U.S. Is Falling Further Behind Rivals in Meat-Worker Safety [feedly]

U.S. Is Falling Further Behind Rivals in Meat-Worker Safety
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-21/america-is-lagging-behind-the-world-in-protecting-meat-workers

from Bloomberg -- meat prices Will continue to rise, a consequence of US style "unemployment-will-take-care-of-labor-shortage-from-worker-deaths", or, "the hungry, sick, dog works harder". --  ideas also popular with the Nazis ---  and numerous feudal regimes, til the Black Death wiped them out.

The U.S. government is falling behind global rivals when it comes to protecting meatpacking workers from Covid-19 infections, even though the nation's plants were among the first to confront rampant cases across factories.

In Germany, the government is ready to upend a labor contracting system that left poorly paid immigrant workers vulnerable. Australia's second-most populous state, Victoria, slashed slaughterhouse staffing capacity to enforce strict spacing requirements. In Brazil, the federal government has set safety rules, though unions have said they're not strong enough.

Employees remove internal organs from pigs at a meat processing facility in the U.S.

Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg

Meanwhile, the U.S. has yet to impose any mandatory safety measures on meatpackers to contain infections, issuing just voluntary guidelines. And the only federal citations against major meat processors resulted in fines of less than $16,000, decried as paltry by worker advocates. At the same time, an executive order from Donald Trump has kept plants running at full tilt since late April.

The U.S. response "has been a mess," said James Ritchie, assistant general secretary of the Geneva-based International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers' Associations.

Trump's order has been "downright dangerous" since it didn't come with any U.S. federal agency issuing enforceable safety rules, Ritchie said.

World's Top Meat Suppliers

Nations including the U.S. and Brazil rank among the world's top shippers

Source: USDA forecasts for 2020 exports

Coronavirus infections spread rapidly among U.S. meat workers in March and April, prompting major facilities to shutter before Trump issued the order to keep them open. Since then, it's been unclear how widely the virus is still impacting workers because many companies aren't publicly disclosing new cases. A tabulation of local news reports by the Food & Environment Reporting Network totaled at least 42,606 confirmed Covid cases and 203 related deaths among meatpacking workers through Friday.

Evidence points to the virus spreading by air, with an initial study in Germany showing particles can jump more than 8 meters (26 feet) in slaughterhouses where cold temperatures and poor ventilation put workers at risk. To protect employees, Ritchie said there should be a universal slowing of production lines.

Virus Can Travel 26 Feet at Cold Meat Plants With Stale Air

While companies took their own safety measures, including installing plexiglass barriers and issuing protective equipment, the American federal government never stepped in to create enforceable protocols. This month, U.S. regulators issued their first sanctions against meatpackers in connection with outbreaks. Smithfield Foods Inc. was fined $13,494 and JBS SA was issued a penalty of $15,615, drawing outrage from two senators, a former safety official and a major national union as being inadequate.

The next litmus test for how well the virus is being controlled at American meat plants is likely to come over the next few months as the weather turns colder, which could help infections to spread more quickly and the period will also coincide with the annual flu epidemic that sweeps the northern hemisphere.

In contrast to the U.S., German and Australian regulators intervened with stronger measures for meat workers even though the nations were dealing with smaller outbreaks. Germany's Agriculture Minister Julia Kloeckner is even calling for higher food prices to ease cost pressures on producers.

"We are currently experiencing a momentum, an opportunity to readjust the meat industry," Kloeckner said in emailed comments to Bloomberg. "That is what we are tackling."

Here's a look at how global policies are taking shape:

U.S.

It's possible the U.S. may yet impose additional safety regulations as Congressional leaders haggle over a broad coronavirus relief package. A version the Democratic-controlled House passed in May would require an emergency temporary regulation requiring safety measures to reduce the spread of Covid in workplaces, including meat plants. Senate Republicans have resisted the step and GOP Senate Leader Mitch McConnell is instead seeking to include a provision granting immunity to businesses for virus-related legal claims.

Meat and poultry companies have "voluntarily enacted government recommendations and more to protect employees," the North American Meat Institute said in an emailed statement.

Butchers place pork ribs on a conveyor belt at a meat processing facility in the U.S.

Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg

Labor unions' lobbying efforts to include mandatory Covid safety measures are "an uphill battle" said Rebecca Reindel, occupational safety and health director for the AFL-CIO.

