Global Energy markets and the Chinese Demand – Truths vs half and untruths – Consumptive use vs Acquisitive consumption
The Chinese leadership of the People’s party have an overriding and enormous responsibility each and every day.
Feed more than a Billion people.
A Billion and a third, of human beings with souls, to be precise.
These human beings with their individual meager carbon consumption per capita – as compared to western standards – have to be taken care of in the face of the increasingly unreliable climate, catastrophic recurring droughts alternating with floods and sudden cataclysmic climatic effects of a warming atmosphere and planet.
The duty to feed their people has been bequeathed upon them by the National Steersman and they cannot deviate from it.
Simple as that.
And that takes energy.
Many gigawatts of energy…
Therefore, that they have a clear energy policy – to achieve this – is no secret at all.
It is clearly spelled out in the five year plans and is applied throughout and by leveraging their economic institutions.
Follow the money and the global energy acquisitions and investments and You shall see the patterns forming.
The Chinese leaders, are simply insuring their future by focusing on the two headed Dragon policy of the Manchu emperors of old.
Look east and west and get the best. See North and South and gather the cloud…
Or more precisely now it fits to look in the past and into the future and invest in building a bridge to both with fervour, and energy, always moving forward.
By investing in their domestic renewable markets more than the world’s combined clean energy investments, they ensure growth, leadership, continuity and inner energy strength for the future.
By buying the oil, coal and natural gas they need from the international markets, they ensure building strategic reserves in the old energy to meet their present and projected necessities, building a fair cushion to absorb anomalies and coming shocks they perceive in an ungovernable climate; but also to build a great New Energy future.
They know through clear headed science and observation, that with increasing Climate stresses and a warming planet, the world will have to consume more energy, just to stay still.
Let alone if they want to continue growing or if they want to exercise a global leadership position.
And that will take enormous amounts of energy.
Leadership always does…
Because building the world’s first self sufficient clean and renewable Energy economy takes immense amounts of classic fossil fuel energy to create the means and the implements of new Energy and also to propel the juggernaut forward into space…
That is where the Chinese leadership secret is.
Old Energy is used to build New Energy.
And all that investment will pay off handsomely as the collateral benefit is the creation of whole new classes of Energy technology and energy means, that will be predominantly Chinese.
As they already are in Solar and Wind…
And buying old energy to convert to New energy is smart now.
Because the low hanging fruit won’t last forever…
With one billion people picking it up – no wonder – nothing will be left for the sleepy westerners.
The early bird as always takes the worm, and the coffee, and the croissant too.
I could quote numbers here by heart, but it won’t matter – let sleeping dogs lay – the Senators are enjoying their rest; dreaming of a breakfast Brioche.
Maybe someone should wake them up to smell the coffee, for the brioche is gone….
Because in China the news are all going in the direction of Clean Energy and creating capacity for the next century – not for the old one.
Creating jobs and energy security for their future not for their past.
And focusing single mindedly on what really matters, without negating their might or the diplomatic will to drive a fair and equitable global climate deal.
What it really matters now, and this is the true North – a beacon for the rest of the world – is that they invest today upwards of $10 billion in clean energy and assorted renewables per month.
TEN BILLION US Dollars per MONTH in the New Energy.
Not too timid as these investment numbers speak for themselves.
That is a rounded, Ten Billion dollars invested in Clean Energy, Renewable Resources, New Green Energy Technology and the simplest stuff, like Biochar, Coal gasification, Biomass in the coal electricity mix, CCS, Cleaner fuels, transition of the cola fleet and the assorted SWG [Solar-Wind-Geothermal] renewable common sources with additional investments in tidal and wave energies.
And that isn’t counting the tremendous second push which is typical fossil fuels with an increased efficiency, economy and intensity.
While domestically there is little to speak of, the international production for the big three oil companies – CNPC/Petro China, Sinopec Group, and CNOOC Ltd, is now more than 1 million barrels of oil equivalent per day. And this is a new record. But still China is not the number one consumer of Energy in the world.
That dubious record sits still squarely with uncle Sam… who hasn’t been able to get off that chair for more than a century, still drunk on cheap energy fumes.
Furthermore, the anomaly between what is perceived by others as China’s energy consumption pattern, is the simple addition of all their investments and energy acquisitions on top of their domestic resources. That s the wrong headed math. The energy acquisition and the energy use aren’t linear parallels….
The acquisitions are not all slated to burn and devote to their energy needs immediately; but rather are a strategic reserve build out, and an energy transformation towards Low Carbon Footprint P&U and new clean energy and renewables.
Only now China has intensified it’s efforts internationally and that is why it is so visible.
The Chinese leaders have committed $195 billion to invest in international fossil fuel assets, buy-outs and also corporate acquisitions since 2009, far exceeding previous annual spending. This represents 50% of the global deal value of 2010 alone. And yes it is strategic…
The drive to acquire global oil assets is simple.
China is now the worlds number one acquisition consumer of energy, and domestic demand continues to go up.
But it is not yet the number one consumptive user of energy. That still is the United States of America.
These are two drastically different things….
Most of the Energy resources China buys now internationally, are strategic and long term.
Not to be burned and used up immediately but mainly to build a buffer and strategic reserves and transform to prepare for what the leadership sees as a highly uncertain future.
Something the US and the EU and many others since long ago; had the luxury of doing and maintaining.
China is simply catching up and building their long term reserves as a way to compete on the global stage.
Yet what is most important is that China also sees the long term Climate Change as the imminent threat.
And because of it, they build their strategic reserves in such a way as to mitigate that particular threat.
They are building peaceful reserves.
And yet they are a stark reminder that what these leaders of the oldest continuous nation on earth, have seen; the rest of us need to observe also.
Create stores of New transformative energy for the coming tsunami of environmental disasters and related population movements and attrition or fail to and perish… or even worse.
The story of ”the grasshopper and the ant” all over again. Only this time facing the worse Climate anyone has ever seen. And it’s not the coming winter that scares them, but the coming summers… of discontent.
Short sighted leaders will drive their people to peril.
Just as surely as the three emperors who failed to heed Tzu’s advise…
Long term thinkers will survive… and thrive.
That is the lesson of the Chinese leadership’s insistence and investment in Renewable Energies brings to us loud and clear.
Yours,
Pano
China requires total energy investments of some $4 trillion over the next 20 years to keep feeding its people, maintaining it’s economy and avoid climate change negative effects such as power blackouts and fuel shortages.
With this in mind China is expected to build 1,000 gigawatts of new power-generation over the next 15 years.
That’s the total current, U.S. capacity, which took TWO HUNDRED YEARS to build.
And what most of this capacity will be made up of is strictly Renewable Energy.
How is that for a signal?
