Hope you enjoyed the video. Keep your comments thoughtful and respectful. Check out other videos on China's economy here: th-cam.com/play/PLKtxx9TnH76T_4R7Lxs8QoDr64zlvt8SS.html
Clearly this video was researched at least 3 to 4 years ago. and as always a hidden political slant. you maybe good at finding figures and number but terrible at putting the puzzle together.
Why China is "addicted" to coal? 👉because West moved most of their manufacturing facilities to China, West put their carbon footprints and pollution into the "China’s Account". Also, take the advantage of the cheap Chinese labor to maximize their profits at the expense of their own labor force at home. Also West dumped their toxic plastic waste to China, luckily China has stopped accepting toxic waste.
I agree with most of the points made in the video, except when it claims that the increase in the demand for air-conditioning is somehow due to climate change. It's not. It's due to a wealthier population finally being able to afford air-conditioning. They've always *wanted* it. Many of our great-great-grand-parents grew up on farms. It was hot. In the 1930s it was really hot. They certainly wanted air-conditioning, but they didn't have that option. They had to wait for rural electrification (aka the grid) and for technology to get to the point where it was affordable and reliable. It was NOT because the climate was so much cooler in the past that people didn't lay sweating in their beds all night long during the Summer. They did. It was an unpleasant fact of life.
Thank you for stating the obvious fact that technology and affordability are not the same year-to-year. It wasn't until the early 2000's that I got central air and I was almost forty - and I am a middle class American.
Not disagreeing completely, but it's also not 100% true either. If you look at the coastal and flat low land climate, then yes, your comment is correct. However, in mountainous area, especially around the foothills, things are different. For example, Bandung (West Java, ID - Elevation 768m) has an average temp of 22 deg. C in 1975. In 2020 that's now 26 deg. C. While 4 degrees doesn't sound a lot, that changed many things. In 1980s, even the richest in Bandung didn't have aircon. It was silly to install one, since it can be very cold around midnight that blanket might be needed since 16-18 deg. C was common. It wasn't just because aircon was expensive, since the richest wouldn't buy them either even though they definitely had the money, but it's more because it's already cold. And since we're in tropical climate, temperature doesn't fluctuate as much either, so mid-day heat was still bearable in 1980s - 1990s. Fast forward to 2021, and aircons are everywhere. We bought electric fans for the first time in 2016 because for the first time in 16 years we lived in our home that the night became unbearably hot. Our neighbours installed their first aircon around 2005-2008. We even debated about installing one in our home too, but decided against it because the design of our house makes it almost impossible to put pipes for the outdoor unit. So, no, even in cities and metropolitans, aircon phenomenon started around year 2000s. Most can afford aircon even before 2000, but why would they if you can bear the temperature? But it's no longer the case. 36 deg. C was something you rarely heard of in 1980s' Indonesia, but nowadays if you go flat lands like Karawang or Cikarang, it's common peak temp at noon, especially during summer time.
@@julm7744 Oh indeed. Climate change is more than just people burning fossil fuel. The 36 deg. C in Karawang and Cikarang definitely has some being contributed from trees that were cut down for massive, acres worth, of industrial estate. Or increase urbanization that lead to microclimatization, like how high-rise building manipulates wind movements around the city, creating heat spots. What I disputed was the idea that people bear the uncomfortable heat JUST because of poverty, as stated by the OP. It's not the case, since more factors play into their purchasing decision, or lack thereof, for aircon prior to 2000.
Air conditioning addiction is a real thing in east asia, in HK and Taiwan even in spring or autumn when is not really that hot almost all department stores, malls and shops will have the ac on. It has become part of the culture, now is normal that any new apartment will have an ac unit in each room and people will often turn then on for most of the day some people even sleep with the on.
Hi Jon - great video on China's addiction to coal. Have you ever considered doing a video on China's civilian nuclear power program? I find it interesting that China, despite achieving nuclear technology relatively early on, did not get caught up in the nuclear power craze to the degree that the the USSR did. Also would be interesting to learn how nuclear power factors into their future carbon neutrality goals. Food for thought!
I hope he does a video on it. The biggest reason I can think of is that: 1. Western nations would not share designs until the 1990s & 2. Nuclear plants are extremely capital intensive and China lacked that until the mid-2000s (then Fukushima paused everything).
Why China is "addicted" to coal? 👉because West moved most of their manufacturing facilities to China, West put their carbon footprints and pollution into the "China’s Account". Also, take the advantage of the cheap Chinese labor to maximize their profits at the expense of their own labor force at home. Also West dumped their toxic plastic waste to China, luckily China has stopped accepting toxic waste.
Good video. Just a little tip from an audio dork: Normalize your audio. Then use a "limiter" on the audio. It will make your dialogue volume more even and louder.
Indonesia doesn't have a lot demand for coal at 2021, it is because China keep sending messages in SCS. Indonesia then trying to use its leverage to send a reply message and boom.. bituminous coal price is starting to rise and that is a chirstmast give from unofficial southern neighbour. At that particular time Australia is still banning coal export to China, there are no power outages in Indonesia and the media from coal importing countries just keep calm down their public except for China. It applies also for raw nickel export ban
at 4:11 "China's renewable energy technology lags that of developed countries" Please provide source. Seems like an odd statement when China manufactures most of the world's solar panels. Are Chinese wind turbines also "less efficient" than turbines used in the "developed world"
He mentions that it's particularly difficult to store the energy and transmit local energy across the country. Solar panels and wind mills aren't very new tech, but only the very cutting edge of storage efficiency and conversion has made renewable sources even a viable option. Itll Cost a lot of money to install on a large scale until more companies are making the best tech.
Chinese-made mass-produced solar panels are generally considered to be of lower quality than those made in the west, which could be a slight difference in research and semiconductor technologies, but that may also just be aiming for different markets. The same way Chinese goods are usually considered lower quality than something made in Japan, for example. It’s not as if China lacks the technology, just that the things most people see exported from China aren’t aiming for the upmarket clientele that things exported from Japan are. There’s also the issue of corruption and poor QC and lack of accountability that lowers trust in Chinese goods, though that’s more hearsay than anything I could prove. The moment you start talking about goods made by a country as opposed to being made by a company, you’ve already muddied the waters somewhat. To collect data for such a statement you’d need to aggregate it from a plethora of different companies, which is never terribly easy.
lol no need to be so sensitive, coal was the obvious winner choice for a developing country, cheap and easy to operate, in the last few years, china is making good progress on solar and unclear powerplant, in term of technolgy, it will dominate soon, just need battery tech to start booming for solar, which china is hoping to get from tesla
Given that China added like 500+ GW of renewable electricity capacity in 2023 and also adding record number of EVs, you should probably make an update to this video.
Thank you for this video. When you talk about "sustainable" energy sources, that does not appear to include nuclear power. Would be interesting to see how nuclear energy fits into the context of other energy sources. Also, one must be very careful when discussing the effects of climate change on electricity production or vice versa. The article you cited relies on temperature-increase projections based on some choice of climate model. The models are incertain and show rather disparate projections. This was true in IPCC 5 and continues to be true in IPCC 6. Over 70% of CO2 emissions come from power production (according to Our World in Data) so getting China off its coal dependence would be a good thing. As you point out, none of this will happen any time soon, but one has to make a start somewhere.
The big problem that many countries seem to ignore is the fact of how unreliable renewable is, you cant expand industries in a country where the new expansion only works ''in the right conditions'' And for private homes when the conditions outside isnt ideal is usually the times when electricity is needed at most -And renewable sources produce the least. As always it is not a [insert issue] crisis, its a management crisis.
yes without a good and cheaper battery, the renewable energy like wind and solar are very unreliable. Probably the only reliable green energy is Nuclear energy and dam
Not true at all, renewable is reliable and I know what you are going to say: but solar and wind bla bla bla. I live in a third world country (Brazil) that has close to 85% of its energy matrix on renewables. The real problem is that we need/want that sweet economic growth now and building motherfucking anything takes a decade. Renewable is reliable, it just "does not make economic sense" waiting for the Three Gorges Dam 2.0 when coal power plants are easier, cheaper and faster to deploy.
@@kahaneck hydropower plant also quite reliable, but the problem is it take huge amount of land and also it will produce less electricity during drough season
True that solar is variable, but I type this from an off-grid house with 10kW on the roof and I love in comfort. It can be done. Agreed that we have a real challenge ahead.
This is a video about how unreliable coal power is and you think the big problem is renewables? You've been brainwashed by politicians, think for yourself.
You should totally change your avatar to that drawing version of the deer 🦌! Just noticed you using it, not sure how long you have been using it, but I would totally switch to it for every avatar/logo you have! That’s just my inconsequential opinion, but I think it looks fantastic, and really adds something, while still keeping the classic deer design I (and I’m sure many others) associate with this amazing channel! Please tell the designer it looks fantastic!!! 👍😊👍
China is also building an accelerator-driven sub-critical reactor. It's basically a spallation neutron factory tapped with a nuclear reactor. By design, this system can burn nuclear wastes in its reactor with the help of extra neutron flow, and also nuke-power that accelerator. If it's a success, they'll have a self-sustained nuclear wastes burner.
