“All warfare is based on deception.” - Sun Tzu
Soon after the start of WW2, the Trout Memo was circulated amongst British intelligence comparing military deception to fly fishing strategies. The memo’s 28th idea (they must’ve liked fly fishing) on how enemies could be fooled like a trout was the inspiration for “Operation Mincemeat,” a ploy designed to conceal the Allies’ intention to invade Sicily.
The seizure of Sicily was considered an obvious next target for the Allies, given its access to Mediterranean sea routes and continental Europe. The “bait” in the operation was a deceased British Officer that drifted onto Spanish shores after a plane crash carrying documents implying that the Allies would soon invade Greece and Sardinia. In reality, there was no plane crash and the “British Officer” was a deceased homeless man carrying completely fabricated documents.
After it made its way to and through German intelligence, Hitler swallowed the bait and moved extensive military operations away from Sicily and to Greece and Sardinia. In July 1943, the Allies invaded Sicily with nearly 160,000 men and met little resistance. In addition to saving thousands of Allied soldiers’ lives, Operation Mincemeat helped turn the tide of WW2 toward an Allied victory.
The role of deception has long been valued in military operations, but perhaps no more so than in China. Being such a veteran fly fisher in the sea of geopolitics, China has had little issue duping the United States into swimming towards bait attached to a pointy hook.
Dismal education around the basic physics and value of energy has led many Americans🐑🐑🐑 to the conclusion that there’s an urgent need to get rid of fossil fuels and switch to renewable energy - namely wind, solar, and batteries. The bait of cheap, planet-saving renewable energy is leading directly to the accumulation of economic and geopolitical power for Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Renewable energy for thee, power for mee.
Let’s take what China is doing vs what they say they’re doing in turn.
Over the past few decades, China’s economic boom has been nothing short of astounding. Since 1980, nearly a billion of its citizens have been lifted out of abject poverty. To power this growth, China’s aggregate energy consumption has gone from 1/4th of the United States’ to close to 2x. To put this boom into perspective, over a three year period (2011-2013), China used more cement than the United States consumed in the entire 20th century. That’s a lot of cement😦.
While the growth of China’s aggregate energy consumption is insane, they’re just getting started. To understand why, translate aggregate energy use to energy use per capita:
Energy powers machines and machines make stuff. Access to stuff, no matter where it falls on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, depends on access to affordable and reliable energy. While we are able to produce more with less energy as technology and manufacturing evolve, per capita energy consumption is nearly a direct measure of a society’s per capita standard of living.
In the decades to come, China will continue to increase its per capita energy by focusing on developing affordable and reliable energy. Why? China cannot grow its geopolitical power without first ensuring domestic stability. Say what you will about him, but CCP general secretary Xi Jinping understands that a) sustained economic growth strengthens his political foothold and b) sustained economic growth only persists with access to abundant, cost-effective energy. To power the growth still to come, China will continue to use the most cost-effective energy that it can get its hands on.
But wait a second, isn’t renewable energy the cheapest form of energy? And if not, won’t it be soon? There are two ways to attack these questions. One way would be to evaluate the questions literally as proposed. Sounds boring. The second, faster way is to simply look at the energy infrastructure that China is building. If you buy the argument that China will prioritize affordability over everything else, you can glean quick insight into their view on various energy sources. With that lens, it’s indisputable that China’s energy strategy continues to be centered around fossil fuels as it permitted more coal power plants last year than at any time in the last seven years. The coal buildout is equivalent to about two per week and 6x more than the rest of the world… combined.
But wait a second. Isn’t it more important to look at the growth rate of solar and wind? In the five years ending in 2021, China’s growth in fossil fuel usage for primary energy was just 16% while the growth rate in wind and solar was over 212%! While tempting and seductive, drawing conclusions from this difference is terribly misleading. During this same timeframe, the aggregate growth in fossil fuel usage was nearly 3x the growth of solar and wind. It’s easy for a growth rate to seem impressive when the starting number is so small.
But wait a second. Hasn’t China committed to reaching peak carbon emissions by 2030? The empty rhetoric is as painstakingly obvious as it is frustratingly embarrassing that we believe it. Should you trust an authoritarian regime that utilizes forced labor and implements a draconian surveillance state and social credit system? At the very least, you should be a suspicious fish.
In April 2021, Xi Jinping told a Leader’s Summit on Climate that:
“China will strictly control coal-fired power generation projects, and strictly limit the increase in coal consumption over the 14th Five-Year Plan period [2021-2025] and phase it down in the 15th Five-Year Plan period [2026-2030].”
Fast forward two years and it doesn’t exactly seem like China is limiting coal consumption as promised🤔. So why the empty rhetoric if Xi knew China would be doing the exact opposite of phasing down coal usage? While it might be easy to toss it aside as overly optimistic or self-serving political speak, there is a more pernicious explanation: power (energy pun ☑️). China is making Western economies increasingly dependent on their fossil-fueled domination of the renewable energy supply chain.
To make matters worse, the United States is running faster and faster into this conundrum. Why? The cost of producing electricity from renewables is continuing an inevitable cost decline, the climate crisis is here, and reaching net zero carbon emissions ASAP is necessary to save the planet. Cheap, planet-saving energy is pretty tasty bait.
As it relates to China and the “energy transition,” media propaganda plays to a deep-seated American insecurity: losing. We are losing to China. They are eating our lunch and winning the energy transition. Get out of your lazy boy, wipe the spaghetti sauce off of your pajamas, deploy renewables as fast as possible, and rapidly divest away from all fossil fuel infrastructure.
What does this pro-American, beat-China energy strategy entail? Relying on China. China is to the renewable energy supply chain as the 1990s Chicago Bulls were to the NBA - dominant. Take it from the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) Energy Technology Perspectives 2023 report (emphasis added):
“China currently dominates the manufacturing and trade of most clean energy technologies.
For mass-manufactured technologies like wind, batteries, electrolysers, solar panels and heat pumps, the three largest producer countries account for at least 70% of manufacturing capacity for each technology – with China dominant in all of them.
The majority of announced projects for the processing and refining of key critical minerals are set to be located in China. These midstream processes tend to be energy-intensive. China accounts for 80% of the announced additional production capacity to 2030 for copper and dominates announced refining capacity of key metals used in batteries (95% for cobalt, and around 60% for lithium and nickel).
Solar panels, windmills, and batteries don’t just appear out of thin air, they have to be made and the processes to do so can be incredibly energy intensive. Solar panels don’t make solar panels. Develop coal plants, make solar panels with coal energy, sell solar panels to the United States, rinse, repeat. Doomberg, a must-subscribe with consistently thoughtful energy pieces, frames the situation surrounding solar particularly well:
“For the past several decades, administrations from both political parties have overseen an unprecedented gutting in the US manufacturing base, leaving wide open the opportunity for geopolitical foes to fill the void in requisite supply chains. Nowhere is this more evident than in the solar industry where China leveraged dirty coal, slave labor, and aggressive import duties on key intermediate goods to illegally support its domestic manufacturing base. Allowing China to flood the market with artificially cheap product put significant pressure on global competitors. As a result, China has achieved near-monopoly status at several important manufacturing steps in the chain, putting many Western manufacturers out of business in the process.”
What seems like cleaner, more affordable energy is just bait that is leading to a situation where our energy is more expensive and the supply chains to produce it are entirely reliant on China. To say that we’re asleep at the wheel would be doing a disservice to the skill of sleeping drivers.
“♡ Like” if you ain’t a fish
Thanks for taking the effort to write this. Very good summary of what is actually happening.