Verbatim Mac

CPs

Advantage 2 – Air Pollution

CP Text – The People’s Republic of China should expand its electrical grid and integration of wind turbine technology

Wind technology fails without integration – leads to energy waste

MIT 6/20, Study: China could go big on wind power—if it adjusts its grid operations, June 20, 2016, Nature http://phys.org/news/2016-06-china-big-powerif-adjusts-grid.html)//SZ

China has an opportunity to massively increase its use of wind power—if it properly integrates wind into its existing power system, according to a newly published MIT study. The study forecasts that wind power could provide 26 percent of China's projected electricity demand by 2030, up from 3 percent in 2015. Such a change would be a substantial gain in the global transition to renewable energy, since China produces the most total greenhouse gas emissions of any country in the world. But the projection comes with a catch. China should not necessarily build more wind power in its windiest areas, the study finds. Instead, it should build more wind turbines in areas where they can be more easily integrated into the operations of its existing electricity grid. "Wind that is built in distant, resource-rich areas benefits from more favorable physical properties but suffers from existing constraints on the operation of the power system," states Valerie Karplus, an assistant professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, director of the Tsinghua-MIT China Energy and Climate Project, and a member of the MIT Energy Initiative. Those constraints include greater transmission costs and the cost of "curtailment," when available wind power is not used. The paper, "Integrating wind into China's coal-heavy electricity system," is appearing in Nature Energy. In addition to Karplus, the authors are Michael R. Davidson, a graduate student in MIT's Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change and the MIT Institute for Data, Systems, and Society; Da Zhang, a postdoc in MIT's Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change; and Weiming Xei and Xiliang Zhang of Tsinghua University. Karplus and Zhang are the corresponding authors of the paper, and lead an MIT-Tsinghua collaboration focused on managing energy and climate change in China. Co-existing with coal While China has invested heavily in renewable energy sources in recent years, more investment in the sector will be needed if the country is to meet its pledge of having 20 percent of its energy consumption come from non-fossil fuel sources by the year 2030, as part of the Paris climate agreement of 2015. While several previous studies have evaluated China's wind-energy potential based on the country's natural environment, the MIT study is the first to study how wind energy could expand, based on simulations of China's power system operations. When operational constraints are considered, the MIT team found, China may only be able to use 10 percent of the physical potential for wind power cited in their analysis and other studies. Nevertheless, even harnessing that 10 percent would be enough for wind power to provide the study's estimated 26 percent of electricity by 2030. A key challenge the study identifies is integrating wind power into a system that has traditionally been geared toward consumption of coal. Wind power, being intermittent, currently requires flexibility in the operation of the electricity system to ensure wind can be used when it is available. That, in turn, requires flexibility in the delivery of electricity from coal-fired power plants, which accounted for over 70 percent of electricity generated in China in 2015. However, China has regulations determining high minimum output levels for many coal-powered electricity plants, to ensure the profitability of those plants. Reducing these requirements and creating more flexible generation schedules for coal would create more space for wind power. "Renewable energy plays a central role in China's efforts to address climate change and local air quality," Da Zhang explains. "China plans to substantially increase the amount of wind electricity capacity in the future, but its utilization—and ultimately its contribution to these environmental goals—depends on whether or not integration challenges can be solved."

Unregulated expansion of Chinese wind tech undermines transition and leads to grid collapse

http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/index.cfm/go/news.display/id/23743

Although China's domestic solar market is healthy enough to absorb losses in the US and Europe, its wind industry is having a tough time.

Its biggest wind companies have reported greatly reduced revenue and orders. Although China led the world in wind installations last year, the 17.6 gigawatts installed was 7% less than 2010. This year, about 40% less new capacity will be approved than in 2011, according to the China Wind Energy Association (CWEA).

The problem is over-capacity, which the government is trying to address. At the peak of the wind boom in 2010, wind farms were built at break-neck speed, and then sat idle because they couldn't connect to the grid. There's enough idle wind capacity to supply 3 million homes.

"The under-regulated expansion of the Chinese wind power sector created a serious misalignment between the capacity of new wind farms and ability of provincial and national grid infrastructure to handle the their large and unpredictable fluctuations in wind-powered generation," says CleanBiz Asia.

