Response to Jeremy Carl, part three

The question for China and India is not whether to make the transition away from coal, but how soon

Posted by David Roberts at 12:01 PM on 30 Nov 2007

Read more about: climate | energy | coal | China | India

In part one I made the point that if China and India develop along the same path as the West, we're all doomed. This fact is becoming increasingly clear to everyone. One way or another, whoever foots the bill, they'll have to change, and that means shifting to a more expensive-in-the-short-term source of electricity, of which clean coal is but one example among many.

In part two I acknowledged that there are powerful arguments -- mainly social and political rather than economic or technological -- that clean coal is the most obvious short-term choice (and thus that we should focus our efforts on developing and scaling it).

In this post I'll make a simple point: the question before China (and other developing nations) is not whether to shift to sustainable development but when and how fast. The conundrum is all about decisions in the next 20 years.

The primary goal right now in developing nations is to bring people up to a standard of living commensurate with the Western middle class. Imagine two different paths that, e.g., China might take to that goal:

Stick with the coal boom, build hundreds of coal plants, and then clean them up as best as possible when the technology becomes available.
Shift government money, power, attention, and international aid to greening electricity production, electrifying transportation, encouraging public transit and green urbanism, and radically increasing the energy efficiency of houses, factories, and vehicles.

Comparing these choices, we need to ask which will reach the goal (a broad middle class) faster, which will reach it cheaper, and which will reach it in a way that it can be sustained over the long haul. Two facts I see as fundamental to this choice:

1. Sooner or later, China will have to take the latter path. It is often taken for granted that there's enough coal to fuel China's growth for another century at least. But there's good reason to doubt that -- one analysis predicts global peak coal by 2025. There's more than enough coal around to fry the planet, but still, it's a finite resource. China recently became a net importer.

That's the physical limit on the horizon: coal peaks, begins declining, and becomes prohibitively expensive. Take that point in time and begin subtracting from it, knocking off a few years for everything that might happen before that physical limit to hasten coal's demise:

The national security vulnerability of relying on Australia, Indonesia, and Russia for a major source of energy will spur action from nationalists in developing governments.
Rising oil costs will increase the price of international shipping of coal containers.
The growing Chinese middle class will tire of toxic rivers, unbreathable air, desertification, water shortages, and billions of dollars in avoidable health care costs.
State planners will notice (based, one hopes, on U.S. experience) that renewables provide more jobs, while coal mining and burning not only kill people but are increasingly automated, providing fewer and fewer jobs.
International pressure to reduce carbon emissions will become overwhelming.

When you combine all these possibilities, it starts to look like China's not going to get another century of breakneck growth out of coal. It starts to look like they'll be lucky to get 20-30 years.

2. After the transition to R&E has been made, China will be better off in every respect. R&E creates more jobs. It distributes more political power into citizen hands. It dramatically reduces healthcare costs. It is more stable, since it involves reasonably predictable capital and operating costs without unpredictable fuel costs. It is more resilient against accidents, disasters, and attacks. And it has fewer externalities, foremost damage to the atmosphere, which otherwise promises to screw China up as bad as any country.

The above two facts are true for every country in the world: There's an inevitable transition coming, and we'll all be better off after we make it. The question is, how do you make the transition without disruptive effects in the short term? For every country, the calculation will be different. In rich Western countries, there's no better time than the present. We have the wealth to pull it off without serious harm to our economies.

In China, the calculation is different. Their need for speedy development is greater. They have far more people in poverty and far less aggregate wealth to devote to the transition. They don't have the social, intellectual, and entrepreneurial capital the U.S. has (at least not yet -- we're doing what we can to piss our advantage away). The transition is likely to be more disruptive and put a bigger damper on economic growth, especially if there isn't substantial foreign aid involved.

The question facing China's leaders is: why make this wrenching transition now? Why not buy some time with clean coal and make the transition later on, when the country is richer and has more technological tools available? Why not let Western countries lead the way for a few years? What reason is there to start today shifting to R&E?

I'll offer an answer to that in part, um, what are we on now?, four I guess.

For story: Response to Jeremy Carl, part three
3 Comments | Post a Comment

Per Capita Paths

Good post generally David, but a couple of points.

You divided the choices into 2, and said these are it. Well, no. Something in-between the two is also possible, and is pretty much what is happening now.

To get all the way into two, China needs support (and not just China, ALL of the developing nations!!) from the developed nations.

Japan is offering energy efficiency aid, France just sold a huge nuclear reactor. A number of the EU countries have projects going on to help (in China and in other developing countries). I suspect the new Australian government will roll up its sleeves and get to work around the world.

And there is an important point to keep in mind, that is usally gets lost in all of this. Which is that per-capita, China is still not doing so bad. It is way behind the developed world, even now.

Which means, that if we're talking carbon footprints, most Chinese can increase theirs. The problem is the ceiling.

If there is a global ceiling on carbon foot prints (imagine a big pie that needs to be divided up), then China, India and other developing countries are not using their "share".

Someone is hogging the pie. None of this will work unless they stop.

It is fine to talk about what developing countries need to do, but really, in theory they could continue to develop along current models for a while and make a gradual transition to sustainability, except for one thing.

