On September 21st 2021 China’s President Xi Jinping delivered a speech to the United Nations General Assembly. One of its notable highlights is the pledge to stop coal power plant construction worldwide.
The pledge is nested in the climate goals of the People’s Republic, to reach peak coal use before 2030 and net-zero carbon emissions by 2060:
It is well known that China finances the vast majority of new coal-fired power plants worldwide. At least that’s what U.S. security stare ghouls like Jeff Nesbit (author of Peace, a novel in which Israel bombs Iranian nuclear facilities) want us to believe.
The truth is that the People’s Republic of China provides the largest amount of public funding for new coal plants, but that private capital provides the largest amount of total funding for coal.
The Global Coal Public Finance Tracker shows us how Chinese public funds provide for coal power plants in the Third World. This is part of the vast international infrastructure project bound up in the Belt And Road Initiative.
While the debate over the future of domestic coal power continues in China, this announcement to the UNGA still represents an enormous step towards a carbon-neutral future.
This promise to switch to renewable energy is not some far flung hypothetical: Chinese firms and governments are already developing and installing renewable power sources at an accelerating rate.
At the same time, China is investing in Vanadium redox flow batteries. Unlike the lithium batteries used in Teslas, they do not explode:
Vanadium flow redox batteries also last 20 to 30 years instead of 5 and have much higher energy storage capabilities, making them ideal for green energy storage.
China’s National Photovoltaic and Energy Demonstration Experimental Center has begun testing vanadium redox flow batteries at its Daqing facility in northeastern China.
Emiliano Bellini for PV-Magazine
The announcement was made by Toronto-based Sparton Resources Inc., a minority shareholder in Canadian vanadium redox battery provider VRB Energy, which will provide a 125 kW/500 kWh storage unit for testing.
China is also the world’s top producer of vanadium, a metal found alongside iron in mined ore. China produced 40,000 megatons of vanadium in 2019, more than double the second place producer, Russia, at 18,000 MT.
At this rate the oil-drunk First World will be asking China to upgrade our power grid before America can even decide whether or not to frack Alaskan nature reserves.
While droughts, wildfires, hurricanes, and floods are razing American cities, one thing becomes more and more clear: the 21st Century is going to be the Chinese Century.
[ Featured image from United Nations Environment Programme ]
