#EU subsidises the CHINESE steel which is decimating British industry

From the Daily Express

By MARCO GIANNANGELI
PUBLISHED: 00:01, Sun, Apr 10, 2016

BRITISH taxpayers have been forced to subsidise the very Chinese steel companies that are threatening 40,000 UK jobs, critics say.

It comes after revelations that the European Investment Bank has given so-called “soft loans” to China of £80million as part of a climate policy intended to lower emissions.

The astonishing figures include a loan of £40million to one of the world’s worst “steel dumping” culprits, the Wuhan Iron & Steel Corporation.

To add insult to injury Wuhun, the world’s eighth largest steel producer, boasts the Chinese state as its main shareholder. Wuhun is such a prolific steel dumper that it has now been especially targeted by the European Commission, which wants to slap it with 36.6 per cent tariffs.

The loan was paid out under the China Climate Change Framework Loan II. The money is supposed to persuade the steel giants to invest in lower emission technology.Furious critics last night pointed out the irony that the loan was concerned with reducing the cost of power generation while one of the complaints of Tata Group is the high cost of energy associated with its steel production operation in South Wales.

 

Others asked whether Wuhan would have been in a position to dump steel so aggressively if their energy costs had been higher.

China to finance huge coal power projects in Pakistan

Moving coal in Pakistan

Asian countries don’t have the same paranoia as many Western governments about using coal to provide much-needed electricity to their vast populations. While the West toys with ineffective and hugely expensive weather-dependent systems, they take a far more practical approach. It looks like a follow-up to the massive Gaddani energy park scheme.

Chinese President Xi Jinping is set to unveil a $46 billion infrastructure spending plan in Pakistan that is a centerpiece of Beijing’s ambitions to open new trade and transport routes across Asia and challenge the U.S. as the dominant regional power. The largest part of the project would provide electricity to energy-starved Pakistan, based mostly on building new coal-fired power plants.

The plan, known as the China Pakistan Economic Corridor, draws on a newly expansive Chinese foreign policy and pressing economic and security concerns at home for Mr. Xi, who is expected to arrive in Pakistan on Monday. Many details had yet to be announced publicly.

“This is going to be a game-changer for Pakistan,” said Ahsan Iqbal, Pakistan’s planning minister, who said his country could link China with markets in Central Asia and South Asia.

Ed Hoskins: Charting the outcome of the Obama – China climate deal by 2030

Guest Post from Ed Hoskins:

In November 2014, to much fanfare, President Obama concluded an agreement with China on Climate. This was as a precursor to the major Paris climate conference in December 2015, where it is anticipated that a definitive and binding Climate agreement should be reached.  These notes follow through that 2014 agreement as far as it concerns future likely CO2 emissions up until the year 2030.

Essentially the agreement said that whilst Western Nations would be expected to reduce CO2 emissions substantially, China, India and the rest of the developing world would continue its CO2 emissions growth until at least 2030 to ensure that continuing enhancement of the living standards of their populations, and that only then China would limit further growth of its CO2 emissions.