U.S. Meat Plants Are Deadly as Ever, With No Incentive to Change

Efforts to win better safety regulations are hampered because the employees are often minorities and immigrants who, unlike other high-risk workers such as doctors and hospital staff, labor out of sight of consumers.

"They face a lot of barriers," Reindel said. "You have a lot of workers of color. You have a lot of immigrant workers. You have a lot that don't know their safety and health rights."

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the federal agency that's part of the Department of Labor and has the power to regulate conditions in meat plants, is committed to protecting America's workers during the pandemic, a department spokesperson said in an emailed response, which cited the voluntary safety guidelines the agency has issued. The agency also continues to respond to and investigate complaints it receives.

Germany

In Germany, a Covid outbreak at a slaughterhouse infected 1,500 workers and shuttered the facility for a month from mid-June. That seized attention across the continent and accelerated a move by politicians to crack down on poor work conditions. The industry's production lines rely largely on subcontracted staff from eastern Europe, a practice the government is now moving to end, said Johannes Specht, head of collective bargaining at Germany's NGG union.

The German cabinet in late July approved a bill to ban temporary employees at meat plants.

Top Pork Exporters

The EU is forecast to account for a third of global trade this year

Source: USDA estimates

The new bill to end subcontract workers will give "clear responsibility instead of cascades of shadow companies," said Kloeckner, the ag minister.

She also wants to move from a system with a few, large centralized processors and promote smaller, regional slaughterhouses and butchers. Higher meat prices could allow for improved conditions in animal stables, shorten transport times to processors and allow for fair working conditions and sustainable farmer incomes, she said.

Australia

Australia's Victoria state has been hardest hit by a fresh wave of virus cases, leading to a strict months-long lockdown for its more than 5 million residents.

Meat plants have been the source of some of the state's biggest virus clusters and more than half a dozen facilities have been forced to shutter temporarily. The state government in August slashed slaughterhouses' and processors' staffing capacity and enforced strict spacing, hygiene and health check measures, as part of the broader restrictions to curb community transmission.

A worker moves cattle carcasses from the cold room to the boning room at a meat processing facility in Australia.

Photographer: Carla Gottgens/Bloomberg

Meat giant JBS shuttered the state's biggest processing facility until community transmission is under control, saying it could not operate in the current environment.

The state government also provided payments to workers who had to miss shifts to isolate after a coronavirus test, and for those who had to take time off following a positive test, if they had no access to paid leave.

Brazil

In Brazil, the world´s largest chicken and beef exporter, the federal government set mandates for safety measures, including establishing a minimum distance of 1 meter (3.3 feet) between workers, or less if employees are provided with enough protective gear.

While that's still more strict than the U.S., which has only the voluntary guidlines, Brazilian labor leaders have said the country's measures are still insufficient to ensure employee safety. Unions in the nation have estimated, based on surveys with local members, that about 20% of Brazilian meat workers, or roughly 100,000 people, have been infected with Covid-19.

Some local governments, including chicken and pork production hubs such as Rio Grande do Sul and Parana states, have set their own guidelines for meat plants during the pandemic, with higher standards compared with the federal rules. But others states, including the top beef producer Mato Grosso, haven't published any resolution, which leave the national guidelines as the only protocols.

In many places, "slaughterhouses have the government's approval to work without prioritizing employee safety," said Artur Bueno, head of the national labor union CNTA, which represents workers from the food industry.

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Racial disparities in income and poverty remain largely unchanged amid strong income growth in 2019 [feedly]

Racial disparities in income and poverty remain largely unchanged amid strong income growth in 2019
https://www.epi.org/blog/racial-disparities-in-income-and-poverty-remain-largely-unchanged-amid-strong-income-growth-in-2019/

The Census Bureau report on income, poverty, and health insurance coverage in 2019 reveals impressive growth in median household income relative to 2018 across all racial and ethnic groups, but income gaps persist. While the Census cautions that the 2019 income estimates may be overstated due to a decline in response rates for the survey administered in March of this year, real median household income increased 10.6% among Asian households (from $88,774 to $98,174), 8.5% among Black households (from $42,447 to $46,073), 7.1% among Hispanic households (from $52,382 to $56,113), and 5.7% among non-Hispanic white households (from $71,922 to $76,057), as seen in Figure A.

In 2019, the median Black household earned just 61 cents for every dollar of income the median white household earned (up from 59 cents in 2018), while the median Hispanic household earned 74 cents (unchanged from 2018).