"The grid issue is primarily one of safety. Last year, for example, a number of serious incidents cropped up in Gansu province, one of China's major power bases. In once instance, equipment failure at one Gansu wind far caused a chain reaction that knocked out hundreds wind turbines across the region and threatened to disrupt a transmission network that delivers electricity to about a third of the country," they report.

Advantage 3 – Steel CP

1NC

The United States federal government should remove its anti-dumping duties on imports of Chinese steel and steel products.

Steel prevents coop and is largest factor escalating the trade war

Zero Hedge 5/19 (investment news service)

(China Furious After US Launches Trade War "Nuke" With 522% Duty, May 19, 2016 11:42 PM

The US was not left unscathed: we reported in December that "The Trade Wars Begin: U.S. Imposes 256% Tariff On Chinese Steel Imports" and since then things have progressively turned worse, finally culminating overnight with an outburst of anger from Chinese officials who, after attempting to flood not just the US but also the entire world with their commodity in general and steel in particular, exportshave criticized U.S. anti-dumping penalties imposed on Chinese steel amid mounting complaints Beijing is exporting at improperly low prices to clear a backlog at home.

The numbers, however, do not lie and confirm that China is engaging in massive global commodity dumping.

In some regard, China has reason to be angry: the US unleashed what is nothing short of a nuclear bomb in its rapidly escalating trade war with China, and recently imposed duties of 522% on cold-rolled steel used in automobiles and other manufacturing, In doing so it has rendered Chinese exports to the US unsustainable and will force even more excess Chinese production to remain landlocked within China's borders, making the domestic glut, and price collapse, that much worse.

2NC Steel Solvency

Steel is key

Riley 5/18 (CNN correspondent)

(Chalres, U.S. hikes duties on Chinese steel to more than 500%, May 18, 2016, http://money.cnn.com/2016/05/18/news/us-steel-china-trade/)

A trade spat between the U.S. and China boiled over on Wednesday, with Beijing demanding the removal of a new 500% duty on some of its steel products.

The escalation follows a ruling by the U.S. Department of Commerce on Tuesday that dramatically increases duties on Chinese cold-rolled steel, which is used to make appliances, cars and electric motors.

"China is extremely dissatisfied with this decision," the Ministry of Commerce said in a statement. "China urges the U.S. to strictly abide by World Trade Organization guidelines and correct its mistake as quickly as possible."

Trade tensions between the U.S. and China have risen considerably this year -- especially over steel. Last month, U.S. Steel accused dozens of Chinese producers of breaking trade rules, and asked the U.S. International Trade Commission to investigate. China produces half of the world's steel, more than the U.S., European Union, Russia and Japan combined.

And this is a key signal to China to resolve things through the WTO

Platts 6/28 (commodities information service)

(China threatens using WTO to dispute US sheet steel duties, 28 Jun 2016, http://www.platts.com/latest-news/metals/pittsburgh/china-threatens-using-wto-to-dispute-us-sheet-21835950)

China's Ministry of Commerce (Mofcom) said it would take all measures including using World Trade Organization proceedings to protect its export business, according to a translated statement on its website Tuesday, following a US move to impose duties on Chinese steel sheet.

Mofcom has issued two statements in the last week about US International Trade Commission's findings that the US was injured by imports of cold-rolled coil and corrosion-resistant sheet and products from China and other countries.

The ITC's decisions formalized antidumping duties of 209.97% and subsidy rates of 39.05-241.07% for Chinese corrosion-resistant sheet as well as 265.79% antidumping duties and 256.44% subsidy rates for Chinese cold-rolled coil.

Mofcom said the frequent use of trade protection practices was not solving global financial problems.

"Fiercer and fiercer trade protectionism can only aggravate frictions and conflicts, but help little to solve the problem," the ministry said in a statement that followed the ITC's ruling on CRC. "The Chinese side urged the US to adhere to the WTO rules, to adopt the trade remedy measures prudently and carefully and to play a positive role in promoting the US-China trade in steel products and in improving the overall trade environment."

The global steel industry is facing an Ice Age - escalating protectionism and structural overcapacity have generated a crisis of finger-pointing and scapegoating - only the plan's concession can open the table for negotiation over the steel glut.

