GWPF | 17 April 2015
India To Become Fastest Growing Country, Overtaking China
India is set to overtake China as the biggest importer of power-station coal. Indian thermal-coal imports will surpass China’s by 2017 or sooner, Bloomberg Intelligence analysts William Foiles and Andrew Cosgrove said in a report. China, the world’s biggest energy consumer, is cutting down on coal use to fight pollution. India and its regional peers including Indonesia, Vietnam, Japan and South Korea plan to increase their combined coal-fired generating capacity by more than 204 gigawatts, or 60%, through 2019, as per the report. —Bloomberg, 17 April 2015
India has announced that it will double its coal use by 2020, in the process overtaking the U.S. as the world’s second largest coal consumer after China. The International Energy Agency predicts that global coal demand, along with that of oil and gas, will still be rising in 2040, when fossil fuels will account for three-quarters of energy use. Asia in particular is destined for an enormous burst of coal investment. A great deal of the funding will likely come from the new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, AIIB, an initiative promoted by China in the face of staunch U.S. opposition. The AIIB initiative – and its boost to coal-fired funding – leaves the U.S. president looking even more lonely on the geopolitical shore, a lame duck Canute vainly commanding the seas — and smokestacks — not to rise. –Peter Foster, Financial Post 17 April 2015
1) India To Overtake China As The World’s Biggest Coal Importer – Bloomberg, 17 April 2015
2) India To Become Fastest Growing Country, Overtaking China, IMF Predicts – The Hindu, 15 April 2015
3) Peter Foster: Why Coal Looms Large In India’s Future – Financial Post 17 April 2015
4) Steven Hayward: Narendra Modi’s Energy Realism – Power Line, 16 April 2015
5) Robert Bryce: The Environmentalists’ Civil War – National Review, 17 April 2015
6) America’s $7 Billion A Year Green Industrial Complex – Ecofascism blog, 16 April 2015
The International Monetary Fund on Tuesday forecast India’s growth to strengthen from 7.2 per cent in 2014 to 7.5 per cent in both 2015 and 2016, overtaking China’s growth — for the first time since 1999 — that it projected will slow down to 6.8 per cent. The country is attempting to shift from consumption to investment-led growth, at a time when China is undergoing the opposite transition, the Bank said in its bi-annual South Asia Economic Focus report. –Puja Mehra, The Hindu, 15 April 2015
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi is typically called “controversial” or “divisive,” which means the liberal establishment of India and internationally doesn’t like him. I don’t know if he deserves the accolade as the “Ronald Reagan of India,” but I hear he has some reformist instincts about opening up India’s economy and fighting corruption. One thing his government has done is tell Obama and the UN to go stuff it on climate change. While India mouths a few platitudes, for the most part they talk sense, saying they’re going to increase coal production, for example. –Steven Hayward, Power Line, 16 April 2015
It’s a manifesto smackdown, a fight among the members of the green Left for the intellectual and moral high ground. It’s also a fight that reflects the growing schism within American environmentalism. On one side are the pro-energy, pro-density humanists. On the opposite side are the anti-energy, pro-sprawl absolutists. The group’s backers — who include former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg — have pledged some $60 million in funding for the effort, which aims to shutter half of U.S. coal plants by 2017. –Robert Bryce, National Review, 17 April 2015
A loose affiliation of millionaires and billionaires presides over a vast well-knit network of like-minded funders, government bureaucrats, and enviro-activists who manufacture phony grassroots campaigns and churn out bogus propaganda disguised as science and journalism in an effort to control economic decision-making across America. Between 2000 and 2012 some 26,500 distinct US-based environmental NGOs collected revenues of $81 billion ($6.6 billion per year). Having seized branches of government, they now lavish tax dollars upon the ENGOs. This enviro-regulatory regime is being gamed by rent-seeking crony capitalists from the renewable energy and pollution control industries who now number among environmentalism’s principal cheerleaders. –William Walter Kay, Ecofascism blog, 16 April 2015
1) India To Overtake China As The World’s Biggest Coal Importer
Bloomberg, 17 April 2015
India is set to overtake China as the biggest importer of power-station coal, emerging as the leader of a clutch of regional nations that miners including Glencore Plc and BHP Billiton Ltd can tap for new orders.