Figure A

Based on EPI's imputed historical income values (see the note under Figure A for an explanation), African American households finally surpassed their pre-recession median income 12 years after the start of the Great Recession in 2007—the last racial group to do so. Compared with household incomes in 2007, median household incomes in 2019 were up 21.1% for Hispanic households, 11.3% for Asian households, 8.2% for non-Hispanic white households, and 6.3% for African American households. Unfortunately, this recovery of income has been cut short by massive job losses, particularly among Black and Hispanicworkers, during the current pandemic and recession.

The 2019 poverty rates also reflect the strong income growth between 2018 and 2019, though the Census also cautions that the poverty estimates may be understated due to a decline in response rates. As seen in Figure B, poverty rates for all groups were down, but remained highest among African Americans (18.7%, down 2.0 percentage points), followed by Hispanics (15.7%, down 1.9 percentage points), Asians (7.3%, down 2.8 percentage points), and whites (7.3%, down 0.8 percentage points). African American and Hispanic children continued to face the highest poverty rates—more than one-quarter (25.6%) of African Americans and more than one-fifth (20.9%) of Hispanics under age 18 lived below the poverty level in 2019. African American children were more than three times as likely to be in poverty as white children (8.3%).

Figure B

The Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM), an alternative to the long-running official poverty measure, provides an even more accurate measure of a household's economic vulnerability. While the official poverty rate captures only before-tax cash income, the SPM accounts for various noncash benefits and tax credits. The SPM also allows for geographic variability in what constitutes poverty based on differences in the cost of living. According to the 2019 SPM, the official poverty measure understates poverty among Hispanics (the 2019 SPM rate is 18.9% vs. 15.7% by the official poverty measure), Asians (11.7% vs. 7.3%), and non-Hispanic whites (8.2% vs. 7.3%), while the measures produce relatively similar rates for African Americans (18.3% vs. 18.7%).

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President Trump has attacked workers’ safety, wages, and rights since day one [feedly]

Behind the scoundrel, gaslighting, racist 'patriotism' (treason, truthfully) -- the rape of working class families laid bare.

President Trump has attacked workers' safety, wages, and rights since day one
https://www.epi.org/blog/president-trump-has-attacked-workers-safety-wages-and-rights-since-day-one/

From President Trump's first day on the job, his administration has systematically promoted the interests of corporate executives and shareholders over those of working people. The current administration has rolled back worker protections, proposed budgets that slash funding for agencies that safeguard workers' rights, wages, and safety, and consistently attacked workers' ability to organize and collectively bargain. The pandemic has provided the administration an opportunity to continue its attack on workers' rights. We recently published a report that looks at the 50 most egregious actions the Trump administration has taken against workers, but here we take a look at five of the worst actions:

The Trump administration failed to adequately address the coronavirus pandemic.

Despite the widespread reach of COVID-19 in the workplace, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has refused to issue an Emergency Temporary Standard to protect workers during the pandemic. OSHA is also failing to enforce the Occupational Safety and Health Act during the pandemic. Despite nearly 10,000 complaints from workers about unsafe working conditions from COVID-19, the agency has only issued a handful of citations for failure to protect workers. In addition, the Centers for Disease Control issued dangerous guidelines that allowed essential workers to continue to work even if they may have been exposed to the coronavirus—as long as they appear to be asymptomatic and the employer implements additional limited precautions. The lack of these basic protections has led to thousands of essential workers becoming infected with the coronavirus, and many have died as a result.

While Congress passed Families First Coronavirus Relief Act (FFCRA) and the CARES Act to provide workers with temporary paid sick leave and unemployment insurance (UI) expansion, the Trump administration issued temporary guidance that weakened worker protections under these relief and recovery measures. For example, the Department of Labor (DOL) excluded millions of workers from paid leave provisions under the FFCRA, including 9 million health care workers and 4.4 million first responders, before revising the rule after a federal judge invalidated parts of the original rule in August. Further, the Trump administration has vehemently opposed the extension of the $600 increase of unemployment insurance benefits and additional aid to state and local governments. The lack of fiscal relief will cost millions of jobs, including 5.3 million jobs due to insufficient federal aid to state and local governments and 5.1 million jobs due to the expiration of the $600 boost in UI.

The Trump administration attacked workers' wages.

