Electric vehicle boom may 'force' China to burn more dirty coal, says Bloomberg Green

I'm not making this up!

Source: Statista

When I came across an article titled “Electric vehicle boom may force China to burn more dirty coal,” my first thought was that I had stumbled onto a Babylon Bee article, but no, this article was in Bloomberg Green. My next thought was that this article qualifies as an “Energy Transition Absurdity” that David Blackmon writes about on Substack.

Aside from being absurd, the article reminded me why I always discuss with my students the importance of China, especially because of its dominance in rare earth minerals and its high CO2 emissions. Any discussion about carbon dioxide emissions and the energy transition must include China.

The Bloomberg Green article includes these statements:

Expanding coal-fired power is China’s only real option in the short term to meet rising electricity demand, including from new energy vehicles, according to ANZ Group.

Power shortages are likely to reemerge as the acceleration in the energy transition continues to put pressure on electricity networks.

China’s power market is already showing signs of strain as extremely low water levels sap hydropower generation in southern provinces. As climate change delivers more frequent and persistent heat waves, the region’s reliance on hydro — China’s largest source of clean energy — is being called into question.

The government’s response has included raising domestic production and imports of coal, it’s (sic) mainstay fuel.

Here’s my interpretation of this twisted logic: The world is fighting climate change which has caused a surge in demand for EVs, and since China controls most of the metals and rare earth minerals needed in EVs, China is being forced to burn more coal to help the world fight climate change.

How much coal does China burn now? The chart above shows that, as measured by CO2 emissions, China burns almost 4 1/2 times more than India, the second largest coal burner, and nearly eight times more than the US, the third largest coal burner.

Why does China burn so much coal? China has five times more coal-fired electric generating plants than the US and is opening new ones at the rate of two per week:

Source: Statista

How does coal consumption translate to CO2 emissions? As shown in the graphic below, China is by far the biggest emitter of CO2 at 9.8 billion tons per year, which is 1.5 times the CO2 emissions of the U.S. and Europe combined.

Source: Our World in Data

More important are CO2 emissions from Asia, which includes China plus India, Japan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Indonesia, and other Southeast Asian countries. Asia’s CO2 emissions constitute 53% of global CO2 emissions. These “developing” countries have no plans to reduce their emissions. Instead, they admit they will increase their CO2 emissions as they develop economically because they will be using more coal because it is cheap and available.

China is not being forced to burn coal. They are already the world’s largest coal producer and burner and plan to keep that title. The U.S. could close all its coal mines and shutter all its coal-powered generating plants, and world CO2 emissions would barely change.

As the U.S. adopts policies to add more wind and solar power and force coal mines to close, U.S. power grids are warning of possible collapse this summer and next winter, power companies are warning of shortages of transformers and wire, and the U.S. mandates that by 2032 two-thirds of automobiles must be EVs that depend on the power grid to charge their batteries.

The real energy absurdity is that the U.S. is rapidly destroying its own power generation sector and economy to reduce CO2 emissions while China is building more coal-fired power plants and increasing its CO2 emissions. Saying we are on the wrong track is an understatement.