Alden 2016 (Edward, Bernard L Schwartz Senior Fellow, "How to Solve the Global Steel Glut", 4.19.16, http://blogs.cfr.org/renewing-america/2016/04/19/how-to-solve-the-global-steel-glut/

The steel industry is once again in crisis. Led by China, global steelmaking capacity has doubled in the past 15 years, while demand has slumped. The consequences in many countries are falling prices, idled production, bankruptcies and job losses. U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman last week called it “a truly global challenge”. Some 12,000 U.S. steelworkers have lost their jobs in the past year, nearly 10 percent of the total workforce. Britain’s largest steel producer, Indian-owned Tata Steel, is likely to close unless it finds a buyer, with 40,000 jobs on the line; Australia’s two largest producers are already in bankruptcy. The OECD club of developed economies hosted a high-level meeting on April 18 with China and other major steel producers but the gathering failed to agree measures to tackle excess capacity amid arguments over who was to blame. Protectionist wars are already breaking out. The United States has imposed a slew of anti-dumping orders restricting steel imports from Asia, Europe and Latin America. Europe has limited some steel imports and is considering more curbs. China recently slapped tariffs on a smaller category of European steel imports. And USTR Froman last week warned of further “serious trade responses” if China does not cut its steel production and stop exporting the surplus. The problems in the steel industry are far from new. A 1988 book “Steel and the State: Government Intervention and Steel’s Structural Crisis” noted in its opening chapter that the industry had faced “a crisis of overcapacity” since the mid-1970s. That overcapacity was a consequence, the authors argued, of “pervasive intervention by governments in the market”—in particular large subsidies to steel mills that resulted in production far in excess of what the market would otherwise dictate. Today, China is by far the worst offender. In 2000, the United States and China produced about the same amount of steel—135 million metric tons (MMT) in the United States, and 165 MMT in China. Since then, China has added an extraordinary 990 MMT of steelmaking capacity—more steel than the entire world was consuming in 2000. This was not driven by market opportunities but rather by government subsidies aimed at pumping up the economy through investment and job creation; China’s major steel firms reportedly lost nearly $10 billion last year and are groaning under their debt load. Other countries, including Korea, Turkey and India, have also boosted production. U.S. steel capacity fell over the same period, as did Europe’s. If the United States, Japan, the European Union, India, Turkey, Russia, Korea and Brazil all stopped making steel tomorrow, there would still be enough to supply the global market. One of the reasons free trade is under such attack in the United States and some other countries is that the classic free trade argument—that the market will sort this mess out to everyone’s benefit — simply does not hold true in such a distorted sector. If nothing is done, some of the most efficient steel plants in the world will go under and the heavily subsidized, unprofitable ones in China and elsewhere will survive. But the classic U.S. and European response—to throw up trade barriers in the form of anti-dumping tariffs—is not terribly helpful either. Temporary tariffs can give some breathing room to their steel industries. But they come too late, often when the companies are teetering on the verge of bankruptcy. And breathing room for what? If there is no big reduction in steel capacity worldwide, the problem will either be shuffled off to other countries or will re-emerge when the tariffs expire. In the meantime, big steel-using industries like automobiles and shipbuilders will face higher costs than their competitors in countries where steel markets are less protected. The only effective solution is a hugely difficult one—following the OECD prescription and negotiating an international agreement in which steel producing nations agree to an orderly, shared reduction in capacity to balance supply and demand better. But such a deal is almost impossibly difficult to reach. Steel-producing nations tried this seriously once before, in the early 1990s, when the OECD hosted talks on a “Multilateral Steel Agreement” (MSA). The U.S. steel industry had hoped that an MSA would “end government subsidies, cartels and cartel-like behavior and other anti-competitive practices in steel trade and open up all steel markets worldwide to full, market-based competition.” But the politics were simply too hard. “Reducing capacity” is a lovely euphemism for shutting factories and firing steelworkers, and few countries wanted to sign on. And the scale of the problem was much smaller in the 1990s. Today, China has said it might be willing to cut steel capacity by 10 percent or so. Its behavior suggests otherwise, as capacity has continued to grow. And even if Beijing did trim output, it would be a token gesture given the scale of the problem. Yet there seems little choice but to try again to craft such a deal, despite the failure of Monday’s OECD meeting. The alternative—an escalating global trade war in a vital industrial sector—would be harmful to every country involved.

