Motley Fool On China's Move To Renewable Energy -- June 11, 2018

In "top stories of the week" posted over the weekend, I suggested this might be the top story of the past week:

Market researchers are in a rush to lower their solar capacity addition forecasts for this year after China surprised everyone by announcing it will not issue approvals for any new solar power installations this year and will also cut the feed-in tariff subsidy that has been a major driver of the solar business in the country that accounts for as much as 50 percent of capacity.

From a week ago, more on that story from Motley Fool:

China is investing tens of billions of dollars every year into renewable energy deployment and supply chains. Its motivations are simple: The country wants to improve its environmental footprint and air quality, develop a leadership position in global markets, and increase national security and energy independence (you don't have to import renewable energy).

These plans are also longer-term than many headlines would lead investors to believe.

For instance, China isn't using renewable energy to immediately replace coal-fired power plants, which supplied 72% of the country's electricity in 2015 -- more than double the share of coal in the electric grids of the United States.

That's because renewable energy is one of the least efficient ways to go about replacing coal consumption in a short period of time. Instead, China is hurriedly building natural gas and liquefied natural gas (LNG) import infrastructure to replace coal in the near-term. In fact, the country is single-handedly shifting global markets, having imported 58% more LNG in the first four months of 2018 than in the year-ago period, with American supply playing a central role.

Again, from those two articles:

• China announced it will not issue approvals for any new solar power installations this year
• renewable energy is one of the least efficient ways to go about replacing coal consumption in a short period of time (I assume a greenfield nuclear plant is even less efficient in the short term)
• China will be using a lot of natural gas in the short term to meet its energy needs

Another open-book test for investors.