Saturday 22 December 2012

Decarbonisation - Solar and Wind - China good, UK bad?

Decarbonisation is a con to trick UK and Western taxpayers into redistibuting wealth to China.

Many people say the UK is wasting its time 'decarbonising' its energy production, because any cut in UK's use of carbon will almost instantly be replaced or even dwarfed by Chinas expansion of carbon based energy production.

In response the Green side cite China as being the worlds largest investor in renewable technologies (citing wind and solar) - suggesting that this shows that they are also committed to decarbonisation.

However, if instead of investment (spending on technology, with a view to making a profit from it later), we look at use of that technology the picture is quite different.

Country Population Electric Total (TWh) Wind (GWh) Solar (GWh) Wind+Solar (TWh) %age of Total
UK
63,181,775
363.5
5,274
8
5
1.5
China
1,347,350,000
3226.1
25,000
428
25
0.7
US
314,982,000
4111.5
70,800
808
72
1.7

Population is just for reference, but as you can see from the final column, China is way behind the UK and the US in terms of the proportion of electricity it generates this way.

Overall China looks better for 'renewables' in general, but this includes cheap/simple use of natural resources - such as hydro-electric from massive dams on massive rivers. Something not available to the UK.

So while China is make huge amounts of money from the technology it is supplying to the rest of the world it certainly doesn't seem to be eating its own dog-food.

How can this be? I suggest the only reason is that while China likes our money, they know the windmills etc that they are supplying are entirely un-economic to use...