chinaworker.info reporters
Number one in green energy?
China leads the world in the manufacture and installation of renewable energy. It makes 80 percent of the world’s solar PV modules. It has also leapt ahead in electric vehicles (62 percent of global production) and EV batteries (77 percent). Due to the anarchic workings of capitalism, China’s world-beating “green” sector is drowning in overcapacity. Consumer demand overall in China is flat. Sales of EVs and solar panels have both fallen sharply in 2024. Overcapacity has pushed down prices, with droves of loss-making solar and EV makers laying off tens of thousands of workers. Geopolitics also means that big export markets like Europe have raised tariff walls against Chinese EVs, solar and wind.
Despite the fact that power from new solar and wind installations is cheaper in China than fossil fuels, less than 14% of its power generation comes from solar (9.1%) and wind (3.3%). For the CCP regime, coal is still king (see below). The imperialist China-US conflict adds to Beijing’s unwillingness to abandon coal as it sits on the world’s fourth largest reserves.
Record heatwaves and floods
The summer of 2024 has seen several climate records smashed in China with heatwaves, drought, and the annual flood season starting early. July was China’s hottest month since records began. The heatwave continued in August with eastern cities including Shanghai and Hangzhou having several days of 40ºC-plus temperatures. This follows the hottest spring on record across the whole of China. As we go to press, official warnings have been issued for 25 floods, although the country is only halfway through its peak flood season. This is the highest number of significant floods since record keeping began in 1998. China’s biggest river, the Yangtze, has flooded three times so far in 2024, causing large scale evacuations and economic losses. China is at the very heart of the climate crisis, responsible for one-third of the world’s carbon emissions. Last year, China’s emissions grew by 565 million tonnes (to 12.6 billion tonnes), which is like adding an Indonesia or Saudi Arabia. China is also home to 16 of the 20 global regions most vulnerable to climate change and impacts such as rising sea levels, according to risk analysts XDI. Economic powerhouse Jiangsu was ranked the world’s most vulnerable territory, with Shandong in second place.
More coal than ever
Nearly 60% of all the coal burned worldwide is burned in China. And coal is the dirtiest of all fossil fuels. It emits more carbon dioxide per unit of energy than any other fuel, and the air pollution caused by coal is a major public health problem. Air pollution kills two million Chinese every year according to the WHO. Despite China’s huge lead in developing renewable energy, it still relies on coal for 59.6% of total electricity output. The country’s coal usage increased again in 2023 to a new all-time high. A range of factors explain this crazy contradiction. Vested interests inside the CCP and in certain provinces have strong ties to the coal industry and fiercely protect it. Last year, 95% of the world’s new coal power construction was in China.
Geopolitics and “green imperialism”
The US-led Western capitalist countries are “de-risking” from China’s economy and erecting tariff walls against Chinese EVs, batteries, solar panels and other green tech. This is a key battleground within the global imperialist conflict, camouflaged in a “green” mantle. The capitalists’ motives have nothing to do with saving the planet, but rather shielding their own industrial base and economic power, ultimately to be able to wage war. Facing a historic economic slump, Xi Jinping is betting his shirt on manufacturing in “new quality productive forces”. The result is crazy levels of overcapacity and overproduction, which then has to be offloaded overseas. In July, the EU slapped 48% tariffs on some Chinese EVs mimicking the US government, which imposed 100% tariffs in May. Chinese EVs are much cheaper and often better than their rivals’. But the Western capitalists will not allow China’s huge dominance in this sector to wipe out their own auto companies. EVs are not as “green” as the capitalists claim. Twice as much CO2 is emitted in the making of a medium-sized Chinese EV than an equivalent petrol-driven model. Running mainly on coal-power, China’s EV battery factories are heavy emitters.
Gridlock and curtailment
China has built the world’s biggest solar and wind power capacity. But the electricity grid cannot use it. Curtailment – cutting back on output for reasons of potential grid overload – reinforces a structural under-utilisation of renewables in favour of coal. Up to 50-70% of solar generation in Shandong province is curtailed, according to a CCTV report. Hebei and Henan provinces report similar problems. “The grid can no longer consume new energy,” a local official told the SCMP. China’s electrical power market is ‘quasi-feudal’ and fragmented, controlled by regional governments, heavily favouring coal over green alternatives.
Climate armageddon
Global temperatures have broken records for 12 consecutive months. The global average temperature from June 2023 to May this year was 1.63 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average, crossing the 1.5ºC red line for preventing climate disaster. “This string of hottest months will be remembered as comparatively cold,” warned the director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service. Oceans are no longer acting as “climate sinks” – cushioning the world against rising temperatures. The Financial Times reports that in the past 15 months, “Global sea surface temperatures have reached and stayed at record levels, fuelling heatwaves and melting sea ice”. Water temperatures in the north Atlantic were “beyond extreme” it said. One effect is a more explosive Atlantic hurricane season. Hurricane Beryl, which hit Mexico and Texas in July, was the earliest maximum-severity storm on record.
Droughts, food shortages and famine, fuelled by global warming will impact billions of people, a UN report. It said that up to one in five Chinese people could be affected by severe drought in the 21st century. The capitalist system has locked humankind onto a disaster course – governments and big corporations have nothing but empty talk and pro-rich policies that further sabotage the planet’s future. Only system change, to remake the entire system of production on socialist environmentally sustainable lines, can break humanity away from capitalism’s disaster course.
Climate war is class war
The richest 1% of humanity (77 million people) is responsible for more CO2 emissions than the poorest 66% (5 billion people), according to research by Oxfam and the Stockholm Environment Institute. The extra carbon produced by this “polluter elite” will cause 1.3 million heat-related deaths in the years ahead. The super-rich have an obese carbon footprint – with mansions, superyachts and private jets. Africa, which is home to roughly one in six of the world population, causes just 4% of global emissions.
To understand the climate catastrophe and what has to be done, we must see that it’s the capitalist profit system that is the root cause. Climate protests and activism must take aim at the economic system: to show the urgency of revolutionary change to dispossess the “polluter elite” capitalist class and place the economy and all big companies under public ownership and democratic working class control. Only such a socialist green plan can save the planet.