Indian thermal-coal imports will surpass China’s by 2017 or sooner, Bloomberg Intelligence analysts William Foiles and Andrew Cosgrove said in a report. China, the world’s biggest energy consumer, is cutting down on coal use to fight pollution.
India and its regional peers including Indonesia, Vietnam, Japan and South Korea plan to increase their combined coal-fired generating capacity by more than 204 gigawatts, or 60%, through 2019, as per the report.
Still, that may not be enough to trigger a price rally. A decline in coal supplies from Indonesia, the biggest exporter, and the gap between India’s demand and local output will help shape the outlook for thermal-coal prices, the analysts said.
“India will have the largest impact on seaborne thermal coal markets as lofty domestic production targets battle with likely swelling imports due to a wave of new demand from new generation plants,” Bloomberg Intelligence said.
State-run monopoly Coal India Ltd, which produces more than 80% of the nation’s coal, has said it will double output to about 1 billion tonnes in five years. That means almost doubling the pace of growth in its annual production. India’s thermal-coal demand will probably increase 42% to 1 billion tonnes in the six years to 2020, according to the report.
2) India To Become Fastest Growing Country, Overtaking China, IMF Predicts
The Hindu, 15 April 2015
Puja Mehra
The International Monetary Fund on Tuesday forecast India’s growth to strengthen from 7.2 per cent in 2014 to 7.5 per cent in both 2015 and 2016, overtaking China’s growth — for the first time since 1999 — that it projected will slow down to 6.8 per cent.
The World Bank too projected India’s growth to accelerate to 7.5 per cent in 2015, but added that on the back of significant acceleration of investment, growth could even reach 8 per cent in 2017-18. The country is attempting to shift from consumption to investment-led growth, at a time when China is undergoing the opposite transition, the Bank said in its bi-annual South Asia Economic Focus report.
Both the World Bank and the IMF’s projections for the current year are less optimistic than that of the Reserve Bank. The Central Bank-projected growth in 2015-16 (7.8 per cent) will be barely 30 bps faster than in 2014-15 (7.5 per cent) last week in its first bi-monthly monetary policy statement of 2015-16. At 8.1 per cent to 8.5 per cent, the Modi government’s growth projection for this year is the most optimistic.
Speaking to reporters after the release of the Outlook, IMF Chief Economist Olivier Blanchard said there was an increasing divergence in the growth paths of the world’s major economies this year, as a pick-up in the euro zone and India is expected to be offset by diminished prospects in other key emerging markets.
3) Peter Foster: Why Coal Looms Large In India’s Future
Financial Post 17 April 2015
The AIIB is rightly seen as a challenge to the World Bank
Narendra Modi is the first Indian Prime Minister to visit Canada since Indira Ghandi. For much of the intervening period, relations were sticky because of that unfortunate business of India using Canadian technology to manufacture nuclear weapons. At the same time, India’s growth was held back by poor economic policies and widespread corruption, much of it soaked in socialist cant.
Those lousy policies also go back to Mrs. Ghandi. Mr. Modi is rightly seen as a breath of fresh air, even if he inevitably has to play the hypocritical game of global realpolitik.
The alleged landmark deal of Mr. Modi’s visit is India’s $350 million purchase of Saskatchewan uranium. This both symbolically buries the bomb issue, and enables Mr. Modi to trumpet his country’s commitment to “sustainable development,” even as SD is increasingly exposed for the unworkable non-concept that it is.
The notion first emerged at the 1972 UN conference on the environment in Stockholm. Conceived by British intellectual Barbara Ward, who thought the Industrial Revolution had been a mistake, SD’s conceit was that poor nations had to grow while avoiding free markets and fossil fuels.