Since Trump took office, the Department of Labor (DOL) rolled back numerous regulations that protected the wages of working people. For starters, the Trump DOL prevented millions of workers from receiving overtime pay by not defending the Obama administration's 2016 overtime rule, but instead finalizing their own, weaker overtime rule in September 2019. Roughly 8.2 million workers who would have benefited from the 2016 rule have been left behind by the Trump administration's rule.

The Trump DOL also finalized a new joint-employer standard under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which narrowed the set of circumstances whereby a firm could be deemed a joint employer under the FLSA. The Trump DOL's final rule substantially limits shared liability for wage and hour violations, making it harder for workers to hold all parties who set their terms of employment accountable. EPI estimated the ruling will cost workers more than $1 billion annually. A federal court struck down most of this rule, holding that the Trump DOL failed to account for some of the rule's "important costs, including costs to workers."

One of the Trump DOL's most egregious rulemakings was the proposed "tip stealing" rule, which would allow employers to pocket the tips of their employees, so long as workers are paid the minimum wage. EPI's estimates showed that, if finalized, the rule would have resulted in $5.8 billion in lost wages of tipped workers each year. However, before the rule was finalized, reports found that the Secretary of Labor went to great lengths to hide DOL's economic analysis that showed the rule would have been costly to workers. In the wake of this news, Congress added a section to the Fair Labor Standards Act that prohibits employers from keeping tips received by employees, ultimately making the proposed rule invalid.

The Trump administration undermined workers' collective bargaining rights.

Under President Trump, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has systematically rolled back workers' rights under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), which provides workers the fundamental right to organize and bargain collectively. The Trump NLRB has engaged in an unprecedented number of rulemakings aimed at overturning existing worker protections, including narrowing the joint-employer standard under the NLRA and obstructing workers' right to fair union elections. Further, the Trump NLRB has issued a series of significant decisions weakening worker protections such as hindering workers' ability to organize during non-work hours and allowing the misclassification of workers. As a result, the Trump NLRB has completed the wish list of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce—the largest corporate lobbying firm in the U.S.

Table 1

However, the NLRB is not working alone in attacking workers' collective bargaining rights. President Trump has issued several executive orders that eroded the collective bargaining rights for federal workers, including limits on the use of official time for collective bargaining activities and weakening due process protections for federal workers subject to discipline. And when the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, which would significantly restore workers' right to organize and bargain collectively, the Office of Management and Budget issued a Statement of Administration Policy that recommended President Trump to veto the bill if it reached the president's desk.

The Trump administration repeatedly attempted to take away workers' health care.

Since the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), nearly 20 million people have gained health insurance coverage. The ACA, among other provisions, provides a number of protections for workers who receive health insurance through their employers. It requires large firms to provide health insurance to workers or pay a penalty. It requires that employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) have no caps on benefits paid for essential health services. It also requires caps on individual out-of-pocket spending in ESI plans. It allows children to stay on parents' ESI plans until the age of 26. Additionally, it mandates maternity coverage and free preventative care from ESI plans. And it limits waiting periods for when workers could qualify for ESI plans.

Over the last three years, Trump administration has sided with Congressional Republican allies in attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2017, asked the Supreme Court to rule the ACA unconstitutional in its entirety on a wafer-thin legal justification, and weakened the ACA greatly as part of the 2017 tax cut for corporations. Finally, even in the face of millions of workers losing their ESI due to the COVID-19 economic shock, the Trump administration not only persisted in its efforts to repeal the ACA (through its request to the Supreme Court), but it also did nothing to make it easier for workers losing ESI to slide into coverage under the ACA marketplace exchanges, even though an administrative fix was easily available at the time.

President Trump stacked agencies and the Supreme Court with anti-worker appointees

President Trump has put forth numerous anti-worker nominees for agencies in charge of protecting workers. Andrew Puzder, former CEO of a company with a record of labor law violations, withdrew his nomination for Labor Secretary less than a month after his nomination after strong opposition from worker advocates. President Trump's first confirmed Secretary of Labor, Alexander Acosta, advanced a pro-business agenda by delaying and rolling back many workplace protections the Obama administration implemented, most notably the 2016 overtime pay rule. Eugene Scalia, President Trump's current Secretary of Labor, built a career representing corporations, financial institutions, and other business organizations while fighting against worker protections like health and safety regulations, retirement security, and collective bargaining rights.

