China's renewable boom masks a quiet Coal-to-Liquids expansion

India [0], Indonesia [1], Australia [2] (thanks to India [3]), and others are also doing this. And other states like Vietnam [4] and Brazil [5] are also expanding their coal footprint.

A number of high value industrial products like fertilizers and steel have a carbon dependency that cannot be alleviated and which most of those states are expanding.

If current intensity holds til 2050 (and based on infrastructure and manufacturing dealflow in ASEAN, India, and the GCC it will), we are breaking the 2.1*C threshold by then.

It is NOT fatalistic or doomerism to accept that. This needs to be assumed as the base case because most climate projections are heavily optimistic.

[0] - https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/india-clears-4-billi...

[1] - https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/indonesia-offer-ener...

[2] - https://www.energymining.sa.gov.au/industry/energy-resources...

[3] - https://www.pm.gov.au/media/collaborating-india-energy-and-r...

[4] - https://vnexpress.net/viet-nam-se-khai-thac-thu-nghiem-be-th...

[5] - https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/why-coal-still-cling...

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Gibbon1 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I've been wondering about that, South Africa has a lot of coal to gasoline/diesel. Developed during the apartheid era to bypass international oil embargoes.

Places with good insolation could probably use green hydrogen + coal to produce fuels. Considering how much gasoline is taxed they probably could make it pencil out by adjusting fuel taxes.

> industrial products like fertilizers and steel have a carbon dependency that cannot be alleviated and which most of those states are expanding.

When I run the numbers I don't see that. Ammonia is about 18% Hydrogen. Using green hydrogen would cost $500 per ton of ammonia. Putting it in perspective world production of ammonia is about 25kg per capita.

	▲	alephnerd 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		They are trying, and Green Hydrogen will become a reality with a decade for ammonia production, but steel, cement, and other industrial products still have hard carbon fixation dependencies. Based on dealflow and ongoing projects, most countries are basically assuming 2.1C by 2050 is the reality and as such, they have an incentive to maximize capacity into the late 2030s and early 2040s. Think of it like the NPT - those who rushed nuclear weapons capacity by 2000 succeeded with little-to-no ramifications. You have to remember that we're halfway through 2026, so 2040 is only* a little over 13 years away now, and any global consensus will only begin to seriously be negotiated around then add-subtract 5 years. > When I run the numbers I don't see that. Ammonia is about 18% Hydrogen. Using green hydrogen would cost $500 per ton of ammonia. Putting it in perspective world production of ammonia is about 25kg per capita. Green Ammonia is still 2x the cost of Grey (coal) Ammonia [0]. This difference is starting to fall (eg. in India the price difference is now 10% [1]), but it will stil take a decade for Green Ammonia to definitively become cheaper than Grey Ammonia, and most National Green Hydrogen strategies don't expect mass domestic capacity to finish being built out until the early-to-mid 2030s. And this ignores the fact that non-alloy steel (which is the primary steel used for most domestic infra projects across the world from ASEAN to India to Iran to the GCC to Turkiye to Russia to China) cannot be forged without carbon, and the cheapest input for that is metallurgical grade coal. Everyone is trying to rush as much production capacity as they can before everyone is forced to reach an agreement like the Montreal Protocol even though CFCs impact were know well before it. [0] - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666352X2... [1] - https://jmkresearch.com/green-ammonia-is-only-10-costlier-th...