Just asking. Will you cover India's coal crisis as well? We also have a lot of issues here in India, although a minister has tried to pacify the people by saying that coal shortages are only a 'temproary setback'.
@CIA I have been reading reports in the past few weeks that Indian’s coal stockpiles can only meet like 2-3 days of demand when it is usually has enough for 21 days. Whereas for China, the power plants had enough for at least a week, albeit very low from the usual. It was just announced that India and Russia had just inked a deal to purchase 40mil tonnes of coal per year (up from 8mil tonnes).
In other words, the entire effort of the developed world to reduce carbon emssions is a waste of time because the CCP is going to keep building coal fired plants as fast as it can.
A very insightful video. One important point to make: Wind and solar cannot close the gap by themselves. Solar requires too much land - putting solar installations sufficient to meet a substantial portion of China's needs leads to environmental destruction, and of course minerals must be extracted to produce the equipment, including batteries. . Enabling solar and wind to make thir contribution requires nuclear generation as a partner. Nuclear provides >90% availability and reliable, emission free baseload generation; solar provides peak power (the sun is highest when, coincidentally, you need the most power. China has done something else that is pretty smart: public transportation and inter-city rail, all very highly efficient transport sources, are well developed in China and expanding. Electric vehicles rely on batteries with energy densities far lower than fossil fuels, and recharging them adds to pollution and emissions, whereas trains operating on 750V DC or 12 or 25 kilovolt AC are highly efficient.
China also produces world's most renewable energy. The title is very much misleading. If the Chinese in nowadays cannot keep their lights on, the rest of the world won't be anywhere better. The current power shortage is mostly due to the policy back in 2016 to forcefully cut down coal production, and trying to increase percentage of green energy. And the covid last year crippled existing production in Inner Mongolia. We were doing the real efforts to make the world greener. Renewable energy now accounts for more than 26% of electricity generation, compared to 17% in the US. I'd say the content of this video is very informative and covered the truth, but was presented out of contexts. It is like saying that the Chinese should stop consuming beef, so that the co2 footprint of the world would be very much improved.
china has a very inefficient power grid and larger energy ecosystem, its working about as well as you'd expect if you took the US from the 1960s but added all the power hungry stuff from today, lots of individual AC units, lots of poorly insulated homes, factories, and buildings, and little to no efficiency standards
Why China is "addicted" to coal? 👉because West moved most of their manufacturing facilities to China, West put their carbon footprints and pollution into the "China’s Account". Also, take the advantage of the cheap Chinese labor to maximize their profits at the expense of their own labor force at home. Also West dumped their toxic plastic waste to China, luckily China has stopped accepting toxic waste.
@@YouCCP2 Compared to the consumption of entirely Chinese owned manufacturing, the contribution of Western owned facilities is neglible. The main culprit is steel, which consumes a lot of coal directly, and a lot of electricity, then cement which China produces is incredible quantities (like as much in the last decade or 2 as the entire US output to date). We might not have helped very much, but their problems are mostly of their own making
@@YouCCP2 LMao manufacturing facilities which the CCP readily accepted, and don't act like 99% of the manufacturing in China is from the West, China is a massive polluter, number 1 in the world in fact. Which won't be changing if we have brainwashed useful idiots like you blaming everything on the West instead of blaming yourselves. Oh wait, that's right, if you blamed the CCP you would lose on a lot of social credit scores and then get a "lovely" visit from the police.
When something is limited, in this case Electricity, then raise the price a bit so that industries or consumers adjust accordingly. Example, instead of switching A.C at 25C, the higher price of electricity will change behaviour to people turning on aircon at 30C instead. Factories will invest in efficient machines. etc.
You need to have smart electricity meters for every connected consumer that are able to determine the current price for the current consumption by communicating with the energy grid for that. While transitioning, the communication for pricing will also fail when the grid goes down, so you won't get any power until the price mechanism works again, probably making shortages even worse. Followed by massive price fluctuations when the grid starts up, Texas style. Implementing all that properly for over a billion customers in a massive country with lacking power infrastructure seems like quite a challenge and very costly since the technology is pretty new, basically high end. It would be much easier for developed countries to implement and they largely haven't bothered yet and just burn more coal or gas to meet demand.
That's certainly what dirty, greedy CAPITALISTS would do! But certainly not socialists. Electricity is properly as free as the air you breathe! It's almost as though you believe in markets and doubt the omniscience of central planning, the foundation of socialism!
Hello, I´m writing a thesis on similar topic. Do you have any list of references of those information you collected? Would be helpful! :-) Unfortunately, not able to reference a video haha.
China has a large unskilled work force that needs to be employed to maintain domestic tranquility. Enter coal, a domestic product employing Chinese people. Yes coal is dirty, but it is affordable in China, and helps to maintain employment and tranquility. The fix for this is use less coal. This will take time. No fast fixes here!
The use of coal is increasing despite the workforce available is decreasing. The domestic coal is of low quality and expensive(mines are way to deep now) and not enough to fuel all powerplants so cheap highquality and abundant Australian coal has been imported, before Australia was punished by China for demanding an explanation for Chinas Covid lies. With the bann on Australian coal China made a strategic error that cost it it's energy safety as the absence of Australian coal drove the coal prices up high on the domestic marked. The CCP fucked it up and they use all kind of narratives and excuses to not have anyone point at the CCP and the easily triggerd head of the party.
Thermal energy is not a euphemism for coal. It is used to describe energy sources in which thermal energy (heat) is converted to other useful forms of energy. Nuclear power plants , coal fired power plants , gas fired power plants , steam turbines, gas turbines, diesel engines etc are all examples of thermal energy.
Thermal energy is not a euphemism in standard English but it can be used as a euphemism. Maybe governments report energy from gas, oil, biomass and thermal. Just like "good friends" isn't a euphemism in standard English but can be a euphemism depending on context.
china has built 500 cities in 20yrs . they are full of high rises buildings. since heat rises, without air conditioning life in a highrise would be near unbearable . so it's not all just global warming. also why do they not invest in nuclear power which has no carbon emissions or air pollution.? i heard they are working on thorium reactors. if they can crack it it would be almost ideal . not much radioactivity at the end and not for long periods.
@@Fauzanarief-n7i ? You mean how literally the vast majority of entire planet still use ICE cars for daily commute? You're implying like the rest of the world has ditched ICE and is now driving electric or hydrogen which is false.
@@2hotflavored666 The different is US city are very car dependent because of the Suburb and lack of public transport. And also walking in US city are nightmare because of lack of pedestrian infrastructure, big parking lot, and intercity highway making it very far to travel by walking It's different compare to big city in europe, china,japan,or south korea. Majority of urban people in that country are using public transport because it's more convenience than driving because of good public transport and pedestrian infrastructure
4:18 not true, they use a mix of solar, wind and hydropower, and when the sun and wind dies down the hydro plants function as batteries, only generating electricity when it is needed.
From what I know these dams get a lot of their water from the monsoon season which is very erratic so they could have very little water built up and along with a unusually low amount of wind, like in Europe now, with dim days they could run out of power from these renewables
Big contributions to using electricity is due very poorly built houses with minimal insulation, color of the roofs, no thermal mass and bad orientation.
I really like your videos mate, but i honestly think that having some sort of those "no copyright songs", like in other video essay channels, in the back in the back would work really well with your videos.
Please, please NO! I've never watched a video which was ruined because it didn't have background music but I've stopped watching many videos because the background music made it too hard to understand the narration.
China will go the nuclear route rather then for renewables,simply because even if those are ten or twenty percent more effective than nowadays they are to unreliable and inefficient still. And energy storage adds to the efficiency problem too. The chinese already learned their lesson regarding wind,solar and water power. A thing that is still not happening in europe.
So many people are ignorant about nuclear reactor tech and think it'll explode like a nuclear bomb if you sneeze at it. Plus, spent fuel can be reprocessed. We used to do it in the US before Jimmy Carter fucked us. France still does and they've had a stellar record with nuclear power and the world should be following their example
@@kenshin891 Old reactors are still a serious problem and their nuclear waste isnt simply 100% reprocessable,let alone nuclear reactors used in old ships and submarines.
China is the largest producer renewable energy in the world and it also holds majority of the renewable energy patents including the most important ones. However, when you are the most populous and the most industrialised nation on the planet, your energy requirements would be huge. As a result China, despite producing the most Clean Energy is still far from eliminating Coal
@@benghazi4216 Are you just stupid or wilfully ignorant. Most developed countries outsource their manufacturing and even then per capita scale, China does better than these "freedom" loving country you keep on spitting on about.
China’s coal addiction is probably the single biggest obstacle to achieving global reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. India, the U.S. and Europe are also not serious either. Only nuclear power has the immediate capability of ending dependence on coal and natural gas on a wide scale.
