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Comment by JudasGoat | Hacker News Reader

Is this a byproduct of China punishing Australia for asking for an investigation of the Covid-19 origin?

As far as I can see, the answer is negative. The shortage of electricity this time is believed to result from two factors. On the one hand, the price of coal has increased a lot recently, but the electricity price is only allowed to float by at most 10%. Power generation is now a money-losing business. As a result, there is no motivation for power plants to produce more electricity. On the other hand, the goverment wants to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060, so local goverments at all levels are assigned some KPIs. Because of the return of manufacturing caused by COVID-19 in the first half of the year, many places used up their entire year's worth of emission credits early, so they had to forcibly cut off production.

Wonder if this: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-58026038 (China nuclear: Taishan reactor shut down over damaged fuel rods) is also a factor......

Impact of lack of single reactor is negligible for whole grid.

Depends on the grid - some countries get almost 10% of their power from single reactors. Of course, bigger countries have this less

This is quite a stretch. People commenting "in part", of course in part it is, but is also being ango-centric and ignoring real reasons, banning Australia' import is quite an superficial and insiginicant contributor. The global coal price has been on the rise, that's irrespective if China has the ban or not. Even it does, it's still a quite small percentage in terms of total energy supply. I'd rather not argue on this. Find some significant or likely significant reasons, otherwise we are just focusing on logically indefensible but insignificant aspects of things (80% sure there is a term for it)

Are your refering to Australia coal? The imported coal accounts a small percentage of all coal China burnt for power generation.

They needed 3 billion tonnes, of which 2.7 billion was produced locally. 300m was imported, 30m of which was from Australia. Per the article, their coal needs are going to increase by 10% year-by-year. They're investing in other mines and expanding production, but that's going to take 2-3 years. In the meantime, they're facing an acute shortage, partly due to banning Australian coal.

The prime suspect is actually the grid, and generation capacity itself.

It's a recurring phenomenon every few years.

China doesn't have district heating in Shanghai, and further south, despite climate at around Shanghai latitudes being quit cold. This leads to everybody using electric heaters.

It's like the Texas electricity crisis in USA, except it happens every relatively cold winter in China.

I just looked it up because I was curious. Shanghai average temps seldom reach below freezing [1]. The average January low is 36 degF.

Is it really that big of a problem, then? If so, couldn't the government regulate use of electric heating? It's not like water pipes bursting is a huge risk.

[1] https://www.climatestotravel.com/climate/china/shanghai

That's pretty warm! That's similar weather to Atlanta, I would have imagined it's much colder in Shanghai. Average January low in New York City is 26F.

Unfortunately it seems Asian, which I am also have lower tolerance for cold. I and my family could barely endure below 15 degree Celsius.

Asia has some of the coldest inhabited parts of the world !

Responding to your child, echelon, because replies ran out ...

Shanghai is one of those edge climates where it's not quite cold enough to do something about the cold, but just cold enough to be uncomfortable and deploy a band-aid fix.

So they don't make real investments in climate control and everyone is cold and/or wears sweaters in the office and/or deploys electric heaters ...

The Shanghai forecast this week is a high of around 30C and low of 20C.

Indeed, completely missed that.

So... early winter is not the cause this year. Even quite far up north, it's quite warm this year.

Still an interesting point as not many people know Shanghai has quite cool winters (and even 10C outside needs some heating indoors).

I just did a double take as it’s still late summer/early fall so still relatively warm.

I'd say if they have power shortage already, then the situation may turn even more dire when the cold strikes.

Yes, at least in part: https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3147774/c...

lol they have better ways of flexing without shooting themselves in the foot. not everything they do is based on foreign policy.

Seriously? China is pretty petty.

I think generally speaking humans are petty and nation to nation 'punishments' and reactions generally look petty just by default ... short of war.

Good or bad choice I'll leave that to everyone else to decide (wouldn't cost China much to just do ... nothing) but I think it's human nature to some extent.

Sometimes it can be advantageous to appear petty and unstable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madman_theory

Or perhaps a byproduct of the increase in the price of oil.

https://www.npr.org/2021/10/01/1042209223/why-covid-is-affec...

Good to see the CCP having their silly past decisions come to haunt them.

If only we could expect the haunting to motivate change. The pressures that move CCP members are incredibly opaque.

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