possess. Creating energy independent of particles? It might be something the Universe itself does, but until we learn how to create (or destroy) spacetime itself, we find ourselves unable to make it so.

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March 29, 2017 at 03:13AM

Trump’s Executive Order On Energy: This Time, He Listened To The Lawyers

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By Paul Homewood

 

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From Forbes:

 

President Donald Trump’s executive order dismantling large chunks of Barrack Obama’s environmental legacy is a cleverly written document that avoids the pitfalls of Trump’s controversial orders on immigration. Unlike those orders, which have been suspended by federal courts, this one bears the clear stamp of experienced government lawyers and leaves the administration with a rich variety of tactical choices on how to eliminarte Obama-era regulations on fossil fuels.

The 7-page order  released this afternoon reverses a string of Obama’s presidential orders, including findings on the dangers of human-induced climate change and methane emissions. It also orders federal agencies to examine all of their actions related to the previous administration’s scientific findings on climate change with orders to "suspend, revise, or rescind" rules and regulations or begin the notice and comment period to reverse them. These are all legal steps that will spawn lawsuits by states and environmental groups opposed to the Trump administration’s regulatory rollback, but are designed to capitalize on the broad discretion given to federal agencies to interpret the law under the so-called Chevron doctrine.

The order doesn’t rescind Obama’s Clean Power Plan, which has been suspended by the Supreme Court while a Washington appeals court considers its fate. But the order lays the groundwork for rescinding the CPP by instructing Environmental Protection Agency Chief Scott Pruitt to review and potentially "take legal action" to reverse the legal memorandum the Obama administration relied upon to justify the CPP’s sweeping controls on the electric utility grid. To accomplish that goal the EPA reversed a decades-old understanding of a tangled section of the Clean Air Act.  The incoming administration can choose to reinterpret it again, and it can cite as a legal defense the fact that it is merely returning to a long-held understanding of the statute.

"The lawyers really had their way with this one," said said Thomas Lorenzen, a partner with Crowell & Moring in Washington and former assistant chief of the Justice Dept.’s environmental law section. "It is a very carefully constructed order."

Eliminating the previous administration’s legal memorandum could be a speedier way to get rid of the CPP, although it would still have to go through a notice and comment period as well as the inevitable legal challenges. The government wouldn’t have to delve as deeply into the scientific record, however, which the Obama administration provided in ample detail to justify its plan. Instead, the Trump administration would argue the CPP, which takes a systemwide approach toward reducing CO2 emissions, is based on an incorrect reading of federal law. The new EPA plan could return to "inside the fence" regulations on individual power plants, still holding them to strict efficiency standards that will be hard for coal plants to meet, but not eliminating them entirely. The CPP used "outside the fence" regulations imposed on entire regional electricity grids to effectively remove coal plants from the mix.

The order also calls for the elimination of the Interagency Working Group on Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases, as well as its findings on the cost of global warming, which it pegged at $42 a ton by 2020. Effective immediately, the administration will use Bush-era standards to judge the cost of carbon emissions.

The Trump administration still faces hurdles, including a federal appeals court ruling upholding the Obama administration’s findings on the dangers of CO2 emissions from automobiles. But the new administration can use Chevron deference to its advantage here as well, Lorenzen said: The court ruling, which the U.S. Supreme Court refused to overturn, says the Obama administration’s finding was reasonable. The EPA under Pruitt need only muster enough scientific evidence to show that its findings are also reasonable, a relatively low bar for an agency to get over.

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March 29, 2017 at 02:30AM

The Paris Climate Treaty Is Already Failing

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No one outside of the environmental movement expected the Paris climate treaty to be a game changer, but already we’re seeing signs of an unwillingness to follow through on the deal—in “green” Europe of all places! Only three European countries—France, Germany, and Sweden—are following through on their commitments they made in Paris 15 months ago to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The Guardian reports:

“EU politicians portraying themselves as climate leaders should put their money where their mouth is by closing loopholes in the EU’s key climate law and pushing for more ambition,” said Femke de Jong, the EU policy director for Carbon Market Watch, a campaign group that co-drafted the EU Climate Leadership Boardsurvey.

Loopholes abound for Europe, it seems. The Guardian continues:

Several countries have tried to gain wiggle room in the talks by pushing for measures such as a later (and higher) baseline for measuring their CO2 cuts, or greater use of forestry credits to meet the EU’s climate goal…Other “loopholes” identified in the paper include a handout of 100m surplus ETS allowances, worth an expected €2bn, to nine countries to help them meet their emissions obligations on paper. […]

Carlos Calvo Ambel, a spokesperson for Transport & Environment, the survey’s other co-sponsor, said: “The great majority of countries want to rig the law with loopholes so they can continue business as usual. Either Europe follows the lead of Sweden, Germany and France, which are going in the right direction, though not far enough, or we should forget about our climate leadership.”

Forget about your climate leadership, indeed. In fact, if we look at the numbers, Germany—one of the three European nations judged by this new survey to be following through on its commitments—is continuing to see its greenhouse gas emissions rise.

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March 29, 2017 at 02:15AM