2015-05-27

Falling CO2 Emissions Signal Weaker Chinese Growth

Balding's World: Why Greenpeace Leads Us to Believe Chinese GDP Growth is Low
Greenpeace has released a report (make sure to click through to the underlying links) suggesting that in the first quarter 2015, YOY CO2 emissions and coal consumption have fallen by 5% and 8% respectively. If true this staggering and incredibly important for our understanding of the Chinese economy. There is one important caveat. Greenpeace is utilizing Chinese government data, which as I just noted, is notoriously unreliable. As one article about the Greenpeace report notes, China has previously reported large drops in coal production only to later adjust the numbers back up enormously due to producers simply not reporting output.

While we need to proceed cautiously in interpreting these numbers, for the reasons noted, I believe we can make reasonable interpretations of this data.

... A plausible guestimate, based upon electricity growth between January to April 2015, would be GDP in the 1-3% range. There is simply no way you can have zero electricity growth and manage 7% GDP growth.
Add CO2 emissions to electricity, real estate investment, industrial production and trade figures all pointing to a serious slowdown.

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