Bit of a tangent, but I find it a bit funny when people say what China’s doing in Africa isn’t colonialism, because they’re investing billions in infrastructure.
Imagine if the British government defended the brutal colonisation of India, by going on about how much they’d invested in the railways they used to ship out all the resources they plundered.
Electricity sector in India shows growth of fossil fuel plants has been shrinking: 2017 had 22.94% YoY increase in fossil fuel electricity generation while 2018 was 2.05% increase and 2023 was 0.49% increase.
The extraordinary cheapness of solar is putting to death a lot of fossil fuel generation, especially in tropical/subtropical areas that naturally get lots of sun and especially especially for sectors that can tolerate inconstant energy (which India kind of can, based on the fact that their current grid is already not that reliable).
Coal is already economically lousy. Absent some kind of subsidy – whether a domestic or foreign one – or having your own source of very cheap coal, it doesn’t make sense. Even in the US southeast, where there is plentiful coal, coal plants are being decommissioned because of how uneconomical they are for the utilities.
Which is why it is so disturbing that China is funding projects like coal plants in Africa. They’re foisting extremely expensive, dirty power generation onto these countries in order to maintain markets for their coal. When they COULD be pushing for very cheap renewable projects… for which they would still be the exporter. Not to even get into whether or not these plants are consistently doing things like mitigating toxic flyash.
Indeed, it’s wild that they’re seemingly propping up their 88th of 124 export industry that has so many known harmful effects. Presumably these coal plants come with long term purchase requirements from China, otherwise I’d assume the host countries would just let them sit idle.
Imagine if the British government defended the brutal colonisation of India, by going on about how much they’d invested in the railways they used to ship out all the resources they plundered.
There’s no need to imagine. This argument gets made the time . The British unified India, gave it a railway, a public service , etc. They did actually build infrastructure. People have been using this to justify British colonialism in India for over a century. Before that few in the west thought colonialism required justification. The British built these things in order to make wealthy extraction from their colonies as efficient as possible.
Bit of a tangent, but I find it a bit funny when people say what China’s doing in Africa isn’t colonialism, because they’re investing billions in infrastructure.
Imagine if the British government defended the brutal colonisation of India, by going on about how much they’d invested in the railways they used to ship out all the resources they plundered.
China’s also building craploads of things like coal power plants in order to force longterm dependency on an expensive and bad commodity.
It’s definitely mercantilism.
I wanted to educate myself a little here:
Electricity sector in India shows growth of fossil fuel plants has been shrinking: 2017 had 22.94% YoY increase in fossil fuel electricity generation while 2018 was 2.05% increase and 2023 was 0.49% increase.
https://energyandcleanair.org/publication/india-enters-an-unnecessary-coal-plant-permitting-spree-in-2023/ Says that ~35GWh of coal production is permitted, pre-permitted, or announced. Which would be ~13% growth in fossil fuel use, a large increase in rate compared to the year previous.
The linked article states the plants in construction are already excessive (according to India’s National Energy Plan), as would be any future plants.
What’s not clear is that any of these built plants will come online or be used at all.
The extraordinary cheapness of solar is putting to death a lot of fossil fuel generation, especially in tropical/subtropical areas that naturally get lots of sun and especially especially for sectors that can tolerate inconstant energy (which India kind of can, based on the fact that their current grid is already not that reliable).
Coal is already economically lousy. Absent some kind of subsidy – whether a domestic or foreign one – or having your own source of very cheap coal, it doesn’t make sense. Even in the US southeast, where there is plentiful coal, coal plants are being decommissioned because of how uneconomical they are for the utilities.
Which is why it is so disturbing that China is funding projects like coal plants in Africa. They’re foisting extremely expensive, dirty power generation onto these countries in order to maintain markets for their coal. When they COULD be pushing for very cheap renewable projects… for which they would still be the exporter. Not to even get into whether or not these plants are consistently doing things like mitigating toxic flyash.
Indeed, it’s wild that they’re seemingly propping up their 88th of 124 export industry that has so many known harmful effects. Presumably these coal plants come with long term purchase requirements from China, otherwise I’d assume the host countries would just let them sit idle.
There’s no need to imagine. This argument gets made the time . The British unified India, gave it a railway, a public service , etc. They did actually build infrastructure. People have been using this to justify British colonialism in India for over a century. Before that few in the west thought colonialism required justification. The British built these things in order to make wealthy extraction from their colonies as efficient as possible.