The Trump administration also stacked the National Labor Relations Board with corporate lawyers and a former Republican Hill staffer. In September 2017, William Emanuel, a former attorney at the Littler Mendelson law firm who regularly represented large employers, was confirmed as a member of the NLRB, along with Marvin Kaplan, a former Republican Hill staffer. Later in November 2017, Peter Robb, who spent much of his career as a management-side labor and employment lawyer, was confirmed as the NLRB's General Counsel, and John Ring, another corporate-side lawyer, was confirmed and made chairman in April 2018. These Trump appointees have systematically rolled back workers' rights under the National Labor Relations Act.

Furthermore, President Trump stacked the Supreme Court with anti-worker justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, both with records of ruling against workers and siding with corporate interests. Justice Gorsuch was the deciding vote in two Supreme Court cases that dramatically impacted workers' rights: Janus v. AFSCME, Council 31, which stripped public-sector workers of their right of fair share agreements, and Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, which allows employers to require employees to waive their right to class or collective claims.

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Are Red State Governors Getting Their People Killed to Help Donald Trump’s Re-election Chances? [feedly]

The kind of Baker post I love.

Are Red State Governors Getting Their People Killed to Help Donald Trump's Re-election Chances?
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/beat_the_press/~3/QYX2ONoJ9c8/

This is an incredibly ghoulish question that would be absurd to ask in normal times. But these are not normal times. We know Donald Trump has staffed the top levels of his administration with people who unhesitatingly put Donald Trump's political prospects above the well-being of the people. It is certainly plausible that Republican governors have similar priorities.

A simple test for the governors is to look at their positive test rates for the coronavirus. Test rates are a good measure of how serious the governors are in trying to bring the pandemic under control. While they can take measures to limit the actual spread, such as longer and stronger lockdowns and mask requirements, many factors determining the spread are outside their control.

For example, New York, New Jersey, and other states in the Northeast were hard hit early because they had a large number of international travelers. More recently, North Dakota has seen a huge spike in infections because Kristi Noem, the governor of neighboring South Dakota, thought it was clever to have a huge week long motorcycle rally in the middle of a pandemic.

However, positive rates are largely under the control of the state. If the governor makes more of an effort to find positive cases, the state will have a lower positive rate. In states with high positive rates, governors have been less concerned about tracking the spread of the pandemic.

This is a matter of life and death for tens of thousands of people, since if a person knows they are infected, they can take steps to protect their co-workers, friends, and family. If they don't know, they will likely get many of these people infected as well.

It is not hard to imagine that Republican governors would deliberately limit testing so that they find fewer cases. Donald Trump explicitly saidat a campaign rally that he told his staff to "slow the testing down." He subsequently insisted that he was not joking.

In this context, it is perfectly reasonable to ask whether there is evidence that Republican governors have decided to deliberately slow testing, knowing that it will mean that more people in their states get sick and die, just so that Donald Trump will have fewer reported cases.

Here is the story. The chart shows the ten states with the highest positive rates and the ten states with the lowest rates. (The data are seven-day averages, given for September 20^th, by the John Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center.)    

 

 

 

Eight of the ten states with the highest positive rates have Republican governors. The exceptions are Wisconsin and Kansas. Wisconsin stands out as being the worst state by this measure.  This could be the fault of its Democratic governor, Tony Evers, but the Republican controlled legislature may also be a factor. The legislature has repeatedly taken steps to thwart Evers' effort to contain the virus, as has the state's Supreme Court.

We see pretty much the opposite picture when we look at the states with low positive rates, although the relationship is not as strong. Six of the ten states have Democratic leaders. The four exceptions are Phil Scott in Vermont, which has the second lowest rate, Charlie Baker, in Massachusetts, which has the third lowest positive rate, Chris Sununu in New Hampshire, with seventh lowest rate,  and Mike Dunleavy in Alaska, which scrapes in with the tenth lowest positive rate.

The sharp contrast, with blue states having very low positive rates, and red states having very high positive rates, does not prove that Republican governors are deliberately restricting testing. However, it is certainly consistent with this story and should be the basis for some serious questioning of these governors.

(Correction: this post has been corrected to reflect the fact that Kansas has a Democratic governor and Vermont and New Hampshire have Republican governors.)

The post Are Red State Governors Getting Their People Killed to Help Donald Trump's Re-election Chances? appeared first on Center for Economic and Policy Research.

