China’s Emissions Might Be Lower Than USA’s By 2040
End of infrastructure steel and cement, electrification of everything and massive renewables build out mean emissions decline
Since about 1980, China has built a few things. 500 cities. 46,000 kilometers of high-speed rail. 177,000 kilometers of highways. Tens of thousands of dams. Over 50 subway systems with over 10,000 kilometers of track. A lot of light rail systems. About 1.5 million kilometers of transmission lines. About 8 million kilometers of electricity distribution lines. 34 major sea ports. About 2,000 inland river ports. About a terawatt of wind and solar. About 240 major airports.
China’s not done yet, but it’s slowing down a lot. It has cities for all of the people likely to live in cities. The ghost cities that the west made such a big deal about are filling up. China knew that it had to get people out of subsistence farming and into much more fulfilling and productive work and built cities with full infrastructure and utilities to accommodate that before they were going to be full. It has a few more thousand kilometers of high-speed rail to build, but that’s filling in the gaps.
A thesis I’ve been articulating, not original to me, is that China’s demand for cement and iron is peaking and is going to drop…