Mrs. Gandhi gave the keynote speech in Stockholm. She blamed the profit motive for wrecking the environment and keeping people poor. Mr. Modi is clearly of a more market-friendly orientation, even as he continues to pay lip service to sustainability. Indeed, he suggested that the uranium deal was part of “saving the world” from the climate change. With respect, India’s role in such salvation comes on a pretty small scale.
India currently derives less than 4% of its electricity from nuclear energy, and although it has announced bold plans to expand this to 25% by 2050, 2050 is a long way off. For the immediate future, India has announced that it will double its coal use by 2020, in the process overtaking the U.S. as the world’s second largest coal consumer after China.
The International Energy Agency predicts that global coal demand, along with that of oil and gas, will still be rising in 2040, when fossil fuels will account for three-quarters of energy use. Asia in particular is destined for an enormous burst of coal investment. A great deal of the funding will likely come from the new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, AIIB, an initiative promoted by China in the face of staunch U.S. opposition.
The AIIB is rightly seen as a challenge to the World Bank, an institution traditionally dominated by the U.S., and better known for development failure than success. Anti-fossil fuel bias has permeated funding decisions, to the cost of developing countries. Fifteen years ago, the World Bank’s Extractive Industries Review suggested that the World Bank should get out of funding petroleum and coal investment altogether. It didn’t, but opposition to fossil fuel funding has continued, popping up most recently in new forms such as the Divestment Movement.
There’s a sound case to be made that institutions such as the World Bank and the AIIB shouldn’t exist at all, since all they do is politicize investment decisions. Still, if multinational development institutions are actually concerned with development, they need to invest in coal, which offers the quickest and most effective means of alleviating poverty.
Japan recently came in for massive criticism from the environmental movement for using the Green Climate Fund for high-tech coal plants. However, even Yvo de Boer, the former head of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, has supported Japan’s move and the use of coal.
The Post’s Gordon Isfeld reported this week that Canada is considering participation in the AIIB, but is concerned that the new bank “will meet the same high standards as similar international institutions.” The problem is that those standards have been biased against fossil fuels.
Given that so many of Canada’s allies, such as Britain and Australia, have signed onto the AIIB, Mr. Harper certainly wouldn’t be going out of a limb in participating. Indeed, it might send a salutary message to Mr. Obama, whose policies have damaged Canada beyond the hold-up of Keystone XL.
Concern about possible U.S. green trade sanctions has led Canada to mirror, and even get in front of, costly and pointless initiatives. For example, while Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall was welcoming the Indian uranium deal this week, he was also claiming how great the province’s heavily-subsidized venture in sequestering coal emissions had been. These claims look a little shaky given that his neighbour, Alberta Premier Jim Prentice, has given up on carbon capture and storage. Still, if you believe the Ecofiscal Commission, what Canada needs is lots of such cross-purpose provincial policy posturing.
Mr. Obama’s domestic coal policies are more unconstitutional than merely contentious. The U.S./Chinese climate “agreement” signed late last year – in which the Chinese conceded nothing — indicated his desperation to make climate his legacy issue. The AIIB initiative – and its boost to coal-fired funding – leaves the U.S. president looking even more lonely on the geopolitical shore, a lame duck Canute vainly commanding the seas — and smokestacks — not to rise.
Mr. Obama must long for the good old days when, like Prime Minister Modi, he was greeted as a “rock star” in Canada. Now he has put himself between a coal seam and a hard place.
4) Steven Hayward: Narendra Modi’s Energy Realism
Power Line, 16 April 2015
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi is typically called “controversial” or “divisive,” which means the liberal establishment of India and internationally doesn’t like him. I don’t know if he deserves the accolade as the “Ronald Reagan of India,” but I hear he has some reformist instincts about opening up India’s economy and fighting corruption.