That is actually not the case. Levelized cost of energy (LCOE) of nuclear power is about 11cents per kWh, wheres solar is often around 5 cents (2cents in saudi arabia). Capital costs of safe nuclear power is simply way higher than wind and solar. Thats why most companies around the world are not building new nuclear power plants, or even carbon based energy sources.
By framing the statement that way its as if all of the problem stems from China and Chinese people. Meanwhile actual energy consumption per capita in China is way less than in the developed nations. The carbon footprints per capita of developed economies is more than double that of China, more than quadruple that of India. There is much more room to cut out excess emissions in advanced economies but they keep blaming the Chinese and Indians, who’s consumption is mostly tied to necessities.
@@stevenw2933 you're right, action must be undertaken everywhere. Most of all developed countries. But with a carbon footprint of 7.4tons/capita and 1.4 billion inhabitants, China is an important part of the puzzle. Btw, EU emissions are at 6.4tons/capita now and decreasing steadily.
Except that the US and Europe have contributed to the majority of the cuts in greenhouse emissions, the US leading the way. But that led to the problem that people want the US to do more and we are standing there looking at China and India wondering when your going to get them on board. Which is not going to happen in China's case, cause they only use the enviromental regulations to hamper other countries, then do whatever they want to get ahead.
@@DiederikCA And why is that? Maybe because the government keeps throwing enormous subsidies at solar companies. I would hazard a guess that if those subsidies went to nuclear instead IT would be the cheaper technology instead.
I heard a theory by Hedge Fund owner Cathie Woods, that China is actively switching off coal plants in preparations for the Olympic Winter Games 2022. This so the landscape and snow is pristine white, in stead of snowy landscapes stained by coal black smoke and soot. edit: typo
I disagree - getting the US off of oil is hard, but manageable, while getting China off of coal is just impossible. We are talking about a huge amount of energy China is producing from coal, replacing it with renewables is both impossible by our current technology, and not monetarily feasible. And in China, Money is the only thing doing the talking.
What i didnt understand is why they didnt use the Rooftops specially in large citeis for solarpanels, becasue they produce energy when it needed for the air conditionals and secondly mostly overviewd they provide shadows and surve this way to cooling the buildings.
If you have been to most China's southern cities, solar panels on rooftops are as common as buses on roads. From a high rise Gaungdong hotel, I saw rooftops fitted with solar panels as far as my eyes could see.
Nuclear energy is way to go for China. Nuclear is only 4% of Chinese power generation. It can go up to 40% without major problem. China electricity demand: 8000 TW * 36% = 2900 TW so build 1500 2 TW nuclear reactors over next 30 years. Build 50 reactors per year.
50 reactors per year is a lot. That’s nearly all the nuclear reactors currently under construction right now around the world, and it takes more than a year to build them. I think China has 13 or 14 in various stages of construction right now, which is more than anyone else. Also, I think the current plan is to have 20% of energy derived from nuclear power by 2060, but so far they are falling a bit behind. Hopefully they will catch back up
I mean use your common sense dude, 8000TW 🤣 Sorry, but for now 2TW it's a mistake. No country in this world has ever develop single fission nuclear plant with total output power for about 2TW.
@@talltroll7092 To build 50-100 nuclear reactors a year, China needs industrial mass production like container shipbuilding. Building 50 conventional pressurized light water reactor is simply impossible. So China should develop radically new and compact reactor like molten chloride salt fast rector(MCFR) to meet such massive reactor installation demand which can be build in shipyard.
Regardless of the video content (I'm currently starting to watch), it appears your sound recording is very low. Have to near max out my volume to hear you properly
the conclusion is basically it. while most haters say that this is China's failure and trade fight with Australia, China just makes ridiculous amounts of products and no ridiculous amount of renewable energy projects will be able to sustain that. I think the reason their power rate is low is also for manufacturing costs to remain low. I don't see any fast and easy solution, maybe try support more renewable energy systems for factories and households which makes them more resilient and not waste energy and money in long distance power transmission. it could boost job creation too.
11:33 the newer parts of Guangzhou are extremely unshaded. What widely spaced trees are planted in those newer parts are often uprooted and replaced. Part of this is annoying because the lack of shade is to appeal to CCP parades and macro scale aesthetics, another part is because Guangzhou clearly has good precedent for urban shade, another part is the long high-rises are oriented east west for river views, which minimises shade (idk if there's wind reasons)
Same in Shanghai, in addition to along widened roads. Shanghai has traditionally had tree shaded streets (as has Guangzhou), but once roads become eight lanes wide, they turn into deserts.
@@pjacobsen1000 If only China was like the Netherlands: no more than a couple lanes for cars, everyone else cycles. Sure, cycling and public transport are very big in China, but cars are still too many.
@@موسى_7 That was the case 30 yers ago. It was even a common saying, huge country with no cars. However they didn't ride bikes because they were environmentally woke, they cycled because they were dirt poor.
4:43 High Voltage, Direct Current?? My understanding is that Alternating current is more efficient, and that was a key advantage to Nikola Tesla's design for power transmission over that of Westnghouse. Am I wrong?
AC makes it easier to change voltage with transformers, so the systems can be more efficient. However the whole system must be phase and frequency synchronized or it will fall. HVDC, which is enabled by modern power electronics, allows you to link large regional systems without requiring synchronization.
@@Sn0wZer0 Very interesting! Thanks for the reply. So, AC in itself is not inherently better than DC, and instead it is the voltage stepping that discouraged the use of DC? That seems odd in that in the earliest days, the transmission distances were short. I'm not aware that homes/neighborhoods had transformers so that thee efficiency of high voltage was much of an issue. Two follow-on questions are: 1) Is the U.S. pursuing this for its grid modernization? 2) Do VERY high power equivalents to common inverters exist, or is an entirely different technology used to step the voltage?
HVDC is more efficient for long cable runs due to something called the skin effect that reduces efficiency of AC cables. AC is superior in terms of ease of voltage conversion. For short cables the additional cost/converter loss of HVDC equipment is not worth it but on long cables, HVDC allows cables to loose less power so can be better overall.
@@benjamindesson5326 Is the HVDC inverted to AC, and if so, how are megawatts/terawatts converted? OR...are end users now switching to HVDC machinery, appliances, etc.?
What happens when the last group of people refuse to work in ridiculously unfavorable conditions to perform their jobs? It's been going from country to country to country for several centuries. Northern Europe, Southern Europe, USA and Russia, Japan, the rest of eastern Asia and Oceania. A reckoning comes and it's not going to be business as usual.
Centralization to create cross provence energy markets isn't really needed. That's the point of markets. One provence can just publish that each kWh at this time on this border is worth this much to us, and if you want to provide it we will take it.
I was a strong believer of climate change before I discovered seaweed farming I was a strong believer that the world are using up resources and water until I found seaweed farming Seaweed can absorb more co2 then trees, if just 1% of the Australian coast line farm seaweeds the amount of food it generating can feeds castles humans and fishes, Instead of investing millions into toxic battery why don’t just invest in seaweed and stored those carbon in a unused mines I feel cheated by so call Greenpeace There are thousands of oyster field get destroyed, restored the ocean the largest decarbonising machine in the world And the world had turn a blind eye on it
@@carlramirez6339 the only course of action is a group of systems you make it sound too easy Seaweed burger like artificial meat e.g. beyond meat can be made with seaweed Seaweed cattle farming alone can reduce methane production Seaweed can be decomposed to form organic fertiliser algae can replace plastic rubber in shoes There are lots of research needed to make it happen and economically viable No matter you like it or not seaweed could already hidden into daily snack as a thickener If cost come down seaweed can be the biomass to form biofuels So what meant seaweed only It is not only farming and planting, also industrial processes to convert into everyday products ie petroleum plastics rubber meats. The list goes on
We need to stop Co2 getting in the atmosphere, the seaweed is just storing the Co2 inside it which get's released at it's decay. So we would need to combine it with bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) to finally get rid of the Co2 or we could use it as an replacement for plastics or meat which has an 13% share of greenhouse gas emissions. If we are searching natural solutions we could recultivate swamps, destroyed ones are carbon emitters, in Germany 6% of Co2 emissions comes from them and they can store Co2 just like seaweed. Little Funfact: there were plans for Co2 storage with seaweed through fertilizing one specific part of the ocean to enhance the growth and let it sink down to the bottom.
