By JOHN RICHARD SCHROCK
Like many Americans, I have already turned on the heat on my home thermostat. But in a wide range of Chinese apartments and schools, there will be no heat until Nov. 15 each year. And that heat will turn off on March 15 in the spring. In many visits to China universities in the fall, I would live in faculty housing. And along with colleagues and students in dormitories and classrooms, and administrators in offices, we would be wearing jackets and coats all day and sleep under heavy blankets every night for two more weeks.
In 1975 in Hong Kong, I experienced my first “instant-on” or “tankless” hot water heater that only used energy to heat water when you needed it. American hot water heaters used energy day-and-night to keep water hot when we weren’t using it. It would be nearly three decades before that technology started to be adopted over here. And 50 years ago, you could look out and see rooftop water units across Chinese cities, also using sunlight. They remain common today but are unknown here.
Despite modernization that included clothes washers, clothes driers are an energy-gobbling luxury that China cannot afford energy-wise. On any sunny day in China, you will see clothes hanging out to dry on bamboo poles in even the most modern housing complexes. If everyone bought clothes dryers, they would need to build far more powerplants. They are still building powerplants for the basic needs of their rapidly growing middle class.
On hot summer afternoons, air conditioning stresses their electric grid—a government company. They would announce an increase in electric fees for industries only. Extra care taken by China’s industries to maintain profits resulted in less power usage and prevented brown-outs many summers.
China originally planned to complete 25 more nuclear power plants by 2020, but by 2017 it became evident that building more wind and solar power generation would be faster and cheaper. So while China does produce more electricity by clean nuclear power than the U.S., it still has to increase power production further to serve the remaining population it is bringing out of extreme poverty.
And China’s economic growth has been phenomenal. China raised 680 million of its people above the extreme poverty line between 1981 and 2010. Six years ago, China set a goal of eliminating extreme poverty by the end of 2020. Extreme poverty is about $1.69 a day at current rates. By November of 2020–one year ago–all 98.99 million extremely poor, nearly all in the rural population were raised out of poverty by small social-security-like payments for the elderly and business set-ups for the younger—from mushroom farming to new local industries. Many elderly left mountainous rural shacks with no electricity or running water and moved into new simple high rise apartments in nearby towns—referred to as “townification.” That basic rise in living standards likewise required more energy.
In comparison, the most recent research by researchers Brady and Parolin estimates between 2.6 to 3.7 million Americans are extremely poor. That number for China is now zero.
China is now producing and buying more electric cars than the rest of the world put together. In these and many more daily activities, China’s citizens are far more careful to conserve energy and not waste than are Westerners.
Our Western press is mostly clueless when they report total energy usage by country. What really counts is the energy usage per person—a factor required for a minimal quality of life. And for every 10 Americans, there are 44 Chinese living on roughly the same geographic acreage.
According to the Rhodium Group, the amount of greenhouse gas emissions (tons per person) are highest for Saudi Arabia (21.5), Australia (20.6), Canada (19.9) and the United States (17.5). China is at 10.1. If China left their elderly poor living in extreme poverty, hand-pumping water and lacking electricity, their energy usage would be lower. But they didn’t. Overpopulation is the major factor underlying the world’s greenhouse gas problem. India, with average emissions of only 2.5 tons per person and nearly 1.4 billion people, has a long way to go to raise much of their population out of poverty. And that cannot occur without significant increases in energy use per person.
The Western press finds it easy to blame China for consuming more energy than the Unites States. But on a per-person basis, Chinese are far more frugal, while Americans generally squander energy.
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John Richard Schrock has trained biology teachers for more than 30 years in Kansas. He also has lectured at 27 universities in 20 trips to China. He holds the distinction of “Faculty Emeritus” at Emporia State University.