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Coal’s Last Refuge Crumbles With China’s Renewables Plan [feedly]

Coal's Last Refuge Crumbles With China's Renewables Plan
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/coals-last-refuge-crumbles-with-chinasrenewables-plan/2020/09/21/4e896cc4-fc5e-11ea-b0e4-350e4e60cc91_story.html?utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=wp_business

Coal-fired power has been dying everywhere except where it poses the greatest threat.

Draw a line down the world around the longitude of the Nile. The region to the west — encompassing Europe, Africa and the Americas — has seen coal consumption drop by a quarter over the past decade. In the U.S., demand fell 43% on an energy-equivalent basis between 2009 and 2019, according to BP Plc's latest statistical review of energy. In Europe, it slipped 23%. The U.K., cradle of the coal-fired industrial revolution, saw a 79% decline that has left its few remaining thermal plants barely operating since spring. 

The trouble is what's happening east of the line. Consumption there rose by a quarter over the same period, and since the region already accounted for about 70% of coal demand, that has driven the global tally up by nearly 10%. If Asia — and in particular China, which accounts for about half the world's coal consumption — can't break the habit, devastating climate change will be unavoidable.

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On that front, good news may finally be emerging. Beijing is lifting its energy-transition ambitions in its 14th five-year plan, running from 2021 to 2025, people familiar with the matter have told Bloomberg News. A plan to derive 20% of its primary energy from non-fossil fuels may be brought forward by five years from 2030 and the share of coal in the energy mix cut to 52% by the same date from 57.5% this year, according to the report.

You need to decode those numbers a little to see why such apparently modest changes are a big deal. "Primary energy" is a concept that's a little baffling to non-specialists, including not just the power delivered as electricity but the stuff that's burned in vehicle engines and industrial boilers. It also makes no adjustment for the fact that the relatively low efficiency of turbines means only about 40% of the primary energy that goes into a thermal power station as fuel comes out as electricity. 

Adjust the figures according to those rules of thumb, and things come more into focus. Electricity accounts for about 48% of China's final energy mix. If 20% is going to come from non-fossil fuels, that means about 42% of China's grid in 2025 will be renewable- or nuclear-powered, up from about 32% at present.

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Assuming current rates of electricity demand growth of about 5% or so a year continue, that's going to require a blistering build-out of wind, solar, nuclear and hydro-electric generation — especially the first two. At present, China has about 241 gigawatts of wind turbines, 180GW of utility-scale solar and 86GW of rooftop photovoltaic panels. The government's target would require 80GW to 115GW of new solar to be installed every year, as well as 36GW to 45GW of wind, according to a note from Industrial Securities Co. No wonder shares of Chinese renewables companies have been surging as reports of the plans have spread.

China already has more than a third of the world's wind and solar generation capacity. Meeting those levels of installations would almost double its installed wind base in five years, and leave solar facilities more than three times the size of the current utility-scale fleet.

The most important issue is what that would do to its coal plants. As we've written, China shows signs of being more addicted to solid fuel than even to oil. Unlike petroleum, there are abundant domestic reserves of coal at a time when Beijing is increasingly mistrustful of foreign countries.

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Building coal-fired power plants is also a time-honored way for provincial authorities to juice the economy, however much central government may prefer to decarbonize the energy mix. China has about 250GW of new coal power plants under development, greater than the coal fleets of the U.S. or India, Global Energy Monitor, a group backing the phaseout of fossil fuels, wrote in a June report.

If China does succeed in deploying wind and solar at the rates estimated by Industrial Securities, all that extra coal power will be for nothing. Renewables already appear to enjoy priority over fossil fuels in China where grid access is available, thanks to their lower costs. Assuming that they run the same percentage of the time as current facilities, that scale of building should be sufficient to accommodate almost all electricity demand growth by 2025, even if consumption from the grid increases by 30% over last year's levels.

That's not enough on its own. China produces more greenhouse gases than the U.S. and Europe put together. Like those regions, it needs to be decommissioning its coal-fired power fleet, not just holding current levels of generation constant — especially because renewables now deliver electricity that's cheaper as well as less polluting.

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Still, the prospect of a juggernaut of Chinese solid fuel destroying the world's climate goals — a very real prospect, given some of the pro-coal noises that have emerged while the five-year plan has been under development — is looking more remote. China has been the world's most important redoubt of lingering coal demand. As those defenses crumble, the prospect of keeping the world's emissions within more manageable limits looks a little brighter.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

David Fickling is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering commodities, as well as industrial and consumer companies. He has been a reporter for Bloomberg News, Dow Jones, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times and the Guardian.

For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion

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