@@deathgun3110 not heard there are co2 emitting swamps But the advantage of seaweed are the no need for fresh water Lived in countries that treated water like gold ie South Africa, and Australia that no need water is very interesting to me Biodegradation normally released methane not CO2 therefore there are power generation from landfills and biomass One thing I was wondering is trees the fossil formation from those geographic class sound unreasonable, look as Japanese charcoal making 備長炭 how many trees and those high concentrations of high density wood to create those rocks If it was formed by dead kelp sinking to the seabed year after year then it make more sense to me or methane hydrates under sea then makes sense to me Battery is too toxins cobalt is questionable recycling ability is questionable and building pump hydro also not environmentally friendly either green hydrogen looks good electrolysis looks inefficient reverse fuel cell required platinum class materials there Toyota never make it work nuclear looks bad enough Stopping emissions can be difficult
@@wingcheukkan1911 First off the swamps are not releasing GHG emissions on their own, but if those swamps get dryed up to farm on them, than they're releasing GHG emissions. Lithium-Ion chemistry is by far not the only ones, there is now huge research in this area with others being more environmentally friendly like sodium-ion or made entirely out of plant matter. Also batteries are not the only way of short term electricity storage, there are far more like flywheels and gravitational storage, they just need further research. Hydrogen on the other hand is viewed as fuel for the industry here in Germany, since it can´t been transported over long distances (E.g. from australia) and blue hydrogen with CCS has already shown that it has it's flaws. Here we are talking about synthetic fuels like gas, ammonia and methanol or storage in form of heat for district heating in the winter (Sector Couppling). But in the end lowering the energy consumption is the best way stopping emissions and as an bridge already existing nuclear plants can help. P.s. was the part with the 備長炭 about producing it via seaweed? Would bee cool if this works.
Chinese industry has not optimized its worker productivity or its energy efficiency and relies on favorable currency exchange rates and government subsidies to keep their export heavy economy growing. The danger is not economic collapse from a short-term coal shortage. It is the growth at any cost mentality that is the problem. It is impossible to sustain and ultimately investment in productivity and efficiency improvements, which will result in short term losses and sacrifice but long term stability, is necessary. As in other places, new energy infrastructure will need to be built and people will be out of work and have to find new work. It is a choice that many nations have to make now in the early 21st century: business as usual and put off the inevitable and risk collapse, or confront it and mitigate the suffering of the change to come.
@@thetaomega7816 Don't forget that China banned Australian coal, which is why China is in this mess now. Europe has problems because of Russia's lowered natural gas production.
On top of T O’s comments, there was also the high energy usage in the last Winter and this Summer (due to economy restarting, really cold Winter and a really hot Summer), while the stockpile was not replenish at the same rate. This has caused the sudden energy crisis/ concerns that we are seeing today, especially given that Winter is coming. Same thing is being observed in India. They have recently struck a deal with Russia to import 40 mil tonnes of coal, up from 8 mil tonnes!
US coal production fell to the lowest level since 1965, based on replacement with fracking produced natural gas and political pressures. Now natural gas production in the USA is basically holding steady, while exports of LNG to Europe have grown. That is the North American contribution to mix.
Because energy policies are based on short sighted local concerns and hype, but since energy can be transported globally, bad decisions in Germany, UK, China, USA, Japan have global effects.
The reason China can't keep the lights on is a supply issue. The green and ESG movements have impacted on governments and investors by restricting new coal supply through regulation and capital starvation. Climate change may be a real thing but that is a woefully simplistic statement. Your statement says nothing about what the cause of the change is or how serious a problem it is. What is important is climate sensitivity to CO2. The fact that the CMIP 5/6 models overstate sensitivity by a factor of 3 in the tropical troposphere indicates that climate sensitivity is low. Also, why talk about heat wave deaths but not deaths from excess cold? Some studies show that 20 times as many people die each year from temperatures being too cold versus them being too hot. Global warming is likely to result in net less deaths from extreme temperatures.
Most coal came from the carboniferous period when very tall treelike mushrooms or fungus created wood-like structures to grow tall which at that time had no organisms which could break it down like now. Those grew and fell over and were buried over and over, leading to large deposits of unrecycled carbon which then became coal. This was not from algae.
@@stevenwilson5556 you know what? I actually do remember hearing this, I think I mixed up this fact and the majority of the world’s oxygen being produced by algae, thank you for the correction
Getting the US to wean of oil is easy just cut the humongous subsidies that you put on gas, take inspiration from india we tax our fuel a glorious 100%
Easily said than done, most of US people are commute with big car like truck or SUV that consume a lot of gasoline, and also most of US electricity are still relied on natural gas
I am Indonesian,when i knew china had an energy shortage and hike up the coal price into the sky, to be honest i am not happy as Chinese people's too,because a lot our coal mine have heavy tied to political figures nor land/forest livelihood problems to indigenous people as a result ,and those things really not good. Hopefully renewable technology can answer the climate change in future.
Very good video about the China´s coal addiction. You could add more factors, new, that are putting more pressure in the Chinese electricity production. One factor is the start of the electric cars mass market. In China, a new BEV means another car in the streets but electrified. In the Europe, one new BEV means one less gas-powered car in the streets. Another important factor is the digitalization of the Chinese society. More digital is the society more data transmission and more energy consumption. The final factor, very important and it will be one huge economic bottleneck, is the fight against the pollution in China. This fight means changing the source of the electricity power. And more intensive in the energy consumption from the industrial production to export. But the video is great and shows how difficult it will be the energy transition in China.
Great breakdown of what is taking place. And no biased nonsense, which I greatly appreciate. I would like to know however. What you insights and feelings about the tentions of the issue of Taiwan. Do you think there will be a hot war?
Taiwan/ROC meanwhile has a 4th nuclear power plant that's never been opened since it was built in the 1990s due to public concerns over safety, especially after the meltdown @ _Fukushima's_ No. 1 plant
Their energy crisis can be summarised in one sentence: free market prices for the inputs (coal, in this case) combined with state driven caps on consumer prices. Input prices go up, as they do, and suddenly it's not economic. Same situation hit the UK this year. Climate change has nothing to do with it.
China is the largest consumer of energy in the world almost 1.6 times the USA which is second. Faced with a power crisis China may have little choice but to ramp up coal consumption.
Hope you enjoyed the video. Keep your comments thoughtful and respectful.
Check out other videos on China's economy here: th-cam.com/play/PLKtxx9TnH76T_4R7Lxs8QoDr64zlvt8SS.html
Damn bruh u make amazing videos
Clearly this video was researched at least 3 to 4 years ago. and as always a hidden political slant. you maybe good at finding figures and number but terrible at putting the puzzle together.
@@cam35mm you can explain his mistake instead of contributing nothing here.
@@mira-rara I'm sorry that you didn't see that his one plus one equal a backhanded compliment. oh my..
@@cam35mm I'm sorry that you are bad at articulating idea.
I have never heard coal be called "Dead Plant Rocks" it is very accurate.
Kurgezagt may have innovated it
If you burn dead plant rocks, you probably think a dead planet rocks
Why China is "addicted" to coal?
👉because West moved most of their manufacturing facilities to China, West put their carbon footprints and pollution into the "China’s Account". Also, take the advantage of the cheap Chinese labor to maximize their profits at the expense of their own labor force at home.
Also West dumped their toxic plastic waste to China, luckily China has stopped accepting toxic waste.
A friend of mine back in elementary school said this as he forgot the name 'coal' when the science class teacher asked him some question about coal.
@@YouCCP2 okay CCP bot. nice lies. always blame the west and hide instead of accepting your own faillures.
I agree with most of the points made in the video, except when it claims that the increase in the demand for air-conditioning is somehow due to climate change. It's not. It's due to a wealthier population finally being able to afford air-conditioning. They've always *wanted* it.
Many of our great-great-grand-parents grew up on farms. It was hot. In the 1930s it was really hot. They certainly wanted air-conditioning, but they didn't have that option. They had to wait for rural electrification (aka the grid) and for technology to get to the point where it was affordable and reliable.
It was NOT because the climate was so much cooler in the past that people didn't lay sweating in their beds all night long during the Summer. They did. It was an unpleasant fact of life.
Thank you for stating the obvious fact that technology and affordability are not the same year-to-year. It wasn't until the early 2000's that I got central air and I was almost forty - and I am a middle class American.
Not disagreeing completely, but it's also not 100% true either. If you look at the coastal and flat low land climate, then yes, your comment is correct. However, in mountainous area, especially around the foothills, things are different. For example, Bandung (West Java, ID - Elevation 768m) has an average temp of 22 deg. C in 1975. In 2020 that's now 26 deg. C. While 4 degrees doesn't sound a lot, that changed many things. In 1980s, even the richest in Bandung didn't have aircon. It was silly to install one, since it can be very cold around midnight that blanket might be needed since 16-18 deg. C was common. It wasn't just because aircon was expensive, since the richest wouldn't buy them either even though they definitely had the money, but it's more because it's already cold. And since we're in tropical climate, temperature doesn't fluctuate as much either, so mid-day heat was still bearable in 1980s - 1990s.
Fast forward to 2021, and aircons are everywhere. We bought electric fans for the first time in 2016 because for the first time in 16 years we lived in our home that the night became unbearably hot. Our neighbours installed their first aircon around 2005-2008. We even debated about installing one in our home too, but decided against it because the design of our house makes it almost impossible to put pipes for the outdoor unit.
So, no, even in cities and metropolitans, aircon phenomenon started around year 2000s. Most can afford aircon even before 2000, but why would they if you can bear the temperature? But it's no longer the case. 36 deg. C was something you rarely heard of in 1980s' Indonesia, but nowadays if you go flat lands like Karawang or Cikarang, it's common peak temp at noon, especially during summer time.
