Another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please.
I’m now using Substack as a blogging platform, and for my monthly email newsletter. For the moment, I’ll post both at this blog and on Substack. You can also follow me on Mastodon here.
John Quiggin 
Non-news fromChina
https://johnquiggin.com/2025/07/07/monday-message-board-689/comment-page-1/#comment-265962
We now have the official Q3 2025 numbers on the main components of China’s energy transition. Here are the y.o.y. changes from Q1, Q2 and Q2 2024, physical units apart from GDP:
2025 over 2024******** Q1 ******** Q2 *********** Q3 ****
Thermal generation___ – 4.31 % ____+ 0.42 %_______+ 0.69%
Electricity__________ + 1.58 %____ + 3.16 %_______+ 3.71%
Coal_______________ + 9.17 %____ + 4.55 %_______- 1.53%
Natural gas _________ + 4.30 %____+ 7.36 %_______+ 7.71%
Gasoline___________ – 6.54 %_____ – 9.17 %_______- 5.08%
Pig Iron____________ + 1.24 %____ – 6.12 %_______+ 0.16%
Cement____________ – 2.47 %_____ – 1.64 %______ – 3.29%
GDP at constant prices + 5.4 % ____ + 5.2 %______+ 4.8 %
The disappointing news is that thermal generation, mainly from coal, continued to tick up very slightly in Q3: essentially a plateau. The bulk of the steady increase in demand for electricity is met by renewables, but we have not yet seen the start of a sustained fall in coal burning. If you want some straws of cheer to clutch at, the y-o-y change in thermal generation for September alone was a drop of 5.1 %, against an on-trend growth in electricity demand of 3.0 %. This is consistent with a real downturn in coal and GHG emissions, but could be noise. We have to wait till January for confirmation.
On the plus side, the metronomic fall in gasoline consumption continued, set by the switch to electric vehicles. There is also no sign of a recovery in the old heavy industrial sectors of steel and cement, meaning construction. The peculiar miniboom in coal output, unanchored by demand, has stopped. Xi does not have an alternative to betting on new green technologies, in which China is doing just fine.
It you want a deeper analysis with the glass half full, go to Ember: https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/china-energy-transition-review-2025/ For a glass half empty, try Carbon Tracker: https://climateactiontracker.org/countries/china/
OT, a couple of non-Chinese innovations on electric motors that could become significant:
– Korean researchers have built a toy motor using windings of carbon nanotubes, from an overabundant raw material rather than constrained copper: https://drivesncontrols.com/lightweight-motor-uses-carbon-nanotubes-instead-of-metal-windings/
– YASA, a British-based boutique subsidiary of Mercedes, has pushed its axial flux electric motor technology (don’t ask me) to a new record power density of 59 Kw/kg: https://electrek.co/2025/10/22/yasa-record-power-density-axial-flux-motor/ . Mercedes’ high-performance skunk works is working on a supercar for rich male idiots with 1 Mw of power, a practically useless ten times the perfectly adequate 100 Kw of my quite nimble Hyundai Kona. Lighter is always better though, especially in aircraft and drones.
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Grinding, totally unnecessary poverty has high costs to individuals, families, society and the whole economy. Gee, whoda thunk it?
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10-28/cheaper-to-end-poverty-increase-jobseeker-than-maintain-hardship/105866692
In Brisbane’s first serious storm of the season, on Sunday, at least 60,000 homes lost power. At least 11,000 insurance claims have been made.
I wonder what proportion of that damage was due to falling trees and branches as opposed to other issues like wind, hail and water damage which occurred without tree damage? I also wonder what proportion of damage is attributable to inadequate design, materials and construction.
I am not sure if comprehensive analysis of contributing factors to storm damage is being done. It should be done. With increasing frequency and intensity of storms our structures, infrastructures and general built environment mixed with large trees are being stress tested beyond their limits. The new levels of episodic damage signal that our built environment is inadequate to the new challenges.
To meet these new challenges, certain shibboleths, fashions and methods of creating and living in a built environment will likely need to be questioned and changed, after data collection and analysis of course. I suspect, among other things, that we need new zoning laws, new construction laws and even new tree laws.
Getting new zoning laws and new construction laws brought in would no doubt run foul of the power of developers. Getting new tree laws brought in would no doubt run foul of the facile, knee-jerk greenie-ism which does not understand the new dangers and risks we face. Every tree is sacred, even a tree in the wrong place. This has to change in my opinion. Large trees looming over houses, power lines and other infrastructure cause more damage than enhanced value in the long run. We need more trees overall. We need less trees in the wrong places.
But first up, the data collection and analysis of storm damage needs to occur. Then people have to free their minds of certain shibboleths. Will any action happen on this? My guess is no. The building, construction and developers industries have too much hold over governments. Political donations, grey gifts and grift. We know how it all happens in our now generally corrupted political economy. We will never meet climate challenges in our current shape.