China’s nuclear route to net zero poses challenge to green priorities

It would be a mistake to judge the outcomes of COP26 in absolute terms, writes Brian Wilson

COP26 is due to finish in Glasgow next Friday. It probably won’t and if it does, that will be a bad sign. More likely, it will carry on into Saturday, maybe even Sunday.

Work will have gone on through the nights; sentences and words argued over. Finally, a statement will emerge which will be variously portrayed as a triumph or a failure.

All this is a ritual but, as COP26 has confirmed, it is a necessary one to focus attention on the greatest issue of the day. The mistake is to judge such events in absolute terms – 1.5C a success; 2C a failure, or whatever.

What matters more is the direction of travel. As we well know in Scotland, targets are more about self-image than useful reality. By the same token, progress can accelerate through technology or political change, beyond what is signed up to in advance.

There is no absolute virtue and no interest group should lay claim to it. Least of all should industrial nations, which created most of the problems, feel any right to turn censorious without respecting the challenges faced by others at different stages of development.

This is particularly true of the United States which guzzled gas for generations at a rate which appeared foolhardy long before climate change was heard of. The prime perpetrators of the past are obliged to display humility in the demands they make of others.

Passing through Glasgow, I picked up a copy of the China Daily which had suddenly become freely available. It was not necessary to believe every (or any) word, in order to see the world from a different perspective. Pages of close type spelt out the measures China is taking to clean up its act.

China has made a net-zero commitment by 2060 and, unlike the UK, they have an authoritarian system which turns words into deeds. Of course they still use coal to keep the economy running but their transition is already well under way.

I was reminded of a trade delegation I led to China in 2005 made up of British companies promoting “clean coal” technologies. I wrote at the time that these might have more to offer the global drive to cut emissions than anything the world would do on renewables. We needed both.

China and other coal-rich countries were going to carry on burning coal. The question was how they would burn it, and there we could help them. The mission included our Health and Safety Executive who were working with the Chinese. At that time, they admitted 10,000 miners died while working each year. That too needed to change.

The argument then as now was not between the virtuous and the wicked but the pragmatic route towards achievable outcomes. “Cleaner coal” was derided by the green lobby because it contained the word “coal” yet a single-minded focus over the past 20 years on reducing emissions from coal-fired power stations around the world (en route to phasing them out altogether) might have done more than anything else for the environment.

So what is China doing now? It is certainly making a vast effort on renewables and has also recognised the only way to meet its net-zero targets is through a mind-boggling programme of new-build nuclear – 150 new reactors over the next 35 years. It will soon surpass the US as the world’s biggest nuclear generator.

From a net-zero perspective, the UK’S decision to run down nuclear was the most counter-productive ever taken, as is now widely understood. Yet this was the single-minded obsession of our “greens” regardless of impacts on climate change. They have a lot to answer for though the unco’ guid never feel obliged to answer for anything.

I wonder what their advice to China would be now. Abandon net zero or build 150 new nuclear reactors? There really are no answers that do not also throw up dilemmas which is why the statement that finally emerges from Glasgow will be argued over, line by line, late into several nights. However imperfect, it will be worth it.