@@julm7744 Oh indeed. Climate change is more than just people burning fossil fuel. The 36 deg. C in Karawang and Cikarang definitely has some being contributed from trees that were cut down for massive, acres worth, of industrial estate. Or increase urbanization that lead to microclimatization, like how high-rise building manipulates wind movements around the city, creating heat spots.
What I disputed was the idea that people bear the uncomfortable heat JUST because of poverty, as stated by the OP. It's not the case, since more factors play into their purchasing decision, or lack thereof, for aircon prior to 2000.
Good point. Climate change is real but it cannot overshadow all lines of reasoning.
Air conditioning addiction is a real thing in east asia, in HK and Taiwan even in spring or autumn when is not really that hot almost all department stores, malls and shops will have the ac on. It has become part of the culture, now is normal that any new apartment will have an ac unit in each room and people will often turn then on for most of the day some people even sleep with the on.
Hi Jon - great video on China's addiction to coal. Have you ever considered doing a video on China's civilian nuclear power program? I find it interesting that China, despite achieving nuclear technology relatively early on, did not get caught up in the nuclear power craze to the degree that the the USSR did. Also would be interesting to learn how nuclear power factors into their future carbon neutrality goals. Food for thought!
I hope he does a video on it.
The biggest reason I can think of is that: 1. Western nations would not share designs until the 1990s & 2. Nuclear plants are extremely capital intensive and China lacked that until the mid-2000s (then Fukushima paused everything).
@@alecpharris1455 Why "Western nations"? Cooperation with the Soviet Union would seem like the only sensible approach.
@@SianaGearz TBH it’s good that they didn’t get Soviet nuclear technology. The last thing the world needed was more RBMK power plants!
@@SianaGearz they did cooperate. But that ended in 1960 when the nations split diplomatically over different views of communism
@@alecpharris1455 I thought the disagreement was over China being the Junior partner in that relationship.
Another high quality production, thank you! Keep em coming!
Yes, another high quality production indeed !
Yes indeed
Loves asianometry
Why China is "addicted" to coal?
👉because West moved most of their manufacturing facilities to China, West put their carbon footprints and pollution into the "China’s Account". Also, take the advantage of the cheap Chinese labor to maximize their profits at the expense of their own labor force at home.
Also West dumped their toxic plastic waste to China, luckily China has stopped accepting toxic waste.
Congrats on 100K subs! Been following your content since less than 10K and glad to see the channel grow! Will there be a 100K special episode?
Good video. Just a little tip from an audio dork: Normalize your audio. Then use a "limiter" on the audio. It will make your dialogue volume more even and louder.
Indonesia doesn't have a lot demand for coal at 2021, it is because China keep sending messages in SCS. Indonesia then trying to use its leverage to send a reply message and boom.. bituminous coal price is starting to
rise and that is a chirstmast give from unofficial southern neighbour.
At that particular time Australia is still banning coal export to China, there are no power outages in Indonesia and the media from coal importing countries just keep calm down their public except for China. It applies also for raw nickel export ban
at 4:11 "China's renewable energy technology lags that of developed countries" Please provide source. Seems like an odd statement when China manufactures most of the world's solar panels. Are Chinese wind turbines also "less efficient" than turbines used in the "developed world"
He mentions that it's particularly difficult to store the energy and transmit local energy across the country. Solar panels and wind mills aren't very new tech, but only the very cutting edge of storage efficiency and conversion has made renewable sources even a viable option. Itll Cost a lot of money to install on a large scale until more companies are making the best tech.
Chinese-made mass-produced solar panels are generally considered to be of lower quality than those made in the west, which could be a slight difference in research and semiconductor technologies, but that may also just be aiming for different markets. The same way Chinese goods are usually considered lower quality than something made in Japan, for example. It’s not as if China lacks the technology, just that the things most people see exported from China aren’t aiming for the upmarket clientele that things exported from Japan are.
There’s also the issue of corruption and poor QC and lack of accountability that lowers trust in Chinese goods, though that’s more hearsay than anything I could prove.
The moment you start talking about goods made by a country as opposed to being made by a company, you’ve already muddied the waters somewhat. To collect data for such a statement you’d need to aggregate it from a plethora of different companies, which is never terribly easy.
pretty sure interms of total coverage and nuclear power plants.
@@Scrogan Value for money it is not. In the scale of things, it doesn't really matter.
lol no need to be so sensitive, coal was the obvious winner choice for a developing country, cheap and easy to operate, in the last few years, china is making good progress on solar and unclear powerplant, in term of technolgy, it will dominate soon, just need battery tech to start booming for solar, which china is hoping to get from tesla
1:11 What is the heck is going on with that photo??? Was the miner photoshopped in!!? 😂
Given that China added like 500+ GW of renewable electricity capacity in 2023 and also adding record number of EVs, you should probably make an update to this video.
Yes much needed
Thank you for this video. When you talk about "sustainable" energy sources, that does not appear to include nuclear power. Would be interesting to see how nuclear energy fits into the context of other energy sources. Also, one must be very careful when discussing the effects of climate change on electricity production or vice versa. The article you cited relies on temperature-increase projections based on some choice of climate model. The models are incertain and show rather disparate projections. This was true in IPCC 5 and continues to be true in IPCC 6. Over 70% of CO2 emissions come from power production (according to Our World in Data) so getting China off its coal dependence would be a good thing. As you point out, none of this will happen any time soon, but one has to make a start somewhere.
The big problem that many countries seem to ignore is the fact of how unreliable renewable is, you cant expand industries in a country where the new expansion only works ''in the right conditions''
And for private homes when the conditions outside isnt ideal is usually the times when electricity is needed at most -And renewable sources produce the least. As always it is not a [insert issue] crisis, its a management crisis.
yes without a good and cheaper battery, the renewable energy like wind and solar are very unreliable. Probably the only reliable green energy is Nuclear energy and dam
Not true at all, renewable is reliable and I know what you are going to say: but solar and wind bla bla bla. I live in a third world country (Brazil) that has close to 85% of its energy matrix on renewables. The real problem is that we need/want that sweet economic growth now and building motherfucking anything takes a decade. Renewable is reliable, it just "does not make economic sense" waiting for the Three Gorges Dam 2.0 when coal power plants are easier, cheaper and faster to deploy.
@@kahaneck hydropower plant also quite reliable, but the problem is it take huge amount of land and also it will produce less electricity during drough season
True that solar is variable, but I type this from an off-grid house with 10kW on the roof and I love in comfort. It can be done. Agreed that we have a real challenge ahead.
This is a video about how unreliable coal power is and you think the big problem is renewables? You've been brainwashed by politicians, think for yourself.
You should totally change your avatar to that drawing version of the deer 🦌! Just noticed you using it, not sure how long you have been using it, but I would totally switch to it for every avatar/logo you have!
That’s just my inconsequential opinion, but I think it looks fantastic, and really adds something, while still keeping the classic deer design I (and I’m sure many others) associate with this amazing channel!
Please tell the designer it looks fantastic!!!
👍😊👍
Nuclear will be the base power load carrier, possibly thorium base + mayhaps also Fast breeders.
Yes, China will have to deal with nuclear wastes and disabilities in new babies. Your water will become undrinkable.
China is also building an accelerator-driven sub-critical reactor. It's basically a spallation neutron factory tapped with a nuclear reactor. By design, this system can burn nuclear wastes in its reactor with the help of extra neutron flow, and also nuke-power that accelerator. If it's a success, they'll have a self-sustained nuclear wastes burner.
@@ionsilver557 That technology has been upgraded into its second stage, which means, it is very close to be used commercially.
@@pinklady7184 Your wish will come true -----> the deformity will happen to your own baby.
@@clocktower1164 your spiteful comebacks are cringeworthy. Maybe people like you are the reason so many hate nuclear despite it's advantages
Just asking. Will you cover India's coal crisis as well? We also have a lot of issues here in India, although a minister has tried to pacify the people by saying that coal shortages are only a 'temproary setback'.
@CIA I have been reading reports in the past few weeks that Indian’s coal stockpiles can only meet like 2-3 days of demand when it is usually has enough for 21 days. Whereas for China, the power plants had enough for at least a week, albeit very low from the usual.
It was just announced that India and Russia had just inked a deal to purchase 40mil tonnes of coal per year (up from 8mil tonnes).
You're my favorite channel these days. I enjoy these topics a lot
In other words, the entire effort of the developed world to reduce carbon emssions is a waste of time because the CCP is going to keep building coal fired plants as fast as it can.
Amazing informative video with a lot of substance! Keep it up with the great job!
A very insightful video. One important point to make: Wind and solar cannot close the gap by themselves. Solar requires too much land - putting solar installations sufficient to meet a substantial portion of China's needs leads to environmental destruction, and of course minerals must be extracted to produce the equipment, including batteries. . Enabling solar and wind to make thir contribution requires nuclear generation as a partner. Nuclear provides >90% availability and reliable, emission free baseload generation; solar provides peak power (the sun is highest when, coincidentally, you need the most power. China has done something else that is pretty smart: public transportation and inter-city rail, all very highly efficient transport sources, are well developed in China and expanding. Electric vehicles rely on batteries with energy densities far lower than fossil fuels, and recharging them adds to pollution and emissions, whereas trains operating on 750V DC or 12 or 25 kilovolt AC are highly efficient.
