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China To Plow $361 Billion Into Renewable Fuel By 2020 (indiatimes.com)
China will invest $361 billion in renewable power generation between 2016 and 2020, the National Energy Administration (NEA) said Thursday, as the world's largest energy market pushes to shift away from coal power. From a report: The investment will create over 13 million jobs in the sector, the NEA said in a blueprint document that lays out its plan to develop the nation's energy sector in a five-year period. The NEA repeated its goal to have 580 million tonnes of coal equivalent of renewable energy consumption by 2020, accounting for 15 percent of overall energy consumption.
Good for China, and good for us: the sea level rises for everybody equally, no matter which country is at fault. Today, the U.S. and China emit vastly more greenhouse gases than the EU, India, and Russia combined. Those two countries have a responsibility to the rest of the world to get their houses in order.
China is doing something about it, albeit first steps. The U.S., by contrast, is being run buy delusional nuts who think global warming is some kind of scam. Makes me ashamed to be an American.
For most of China's history, renewable energy has meant:
1) Grow enough rice to feed the peasants
2) Have them do manual labor, including growing rice
3) Goto 1
It is the most anti-American un-Democratic Hateful thing I've heard since Obama's speech where he denounced Jesus and declared war on Christmas.
Coal IS a renewable fuel...given a couple million years or so. :)
Actually, it is NOT renewable. About 360 million years ago, plants figured out how to make lignin. But it wasn't until about 300 million years ago that fungi figured out how to digest it. The intervening 60 million years was when most coal formed, as undigested plant matter piled up. Unless we wipe out all the fungi, large scale coal formation is unlikely to recur. It was a one-time thing.
+1 Very interesting... I had no clue. Wish I had mod points for you.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Are you just jealous that the "uber-commie-corporation" of China is more effective at business, and more agile at taking advantage of new worldwide trends, than your corporations?
As Trump would say, they're just better negotiators.
Don't worry, you'll soon be protected by Trump so you can buy American solar panels. Just don't complain if they're twice as heavy and half as efficient (automotive sector I'm looking at you.) At least you can but genuine NAPA replacement parts.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
I have seen the exact same person (Canadian pundit J.J. McCullough) switch from "Why should we clean up our ways when China is pumping out x times more crap than us?" to "The rest of the world is going to clean up whether we do it or not, so why should we bother?" I figure it will be even easier for people who don't have to have their justifications on record to switch to the opposite one.
Because we oppose growing food (corn) and then mandating that we use it as a motor fuel (alcohol)?
Most environmentalists don't view this as an optimal solution either, FWIW.
Or because we figure that there just might be issues competing with the rest of the world economically if we persist in mandating the use of renewables when the rest of the world doesn't?
Well, not China, apparently, and there might be issues if we don't as well, considering the lifetime cost of renewables is about to go under that of fossil fuels, and already is in markets we could be exporting renewable energy products to.
Because we believe that market based solutions to these issues are more efficient than government interference though oppressive regulations?
There we go, we have a winner. Dumb faith in mythical "market based solutions" certainly qualifies as dumbass.
Someone had to do it.
Thanks for the concise reply, I was going to say the same thing. Oil was produced in a similar way, massive blooms of algae in the ocean (when algae first evolved) died and were deposited on the ocean floor and covered in sediments before they could be digested by other life. These algae deposits turned into crude oil and because life has now evolved to consume the dead algae before it can be deposited into sediment oil will not be produced again.
+1 Very interesting... I had no clue.
Some other interesting trivia for fellow fungiphiles: As the plants sucked CO2 out of the atmosphere, and failed to rot because of the lignin, CO2 levels dropped below 300ppm and oxygen levels soared to over 35%. This is believed to be a major cause of the Karoo Ice Age, which lasted for about 100 million years.
Whenever I hear the canard that "life finds a way", I like to point out the 60 million years when life failed to "find a way" to digest lignin, despite ample piles of energy rich food available. When the first fungus finally "found a way", it was not an elegant enzyme that carefully dismantled lignin. Instead, it just blasted the lignin with oxygenated free radicals, and then slurped up the resulting hydrocarbon soup. It have heard biochemists describe it as "untieing a knot with a flamethrower". Today, 300 million years later, all known lignin digesting organisms can be traced to that single breakthrough, and they all still use the same method.
Why? Because we oppose growing food (corn) and then mandating that we use it as a motor fuel (alcohol)?
Ethanol subsidies are pushed by Red State Republicans. Most environmentalist think the subsidies are a waste of money, and may even be energy negative.
Which state grows the most corn?
Which state holds the first presidential primary?
If you answer these two questions, you will understand why we have ethanol subsidies.
>> Unless we wipe out all the fungi, large scale coal formation is unlikely to recur.
Well, now that we know what to do, we just need the plan and the willpower to execute it. How about:
1) We'll build a WALL to keep the fungi out of America
2) We'll DEPORT any fungi still left in America
3) We'll make any country still producing fungi PAY FOR OUR DAMN WALL
4) America is great again
Now, who's with me?
Free market? Unless we find a way to legislate the ownership of air at a molecular level, there will always be some resources that are communally owned. When the production of a good impacts upon these resources and the act of compensation is not reflected in the price, this hinders human progress. A country that embraces these practices will inevitably trail behind those that don't.
Just we we need government jurisdiction and infrastructure to manage the idea and agreement of private ownership (you can relate to the idea of private ownership, right?), we need market regulation to ensure that externalities are reflected in the price of goods. There is no organic chemical process that stipulates how a free market works. We don't just start with the ingredients and then an elemental process takes over. Trade is an artificial process that goes back to the dawn of civilization. It is based on trust, oversight and consequences for breaking contract. We collectively agree on terms of trade using government processes, and oversee them using legal and judicial processes.
Don't use false constructs as a front to campaign for unfair advantage - profits without compensation for externalities.
If it acquires resources on instantiation like a duck, then its a shared_ptr<Duck>
I have been in the microbial biotech world for a decade now and I didn't know this.
I am actually a software guy myself, but my daughter is a biotech major in college and we frequently talk about this stuff over dinner ... and speaking of dinner and lignin-consuming fungus, my Chinese wife is stir-frying some mu-er ("wood ear"), right now. If you are used to "normal" mushrooms (which cannot digest lignin), mu-er can taste funny, and some people complain that it is too "slimey", but I love the stuff. If you have never tried mu-er, please give it a try the next time you are in a Chinese restaurant, but take a moment to consider that these little black fungus are the reason the earth escaped becoming a permanent frozen wasteland, devoid of higher lifeforms.
if you account for externalities like pollution, risk, defense, and so on. See Amory Lovins' research. That has been an economic tragedy from market failure of the last few decades. Markets don't work well when people don't pay the true price up front but can instead privatize benefits for themselves and socialize costs to other people. For example, some companies in the Midwest got cheaper electricity from coal, but I can't eat fish around where I live because they are contaminated with mercury from Midwestern coal pollution.
More evidence: http://www.pri.org/stories/201...
"A new report from the International Monetary Fund says global use of fossil fuels costs taxpayers and consumers $5.3 trillion year. Thatâ(TM)s trillion â" with a T. "
http://loe.org/shows/segments....
"The report's co-author, IMF economist David Coady tells host Steve Curwood how they calculated fossil fuels subsidies worldwide annually cost taxpayers and consumers $5.3 trillion."
The cost in human lives from wars in the Middle East over oil profits is another enormous part of this as is the consequences to geopolitics. How do you factor in the risk of (ironic) nuclear war over oil profits into the cost of oil? See also:
http://www.iags.org/costofoil.... (lowball)
http://www.energyandcapital.co... (highball)
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.