One thing his government has done is tell Obama and the UN to go stuff it on climate change. While India mouths a few platitudes to keep the door open in case Western nations actually cough up $100 billion a year in “climate aid” bribes (that’s the price developing nations have demanded at recent UN climate summits), for the most part they talk sense, saying they’re going to increase coal production, for example. Reuters reported last week:
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi signaled on Monday he would not bow to foreign pressure to commit to cuts in carbon emissions, instead pledging to use more clean energy and traditional methods to lead the fight against climate change.
“The world guides us on climate change and we follow them? The world sets the parameters and we follow them? It is not like that,” Modi said at an event in Delhi. . .
The Indian government has said it needs to emit more to industrialize and lift millions out of poverty.
India may build some clean energy, but they’re also going to build a lot more . . . coal:
Modi Looks to Double Coal Production by 2020
NEW DELHI — Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government aims to double Indian coal production to 1.5 billion tons by 2020. India needs more fuel to meet rapidly growing demand for electricity.
Full post
5) Robert Bryce: The Environmentalists’ Civil War
National Review, 17 April 2015
It’s a manifesto smackdown, a fight among the members of the green Left for the intellectual and moral high ground. It’s also a fight that reflects the growing schism within American environmentalism.
On one side are the pro-energy, pro-density humanists. They call themselves ecomodernists and are led by the Breakthrough Institute, a centrist, Oaklandbased environmental group. On Wednesday, it released what it describes as an “ecomodernist manifesto“ a document that, at root, states the obvious: Economic development is essential for environmental protection.
On the opposite side are the anti-energy, pro-sprawl absolutists. Their views are evident in the ongoing protests this week in Harvard Yard. A group called Divest Harvard is pushing the Harvard Corporation, the school’s governing body, to divest the school’s $36 billion endowment of any investments in companies that provide coal, oil, and natural gas to consumers. This group’s manifesto, issued in February, demonizes energy use.
The absolutists like to use the squishy term “climate justice.” They believe that the threat of climate change trumps all other concerns, including the welfare of people living in energy poverty. For the absolutists, the only path to salvation is through the exclusive use of renewable energy. And in that regard, Divest Harvard falls smack in the middle of mainstream liberal-left environmentalism in America.
The anti-energy, pro-sprawl absolutists — a designation that, in my view, fits the Sierra Club, 350.org, Greenpeace, and Natural Resources Defense Council — are antinuclear, anti-hydrocarbon, and anti– hydraulic fracturing. They routinely peddle slogans such as “fossil-free” and continually claim that we can rely solely on increased efficiency and renewable energy. They push these claims despite overwhelming evidence from Germany and Japan that shuttering nuclear power plants and relying too much on renewables results in higher electricity prices and decreased reliability. (For more on that, see this April 13 Reuters piece about the potential shuttering of dozens of conventional power plants in Germany.)
The absolutists are anti-energy. In a Divest Harvard video posted on YouTube, the group stated that its goal is to “stigmatize the fossil fuel industry.” The absolutists try to do that all the time. Just last week, the Sierra Club announced the expansion of its “beyond coal” campaign.
The group’s backers — who include former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg — have pledged some $60 million in funding for the effort, which aims to shutter half of U.S. coal plants by 2017. Celebrating the fundraising effort, the group’s executive director, Michael Brune, declared, “Dirty, outdated, deadly coal is a thing of the past.”
Never mind that coal remains the world’s fastest-growing source of energy and that it has been the fastest-growing source of energy since 1973. Never mind that countries from Germany to Bangladesh are building hundreds of gigawatts of coal-fired power plants. Never mind that the United States has more coal reserves than any other country does. Coal must be stigmatized.
Based on the logic that the Sierra Club and Divest Harvard put forward, companies such as Coal India Limited must be stigmatized. Coal India is deemed untouchable because it provides coal to generation stations in a poverty-stricken country that gets about 70 percent of its power from coal. Coal India provides fuel to 82 of India’s 86 coal-fired generators. Therefore, it must be stigmatized. Never mind that more than 300 million Indians — a group approximately equal to the entire population of the United States — lack access to electricity.
