Click on the headline (link) for the full text.
Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
China Moves Towards Energy, Not Oil
Mara Hvistendahl, WorldChanging
When China unveiled its’ ambitious renewable energy law in 2005, pledging that by 2020 15 percent of the country’s power would be drawn from renewable sources, it attracted more than a few raised eyebrows. Chinese leaders are fond of long-term plans and big targets. But how, exactly, did they plan to hit this target in the face of China’s fast-growing economy and energy consumption?
Two years later, this is now becoming clear.
In September, top energy planner Chen Deming said that the government would institute subsidies and tax breaks to encourage investment in renewables. The total price tag for the 15 percent target, he added, would be two trillion yuan — about $265 billion, or one-tenth of China’s 2006 GDP.
Sure enough, last week China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), China’s third largest petroleum company (best-known in the U.S. for its botched 2005 bid to buy American oil giant Unocal) announced plans to establish a 1,500 KW off-shore wind farm in Bohai Bay. With Beijing pushing renewables, CNOOC now aims to be “an energy company rather than just an oil company.”
(22 October 2007)
Why China Can Withstand $90 a Barrel Oil – And Higher
David Winning and Natalie Obiko Pearson, Dow Jones Newswires via RigZone
The rest of the world is wincing as crude oil prices surge past $90 a barrel, yet China – the world’s second-largest oil consumer – appears set to continue sucking up oil at ever higher prices.
What’s it got that the rest haven’t?
Experts say the country’s not entirely immune but that a timely combination of extremely robust finances, strong political incentive to uphold costly fuel subsidies, and less exposure to world oil price fluctuations than many realize is what’s keeping Chinese oil demand seemingly insatiable.
Chinese consumers, though less energy-efficient than their Western counterparts, are shielded from the impact of surging oil prices which would otherwise curb their thirst by hefty government subsidies.
The burden falls primarily on Chinese oil companies: China National Offshore Oil Corp. Ltd. (CEO) and PetroChina Co. (PTR), which are obliged to pay a windfall oil tax whenever the price rises above $40 a barrel, shelled out more than $2.3 billion in the first half of this year.
(19 October 2007)
China’s rising living standard cranks up resource competition
Carl Mortished, Times
HU Jintao wants to make every Chinese twice as rich by 2020. He has done it once – in just five years, per capita income doubled to $US2000 ($2250)- and the only obstacle in the Chinese President’s path is the fuel needed to stoke the boiler of China’s locomotive.
The president needs more copper, iron ore, zinc and natural gas. Above all, he needs more coal to keep the power stations humming and more oil for Chinese cars and lorries. China accounts for more than a third of world demand for coal and the price in Australia soared this year as the People’s Republic switched from exporter to importer.
If Mr Hu had a message for the world in his address to the Communist Party National Congress, it was this: we will burn our coal and, if we have to, we will burn yours, too.
Put bluntly, it means that the Kyoto treaty on greenhouse gas emissions is dead and so is any prospect of persuading Beijing to bind itself to other curbs on carbon emissions. We can stop kidding ourselves that China will sign up to any green thingy that hinders his party’s 10-year plan to get rich quick.
(18 October 2007)
Large generalizations about a complex society made on the basis of one speech. -BA