Most of their solar plant are in the gobi desert so they dont need to clear a large land from trees, etc
Can you please post links or at least names of your sources (for numbers/data especially) in the video description?
China also produces world's most renewable energy. The title is very much misleading. If the Chinese in nowadays cannot keep their lights on, the rest of the world won't be anywhere better.
The current power shortage is mostly due to the policy back in 2016 to forcefully cut down coal production, and trying to increase percentage of green energy. And the covid last year crippled existing production in Inner Mongolia.
We were doing the real efforts to make the world greener. Renewable energy now accounts for more than 26% of electricity generation, compared to 17% in the US.
I'd say the content of this video is very informative and covered the truth, but was presented out of contexts. It is like saying that the Chinese should stop consuming beef, so that the co2 footprint of the world would be very much improved.
Outstanding analysis. Kudos.
Incredible and clear narration, thank you
Wow! Really great job on this video! Thank you
3:45 it should be 1.239 TW not 1239 TW (narration) or 1239 GW. Love the content!
A big problem with renewable energy is that it can't keep up with the industry needs in China.
It can't keep up with industry anywhere in the world.
china has a very inefficient power grid and larger energy ecosystem, its working about as well as you'd expect if you took the US from the 1960s but added all the power hungry stuff from today, lots of individual AC units, lots of poorly insulated homes, factories, and buildings, and little to no efficiency standards
Yet we still use less power per capita.
Why China is "addicted" to coal?
👉because West moved most of their manufacturing facilities to China, West put their carbon footprints and pollution into the "China’s Account". Also, take the advantage of the cheap Chinese labor to maximize their profits at the expense of their own labor force at home.
Also West dumped their toxic plastic waste to China, luckily China has stopped accepting toxic waste.
do you have a source?
@@YouCCP2 Compared to the consumption of entirely Chinese owned manufacturing, the contribution of Western owned facilities is neglible. The main culprit is steel, which consumes a lot of coal directly, and a lot of electricity, then cement which China produces is incredible quantities (like as much in the last decade or 2 as the entire US output to date). We might not have helped very much, but their problems are mostly of their own making
@@YouCCP2 LMao manufacturing facilities which the CCP readily accepted, and don't act like 99% of the manufacturing in China is from the West, China is a massive polluter, number 1 in the world in fact. Which won't be changing if we have brainwashed useful idiots like you blaming everything on the West instead of blaming yourselves. Oh wait, that's right, if you blamed the CCP you would lose on a lot of social credit scores and then get a "lovely" visit from the police.
When something is limited, in this case Electricity, then raise the price a bit so that industries or consumers adjust accordingly. Example, instead of switching A.C at 25C, the higher price of electricity will change behaviour to people turning on aircon at 30C instead. Factories will invest in efficient machines. etc.
In a free market, yes. China is not a free market
You need to have smart electricity meters for every connected consumer that are able to determine the current price for the current consumption by communicating with the energy grid for that. While transitioning, the communication for pricing will also fail when the grid goes down, so you won't get any power until the price mechanism works again, probably making shortages even worse. Followed by massive price fluctuations when the grid starts up, Texas style. Implementing all that properly for over a billion customers in a massive country with lacking power infrastructure seems like quite a challenge and very costly since the technology is pretty new, basically high end. It would be much easier for developed countries to implement and they largely haven't bothered yet and just burn more coal or gas to meet demand.
That's certainly what dirty, greedy CAPITALISTS would do! But certainly not socialists. Electricity is properly as free as the air you breathe!
It's almost as though you believe in markets and doubt the omniscience of central planning, the foundation of socialism!
Excellent observations rarely seen among analysts today. Well done.
Man I love this channel. 👌🏻
Hello, I´m writing a thesis on similar topic. Do you have any list of references of those information you collected? Would be helpful! :-) Unfortunately, not able to reference a video haha.
Electricity generated from coal is still better than no electricity at all.
An episode about the construction of the 3 gorges dam please!
China has a large unskilled work force that needs to be employed to maintain domestic tranquility. Enter coal, a domestic product employing Chinese people. Yes coal is dirty, but it is affordable in China, and helps to maintain employment and tranquility. The fix for this is use less coal. This will take time. No fast fixes here!
The use of coal is increasing despite the workforce available is decreasing.
The domestic coal is of low quality and expensive(mines are way to deep now) and not enough to fuel all powerplants so cheap highquality and abundant Australian coal has been imported, before Australia was punished by China for demanding an explanation for Chinas Covid lies.
With the bann on Australian coal China made a strategic error that cost it it's energy safety as the absence of Australian coal drove the coal prices up high on the domestic marked.
The CCP fucked it up and they use all kind of narratives and excuses to not have anyone point at the CCP and the easily triggerd head of the party.
Very informative video thank you
So Wise , Thank You
Thermal energy is not a euphemism for coal. It is used to describe energy sources in which thermal energy (heat) is converted to other useful forms of energy. Nuclear power plants , coal fired power plants , gas fired power plants , steam turbines, gas turbines, diesel engines etc are all examples of thermal energy.
Thermal energy is not a euphemism in standard English but it can be used as a euphemism. Maybe governments report energy from gas, oil, biomass and thermal.
Just like "good friends" isn't a euphemism in standard English but can be a euphemism depending on context.
I enjoy your fine production. Keep up the good work.
Nice overview, thx!
china has built 500 cities in 20yrs . they are full of high rises buildings. since heat rises, without air conditioning life in a highrise would be near unbearable . so it's not all just global warming. also why do they not invest in nuclear power which has no carbon emissions or air pollution.? i heard they are working on thorium reactors. if they can crack it it would be almost ideal . not much radioactivity at the end and not for long periods.
They did, China are building most of the world nuclear power. But nuclear power take long time to build compare to coal and natural gas
At 1:32, looks like Lin Biao to Mao's left, Zhou Enlai at the far right. Anyone recognize the other figures?
Thanks for posting!
14:00
it is relatively easier for the US to use less "oil" and that's exactly what's happening right now.
at a residential level, yes, but what about at the commercial level?
Isn't most of us electricity still reliant on gas? And also isn't Most of US citizen still use ICE car for daily commute?
@@Fauzanarief-n7i ? You mean how literally the vast majority of entire planet still use ICE cars for daily commute? You're implying like the rest of the world has ditched ICE and is now driving electric or hydrogen which is false.
@@2hotflavored666 The different is US city are very car dependent because of the Suburb and lack of public transport. And also walking in US city are nightmare because of lack of pedestrian infrastructure, big parking lot, and intercity highway making it very far to travel by walking
It's different compare to big city in europe, china,japan,or south korea. Majority of urban people in that country are using public transport because it's more convenience than driving because of good public transport and pedestrian infrastructure
Did you change your microphone?
4:18 not true, they use a mix of solar, wind and hydropower, and when the sun and wind dies down the hydro plants function as batteries, only generating electricity when it is needed.
From what I know these dams get a lot of their water from the monsoon season which is very erratic so they could have very little water built up and along with a unusually low amount of wind, like in Europe now, with dim days they could run out of power from these renewables
So informative. Keep up the good work!
6:25 Randomly dropping that pronunciation of Shanxi 山西 😂💯 💯
thats because not to confuse with another province called shaanxi with double "a"
4:35 if only people stopped fetishizing green energy as a genuine replacement for thermal plants. We still havent solved the storage question.
It doesn't have to be either/or. Green energy can be part of the larger energy mix, just like coal, gas, oil, wood, nuclear, cow dung.
this is a great channel
11:33
Japan's energy use is even declining in2016 from 2010.
Is it from economic slow down?
Big contributions to using electricity is due very poorly built houses with minimal insulation, color of the roofs, no thermal mass and bad orientation.
thanks for being a channel that reports facts on what's going on in Asia, rather than media hype.
I really like your videos mate, but i honestly think that having some sort of those "no copyright songs", like in other video essay channels, in the back in the back would work really well with your videos.
Please, please NO!
I've never watched a video which was ruined because it didn't have background music but I've stopped watching many videos because the background music made it too hard to understand the narration.
No music please! It's annoys my concentration
a good compromise may be to have an quick title section with light music and keep the rest without music
This is really informative. Well done
Good information
Jon, why no mention of the potential for nuclear ?
Great vid
China will go the nuclear route rather then for renewables,simply because even if those are ten or twenty percent more effective
than nowadays they are to unreliable and inefficient still. And energy storage adds to the efficiency problem too.
The chinese already learned their lesson regarding wind,solar and water power. A thing that is still not happening in europe.
So many people are ignorant about nuclear reactor tech and think it'll explode like a nuclear bomb if you sneeze at it. Plus, spent fuel can be reprocessed. We used to do it in the US before Jimmy Carter fucked us. France still does and they've had a stellar record with nuclear power and the world should be following their example
@@kenshin891 Old reactors are still a serious problem and their nuclear waste isnt simply 100% reprocessable,let alone nuclear reactors used in old ships and submarines.