To be clear, the absolutists at Divest Harvard don’t mention Coal India in their manifesto. But the open letter published in midFebruary and signed by about three dozen Harvard graduates — including 350.org founder Bill McKibben, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., author Susan Faludi, former U.S. senator Tim Wirth, and actress Natalie Portman — condemns investment in what it calls the “dirtiest energy companies on the planet.”
The manifesto lays bare Divest Harvard’s anti-human outlook. They write: “Global warming is the greatest threat the planet faces. . . . This issue demands we all make changes to business as usual — especially those of us who have prospered from the systems driving climate change.”
Who might be included in “those of us who have prospered” from the use of coal, oil, and natural gas — fuels that, when burned, emit carbon dioxide and therefore contribute to climate change? My back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that it would include nearly every person in America, (approximately 319 million), as well as anyone who has ever made money by taking a car, bus, plane, or ship to work, baked a loaf of bread, or delivered a piano.
In all, the number of who’ve prospered thanks to the availability of hydrocarbons probably totals 3 billion to 4 billion people. Despite energy poverty that afflicts hundreds of millions of people in countries such as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Indonesia (all of which, by the way, are in the process of adding huge amounts of new coal-fired generation capacity), the absolutists equate energy use with evil.
In their February manifesto, the absolutists claim that selling the Harvard’s investments in hydrocarbon producers will make the school “accountable for the future” and that the school should divest because “Harvard eventually divested from apartheid, from tobacco, and from the genocide in Darfur.”
By comparing energy producers (and therefore, energy consumers) with the people involved in racist repression and mass murder, the absolutists are, in effect, saying that consumers who use gasoline, diesel fuel, natural gas, or coal-fired electricity are as morally bankrupt as those who aided racial repression and mass murder.
This is nonsense on stilts.
6) America’s $7 Billion A Year Green Movement
Ecofascism blog, 16 April 2015
William Walter Kay
A loose affiliation of millionaires and billionaires presides over a vast well-knit network of like-minded funders, government bureaucrats, and enviro-activists who manufacture phony grassroots campaigns and churn out bogus propaganda disguised as science and journalism in an effort to control economic decision-making across America. Between 2000 and 2012 some 26,500 distinct US-based environmental NGOs collected revenues of $81 billion ($6.6 billion per year).
The green billionaires oversee America’s environmental movement which in turn steers major policy decisions and lobbies to further empower ideologically aligned government agencies, like the Environment Protection Agency (EPA), that are statutorily prohibited from lobbying on their own behalves.
Supposedly unbiased agencies like the EPA are run by career environmentalists who work hand-in-glove with their allies in the environmentalist non-governmental organization (ENGO) community. Members of this green state elite have no experience as elected politicians nor in business nor in labour. They are bureaucrats, academics, and former ENGO activists. Having seized branches of government, they now lavish tax dollars upon the ENGOs. Obama’s Administration is unprecedentedly stacked with closed-minded enviro-activists.
American environmentalism’s current agenda centres on aggressively tightening regulations on the coal and oil industries to evermore controversial levels. These and other environmental regulations cost businesses and consumers tens of billions of dollars a year. This enviro-regulatory regime is being gamed by rent-seeking crony capitalists from the renewable energy and pollution control industries who now number among environmentalism’s principal cheerleaders.
Environmentalism’s victories come at the expense of American workers and small businesses. Enviro-regulations cause unemployment, and unemployment undermines the health and well-being of ordinary Americans. Environmentalism consolidates wealth and power into the hands of the already wealthy and powerful. Environmentalism hurts the poor.
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If the above passage seems eccentric, overly antagonistic, and perhaps a tad radical, then you are in for a surprise. The above passage is a faithful synopsis of an assessment of environmentalism widely held by members of the United States Republican Party.
This posting condenses and collates four publications from late 2014; two written by Republican staffers employed by the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works; and two published by Republican-allied free-market think-tanks.