There is a huge elephant in the room. And it takes up all the space.

patrick in Beijing

(Of course, I want China to be cleaner, I live here, but I also want my elephant to learn how to behave around others.)

by bookerly at 2:31 PM on 30 Nov 2007

Meanwhile in the US ...

Gosh folks, if we can't lead by example and "do the right thing" with respect to Climate Change, how on Earth can we expect any other country to? We tend to come off as hypocrites.

That said, I also work with a consulting firm that works through EPA to share environmental technology with China. Reports are glowing, showing a clear enthusiasm by the Chinese when they see efficiency and productivity increase, with pollution (all kinds) going down. In some aspects, the Chinese are ahead of the US in technology such as shore power for ships while they are docked in port (usually 1-2 MW hotelling power from diesel engines).

My understanding about China is that as it becomes more decentralized, "gray market" industries are built that use large amounts of coal, much of it illegally mined. That is a sensitive issue, and likely to have the Chinese point their fingers at our notoriously corrupt government here in the US.

But perhaps the most promising thing is that the Chinese love technology, efficiency, and making money. The disturbing part is social unrest, with millions of displaced farmers, former Army soldiers, and at times true environmental disasters.

Onward through the fog

by Sam Wells at 4:21 PM on 30 Nov 2007

please ditch the "clean coal" slogan

wrote this the other day in response to part 2, but then my internet conked out....

Hi y'all,
I sure wish y'all would stop using the term "clean coal." That term is some Orwellian double speak like war for peace or military intelligence. There is no, and there will never be, such a thing as clean coal.

While the discussion of burning coal was nice to read, the fact that mining of coal was not discussed shows the author and commenters are not fully comprehending all the issues here. When doing our nice little balance sheets on carbon emissions have we counted carbon released from the massive forest destruction that accompanies strip mining in many parts of the world? And where do some of our fellow Americans go on that little balance sheet? You know, the ones who have lost homes, livlihoods and loved ones to floods, dust, explosives and all that.

Coal can NOT now or ever be mined in a clean way, just like it can not be burned in a clean way. Ever. I'm not saying we won't be using it, but lets not call it what it is not so that we all feel better about poisoning ourselves and the people who dig it, blow up mountains for it or just happen to live on top of a rich seam of it.

For those of you who didn't get the memo, there is supposedly a lot of coal still here in Appalachia. Appalachia is also home to some of the most productive hardwood forests on the planet. And I mean productive in a biological and ecological sense as well as an economical sense. Over 500 square miles of Appalachian forests have been destroyed by strip mining. Over 1200 miles of headwater streams have been buried by mine "spoils". These are likely conservative numbers. You can look at it on Google Earth. It is destruction on a grand scale and all so we can have plug in cars, fast food neon signs left on all night and friggin' video games (and the internet of course!). Oh, what curtailing our consumption is too much to ask?

I understand the point of this article. King Coal is here, a bunch rich jerks who run things make a lot of money off of it, we are stuck with it. Great.

But don't call it clean. And please don't limit the discussion of its environmental and human costs to what happens when it gets burned. Thousands of Chinese coal miners die each year. American miners still die on the job. The American landscape is being destroyed, irreparably i might add, so that we can have coal. Not just Appalachia but in Wyoming and midwest as well. Critters and complex ecosystems that help make life possible and desirable in Appalachia and across the planet are forever lost to mountaintop removal and all other forms of strip mining. You just can't talk about coal without factoring all of that into the equation.

Personally, I think we need a multi-pronged attack on these problems. First and foremost, we must use much less electricity. Advertisers do not have an inherent right to leave the lights on all damn night. And neither do you. Next, we need decentralized power production for all of those willing and able to put up with the so-called low grade power of solar panels. Those of us living low on the food chain do real well with that. And we need solar panels everywhere to contribute juice to the grid. There is so much empty space on rooftops and parking lots in this country that it is pathetic! (those panels will produced with electricity from coal mined from tunnels of course). We need some sort of public takeover of the coal industry. Sorry free marketeers, but natural resource extraction and use can not and should not be left to the market. That's what got us in this mess and it is NOT what is going to get us out of it. If the profit motive is taken out of coal mining, it can be done in a way that places a premium on the safety of the miners and surrounding communities and minimizes ecological destruction. A mining engineer from the area of southwest Virginia where a 3 yr old boy killed by an errant boulder from a strip mine tells me that the technology actually exists to access most Appalachian coal seams without strip mining. It just costs too much. So remove profit, pay miners well, get them necessary safety gear, and put gobs of people to work cleaning up the existing messes. That, my friends would be a nice start on having a future. Not some lah-lah land snow job about "clean coal" or burning more coal or "Future Gen" or more nukes or whatever the technological hucksters who helped get us into this have to sell next.

For more on strip mining in Appalachia please see:
www.mountainjusticesummer.org
www.ilovemountains.org
www.ohvec.org
www.crmw.org

thanks for the beginnings of a realistic discussion on all these and, again, please, oh pretty please, STOP calling it "clean coal!"

for the forests, mountains, waters and folks of Appalachia,
john the tree hugger
Forester and Naturalist in Training,
formerly active with Katuah Earth First!
and Mountain Justice Summer Class of '05.

by johnthetreehugger at 2:04 PM on 02 Dec 2007

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