Interesting video, keep up the good content! God bless you!
China is the largest producer renewable energy in the world and it also holds majority of the renewable energy patents including the most important ones. However, when you are the most populous and the most industrialised nation on the planet, your energy requirements would be huge. As a result China, despite producing the most Clean Energy is still far from eliminating Coal
Don't be naive now. China burns as much coal as the whole world combined.
Carbon footprint is twice that of the US already
@@benghazi4216 Are you just stupid or wilfully ignorant. Most developed countries outsource their manufacturing and even then per capita scale, China does better than these "freedom" loving country you keep on spitting on about.
China sucks
FYI, there is a distracting high pitch noise in the background audio that is a tad annoying.
China’s coal addiction is probably the single biggest obstacle to achieving global reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
India, the U.S. and Europe are also not serious either. Only nuclear power has the immediate capability of ending dependence on coal and natural gas on a wide scale.
That is actually not the case. Levelized cost of energy (LCOE) of nuclear power is about 11cents per kWh, wheres solar is often around 5 cents (2cents in saudi arabia). Capital costs of safe nuclear power is simply way higher than wind and solar. Thats why most companies around the world are not building new nuclear power plants, or even carbon based energy sources.
By framing the statement that way its as if all of the problem stems from China and Chinese people. Meanwhile actual energy consumption per capita in China is way less than in the developed nations. The carbon footprints per capita of developed economies is more than double that of China, more than quadruple that of India. There is much more room to cut out excess emissions in advanced economies but they keep blaming the Chinese and Indians, who’s consumption is mostly tied to necessities.
@@stevenw2933 you're right, action must be undertaken everywhere. Most of all developed countries. But with a carbon footprint of 7.4tons/capita and 1.4 billion inhabitants, China is an important part of the puzzle.
Btw, EU emissions are at 6.4tons/capita now and decreasing steadily.
Except that the US and Europe have contributed to the majority of the cuts in greenhouse emissions, the US leading the way. But that led to the problem that people want the US to do more and we are standing there looking at China and India wondering when your going to get them on board. Which is not going to happen in China's case, cause they only use the enviromental regulations to hamper other countries, then do whatever they want to get ahead.
@@DiederikCA And why is that? Maybe because the government keeps throwing enormous subsidies at solar companies. I would hazard a guess that if those subsidies went to nuclear instead IT would be the cheaper technology instead.
Great video, thanks
I heard a theory by Hedge Fund owner Cathie Woods, that China is actively switching off coal plants in preparations for the Olympic Winter Games 2022. This so the landscape and snow is pristine white, in stead of snowy landscapes stained by coal black smoke and soot.
edit: typo
I disagree - getting the US off of oil is hard, but manageable, while getting China off of coal is just impossible.
We are talking about a huge amount of energy China is producing from coal, replacing it with renewables is both impossible by our current technology, and not monetarily feasible.
And in China, Money is the only thing doing the talking.
cute but your favorite oil lobbyist disagrees
Then you don't know china. The CPC is still in control, but in the west, it's corporations that hold the power.
What i didnt understand is why they didnt use the Rooftops specially in large citeis for solarpanels, becasue they produce energy when it needed for the air conditionals and secondly mostly overviewd they provide shadows and surve this way to cooling the buildings.
If you have been to most China's southern cities, solar panels on rooftops are as common as buses on roads. From a high rise Gaungdong hotel, I saw rooftops fitted with solar panels as far as my eyes could see.
Nuclear energy is way to go for China. Nuclear is only 4% of Chinese power generation. It can go up to 40% without major problem. China electricity demand: 8000 TW * 36% = 2900 TW so build 1500 2 TW nuclear reactors over next 30 years. Build 50 reactors per year.
50 reactors per year is a lot. That’s nearly all the nuclear reactors currently under construction right now around the world, and it takes more than a year to build them. I think China has 13 or 14 in various stages of construction right now, which is more than anyone else. Also, I think the current plan is to have 20% of energy derived from nuclear power by 2060, but so far they are falling a bit behind. Hopefully they will catch back up
I mean use your common sense dude, 8000TW 🤣
Sorry, but for now 2TW it's a mistake. No country in this world has ever develop single fission nuclear plant with total output power for about 2TW.
Quick question : how many qualified nuclear engineers/builders do you think there are in the world?
@@talltroll7092 To build 50-100 nuclear reactors a year, China needs industrial mass production like container shipbuilding. Building 50 conventional pressurized light water reactor is simply impossible. So China should develop radically new and compact reactor like molten chloride salt fast rector(MCFR) to meet such massive reactor installation demand which can be build in shipyard.
Regardless of the video content (I'm currently starting to watch), it appears your sound recording is very low. Have to near max out my volume to hear you properly
Nah bro, you're deaf lmao. Should've not listened to loud shit your entire life.
the conclusion is basically it. while most haters say that this is China's failure and trade fight with Australia, China just makes ridiculous amounts of products and no ridiculous amount of renewable energy projects will be able to sustain that. I think the reason their power rate is low is also for manufacturing costs to remain low. I don't see any fast and easy solution, maybe try support more renewable energy systems for factories and households which makes them more resilient and not waste energy and money in long distance power transmission. it could boost job creation too.
China is building thorium molten salt reactor if it pans out it could solve China's energy problem
11:33 the newer parts of Guangzhou are extremely unshaded. What widely spaced trees are planted in those newer parts are often uprooted and replaced. Part of this is annoying because the lack of shade is to appeal to CCP parades and macro scale aesthetics, another part is because Guangzhou clearly has good precedent for urban shade, another part is the long high-rises are oriented east west for river views, which minimises shade (idk if there's wind reasons)
Same in Shanghai, in addition to along widened roads. Shanghai has traditionally had tree shaded streets (as has Guangzhou), but once roads become eight lanes wide, they turn into deserts.
@@pjacobsen1000 If only China was like the Netherlands: no more than a couple lanes for cars, everyone else cycles. Sure, cycling and public transport are very big in China, but cars are still too many.
@@موسى_7 I don't think the number of cars on Chinese roads is going to go down anytime soon, on the contrary.
@@موسى_7 That was the case 30 yers ago. It was even a common saying, huge country with no cars. However they didn't ride bikes because they were environmentally woke, they cycled because they were dirt poor.
@@andro7862 and had no cars in first place
4:43 High Voltage, Direct Current?? My understanding is that Alternating current is more efficient, and that was a key advantage to Nikola Tesla's design for power transmission over that of Westnghouse.
Am I wrong?
AC makes it easier to change voltage with transformers, so the systems can be more efficient. However the whole system must be phase and frequency synchronized or it will fall. HVDC, which is enabled by modern power electronics, allows you to link large regional systems without requiring synchronization.
@@Sn0wZer0 Very interesting! Thanks for the reply. So, AC in itself is not inherently better than DC, and instead it is the voltage stepping that discouraged the use of DC? That seems odd in that in the earliest days, the transmission distances were short. I'm not aware that homes/neighborhoods had transformers so that thee efficiency of high voltage was much of an issue. Two follow-on questions are: 1) Is the U.S. pursuing this for its grid modernization? 2) Do VERY high power equivalents to common inverters exist, or is an entirely different technology used to step the voltage?
HVDC is more efficient for long cable runs due to something called the skin effect that reduces efficiency of AC cables. AC is superior in terms of ease of voltage conversion. For short cables the additional cost/converter loss of HVDC equipment is not worth it but on long cables, HVDC allows cables to loose less power so can be better overall.
@@benjamindesson5326 Is the HVDC inverted to AC, and if so, how are megawatts/terawatts converted?
OR...are end users now switching to HVDC machinery, appliances, etc.?
@@gregparrott You missed this Asianometry video: th-cam.com/video/KZBaDle5NbU/w-d-xo.html
What happens when the last group of people refuse to work in ridiculously unfavorable conditions to perform their jobs?
It's been going from country to country to country for several centuries. Northern Europe, Southern Europe, USA and Russia, Japan, the rest of eastern Asia and Oceania.
A reckoning comes and it's not going to be business as usual.
Centralization to create cross provence energy markets isn't really needed. That's the point of markets. One provence can just publish that each kWh at this time on this border is worth this much to us, and if you want to provide it we will take it.
I was a strong believer of climate change before I discovered seaweed farming
I was a strong believer that the world are using up resources and water until I found seaweed farming
Seaweed can absorb more co2 then trees, if just 1% of the Australian coast line farm seaweeds the amount of food it generating can feeds castles humans and fishes,
Instead of investing millions into toxic battery why don’t just invest in seaweed and stored those carbon in a unused mines
I feel cheated by so call Greenpeace
There are thousands of oyster field get destroyed, restored the ocean the largest decarbonising machine in the world
And the world had turn a blind eye on it
I am not against expanding seaweed farming (I love eating seaweed). But surely relying on seaweed shouldn't be our only course of action?
@@carlramirez6339 the only course of action is a group of systems you make it sound too easy
Seaweed burger like artificial meat e.g. beyond meat can be made with seaweed
Seaweed cattle farming alone can reduce methane production
Seaweed can be decomposed to form organic fertiliser
algae can replace plastic rubber in shoes
There are lots of research needed to make it happen and economically viable
No matter you like it or not seaweed could already hidden into daily snack as a thickener
If cost come down seaweed can be the biomass to form biofuels
So what meant seaweed only
It is not only farming and planting, also industrial processes to convert into everyday products
ie petroleum plastics rubber meats. The list goes on
We need to stop Co2 getting in the atmosphere, the seaweed is just storing the Co2 inside it which get's released at it's decay.
So we would need to combine it with bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) to finally get rid of the Co2 or we could use it as an replacement for plastics or meat which has an 13% share of greenhouse gas emissions.
If we are searching natural solutions we could recultivate swamps, destroyed ones are carbon emitters, in Germany 6% of Co2 emissions comes from them and they can store Co2 just like seaweed.
Little Funfact: there were plans for Co2 storage with seaweed through fertilizing one specific part of the ocean to enhance the growth and let it sink down to the bottom.
@@deathgun3110 not heard there are co2 emitting swamps
But the advantage of seaweed are the no need for fresh water
Lived in countries that treated water like gold ie South Africa, and Australia that no need water is very interesting to me
Biodegradation normally released methane not CO2 therefore there are power generation from landfills and biomass
One thing I was wondering is trees the fossil formation from those geographic class sound unreasonable, look as Japanese charcoal making 備長炭 how many trees and those high concentrations of high density wood to create those rocks
If it was formed by dead kelp sinking to the seabed year after year then it make more sense to me or methane hydrates under sea then makes sense to me
Battery is too toxins cobalt is questionable recycling ability is questionable and building pump hydro also not environmentally friendly either green hydrogen looks good electrolysis looks inefficient reverse fuel cell required platinum class materials there Toyota never make it work
nuclear looks bad enough
Stopping emissions can be difficult
@@wingcheukkan1911 First off the swamps are not releasing GHG emissions on their own, but if those swamps get dryed up to farm on them, than they're releasing GHG emissions.
Lithium-Ion chemistry is by far not the only ones, there is now huge research in this area with others being more environmentally friendly like sodium-ion or made entirely out of plant matter.
Also batteries are not the only way of short term electricity storage, there are far more like flywheels and gravitational storage, they just need further research.
Hydrogen on the other hand is viewed as fuel for the industry here in Germany, since it can´t been transported over long distances (E.g. from australia) and blue hydrogen with CCS has already shown that it has it's flaws.
Here we are talking about synthetic fuels like gas, ammonia and methanol or storage in form of heat for district heating in the winter (Sector Couppling).
But in the end lowering the energy consumption is the best way stopping emissions and as an bridge already existing nuclear plants can help.
P.s. was the part with the 備長炭 about producing it via seaweed?
Would bee cool if this works.
Chinese industry has not optimized its worker productivity or its energy efficiency and relies on favorable currency exchange rates and government subsidies to keep their export heavy economy growing. The danger is not economic collapse from a short-term coal shortage. It is the growth at any cost mentality that is the problem. It is impossible to sustain and ultimately investment in productivity and efficiency improvements, which will result in short term losses and sacrifice but long term stability, is necessary. As in other places, new energy infrastructure will need to be built and people will be out of work and have to find new work. It is a choice that many nations have to make now in the early 21st century: business as usual and put off the inevitable and risk collapse, or confront it and mitigate the suffering of the change to come.
yes climate change is real, that's not at debate, humans are not a significant cost.
High quality content from the perspective of a Chinese.
Why is everyone having energy shortage at the same time?
Because companies stopped coal production because of covid and now everybody is back to normal and coal production lacks behind
@@thetaomega7816 Don't forget that China banned Australian coal, which is why China is in this mess now.
Europe has problems because of Russia's lowered natural gas production.
On top of T O’s comments, there was also the high energy usage in the last Winter and this Summer (due to economy restarting, really cold Winter and a really hot Summer), while the stockpile was not replenish at the same rate. This has caused the sudden energy crisis/ concerns that we are seeing today, especially given that Winter is coming.
Same thing is being observed in India. They have recently struck a deal with Russia to import 40 mil tonnes of coal, up from 8 mil tonnes!
US coal production fell to the lowest level since 1965, based on replacement with fracking produced natural gas and political pressures. Now natural gas production in the USA is basically holding steady, while exports of LNG to Europe have grown. That is the North American contribution to mix.
Because energy policies are based on short sighted local concerns and hype, but since energy can be transported globally, bad decisions in Germany, UK, China, USA, Japan have global effects.
I hope you also cover China's water shortage.
Another banger Jon!
The reason China can't keep the lights on is a supply issue. The green and ESG movements have impacted on governments and investors by restricting new coal supply through regulation and capital starvation.
Climate change may be a real thing but that is a woefully simplistic statement. Your statement says nothing about what the cause of the change is or how serious a problem it is. What is important is climate sensitivity to CO2. The fact that the CMIP 5/6 models overstate sensitivity by a factor of 3 in the tropical troposphere indicates that climate sensitivity is low.
Also, why talk about heat wave deaths but not deaths from excess cold? Some studies show that 20 times as many people die each year from temperatures being too cold versus them being too hot. Global warming is likely to result in net less deaths from extreme temperatures.
Would you do a video about tang ping next?
I know the line about coal being plant rock was a joke, but it’s actually mostly algae which is very interesting
Most coal came from the carboniferous period when very tall treelike mushrooms or fungus created wood-like structures to grow tall which at that time had no organisms which could break it down like now. Those grew and fell over and were buried over and over, leading to large deposits of unrecycled carbon which then became coal. This was not from algae.
@@stevenwilson5556 you know what? I actually do remember hearing this, I think I mixed up this fact and the majority of the world’s oxygen being produced by algae, thank you for the correction
Getting the US to wean of oil is easy just cut the humongous subsidies that you put on gas, take inspiration from india we tax our fuel a glorious 100%
Easily said than done, most of US people are commute with big car like truck or SUV that consume a lot of gasoline, and also most of US electricity are still relied on natural gas
Yea, well India isn’t really a success story yet
whoa the deer is a cartoon now
Agree with most points of view, well done.
aussie coal burning 1/6th better versus 50% shipping costs from up a river?
Australia also has much more efficient processes in extracting the coal, which would result in higher savings
Invest in fossil fuel companies . No more supply coming on stream can only mean increasing profits for decades to come .
I am Indonesian,when i knew china had an energy shortage and hike up the coal price into the sky, to be honest i am not happy as Chinese people's too,because a lot our coal mine have heavy tied to political figures nor land/forest livelihood problems to indigenous people as a result ,and those things really not good.
Hopefully renewable technology can answer the climate change in future.
Very good video about the China´s coal addiction.
You could add more factors, new, that are putting more pressure in the Chinese electricity production.
One factor is the start of the electric cars mass market. In China, a new BEV means another car in the streets but electrified. In the Europe, one new BEV means one less gas-powered car in the streets.
Another important factor is the digitalization of the Chinese society. More digital is the society more data transmission and more energy consumption.
The final factor, very important and it will be one huge economic bottleneck, is the fight against the pollution in China. This fight means changing the source of the electricity power. And more intensive in the energy consumption from the industrial production to export.
But the video is great and shows how difficult it will be the energy transition in China.
Good and interesting show.
Please cover Huawei’s 7nm chips!
what about the current energy issue in Europe? And how USA blocks Russia provides energy to Europe?
Great breakdown of what is taking place. And no biased nonsense, which I greatly appreciate. I would like to know however. What you insights and feelings about the tentions of the issue of Taiwan. Do you think there will be a hot war?
Taiwan/ROC meanwhile has a 4th nuclear power plant that's never been opened since it was built in the 1990s due to public concerns over safety, especially after the meltdown @ _Fukushima's_ No. 1 plant
Their energy crisis can be summarised in one sentence: free market prices for the inputs (coal, in this case) combined with state driven caps on consumer prices. Input prices go up, as they do, and suddenly it's not economic. Same situation hit the UK this year. Climate change has nothing to do with it.
The coal market is not a free market. Try creating new supply for coal. No one will fund it because governments are regulating against them.
Their energy crisis can be summarised in one sentence: Butthurt over COVID so banned Australian coal.
@@stephenadams2397 You understand nothing about commodity markets. Maybe watch the video again, and take notes this time.
Either you like it or not right now when come to reliability nuclear power plan is the most reliable one
China is the largest consumer of energy in the world almost 1.6 times the USA which is second. Faced with a power crisis China may have little choice but to ramp up coal consumption.
China have a population 4 times of America and they produce all kinds of goods for the world.so who is wasting energy and polluting the world ?
First semiconductor shortage and now power electric shortage
Is that Australian Coal Ship still stranded outside China ?
How is nuclear power doing in China?