Global steel is bleeding to death under the weight of overcapacity which crushes US downstream manufacturing – even though it’s in the best interest of China’s steel industry to cut overproduction, they’re unwilling to do so because of concern that the US will continue to levy unequal tariffs against the Chinese – concessionary moves by the US are key

Pearson 2016

(Daniel R., former member of the US International Trade Commission, senior fellow in trade studies @ CATO, "The US and China are Both Wrong on Steel", 5.23.16, http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2016/05/23/us-china-steel-war/#5e27f70cb9a2

The United States and China have begun a “bilateral steel dialogue” to discuss curbing surplus global supplies. China is the world’s largest steel producer and exporter. The United States is the fourth largest producer and a leading importer, so a useful exchange of ideas ought to be possible. But don’t hold your breath. This exercise is likely to amount to a dialogue of the deaf for the simple reason that neither side gives any indication of actually understanding the economics of the situation. Both sides should seek to resolve the dispute by reorienting their policies to align with their underlying economic interests. Clumsy central planning has led to the greatest oversupply of steel-making capacity the world has ever seen. Chinese policymakers set their steel sector on a path of continual expansion, which led to an eight-fold increase in that country’s steel output over the past 15 years. However, Chinese leaders forgot to build an “off” switch into their steel-making leviathan, which now produces fully half the world’s output. China should shut down a portion of its steel industry Countries with market-oriented economies would have stopped building mills long before the expected return on investment became negative. China has not been constrained by such financial discipline. For China, bringing new mills on line actually subtracts value from the economy rather than adding it. New mills devalue all the mills built previously, so asset values of the country’s steel makers have plunged. Then, when China exports steel at bargain prices, it effectively transfers some of that lost wealth to other countries. It would serve China’s economic interests to shut down a large portion of its steel industry. The country is believed to have in excess of 1,200 million metric tons (MMT) of steel capacity, and actually produced more than 800 million metric tons (MMT) in 2015. For starters, at least 200 MMT of useable capacity should be shuttered permanently. China should do this not because other countries want it to cut back, but because reducing capacity would strengthen the remaining portion of China’s own steel industry. Although more closures likely would be needed, this first step would help to staunch the bleeding and may allow much of the industry–in China and other countries–to return to profitability. Since steel is a globally-traded commodity, China’s excesses are bedeviling steel producers around the world. The United States is no exception. In the face of rising imports, American production declined 11% over the past four years, dropping from 89 MMT in 2012 to 79 MMT in 2015. Some firms are losing money. U.S. steel producers are justifiably unhappy with the circumstances. Protectionist measure by the U.S. Unfortunately, U.S. policymakers seem determined to follow a protectionist path that won’t provide much (if any) help to the U.S. steel industry, but definitely will hurt the broader U.S. economy. Steel producers hope that imposing a few more anti-dumping or countervailing duty (AD/CVD) restrictions might help to raise prices by further limiting imports of steel. However, the 149 AD/CVD measures currently in place obviously haven’t returned the steel industry to health, so it’s folly to think that a handful more would make any difference. The real cost of import restrictions is the harm they do to manufacturers of value-added products that use steel as an input. Those downstream manufacturers are a much larger factor in the U.S. economy than are steel producers. Department of Commerce statistics indicate that “primary metal manufacturing,” which includes steel, copper, aluminum, magnesium, etc., added about $60 billion of value to the economy in 2014. Downstream manufacturers that utilize steel as an input generate value added of $990 billion, more than 16 times larger. Employment by primary metal manufacturers was 400,000, while downstream manufacturers employed 6.5 million, also 16 times greater. Steel import restrictions have made the United States a high-priced island in an ocean of low-priced steel. U.S. prices have not been high enough to return the steel industry to profitability, but they are high enough to give imported goods an advantage when competing in the U.S. market against domestic manufacturing firms. Carrier has been criticized by politicians for its decision to move 2,100 air conditioner jobs from Indiana to Mexico. It seems likely that the many AD/CVD duties against steel–not to mention restrictions on imports of copper tubing and aluminum extrusions–played a role in that decision. Carrier can escape those policy-imposed costs simply by moving production across the border. A clear message to China The United States should deliver this message to the Chinese: Thank you for transferring so much wealth from China to the United States by selling low-priced steel. It’s helping to keep our large manufacturing sector globally competitive. This approach has a decent prospect for getting the attention of Chinese leaders and encouraging them to downsize and restructure their steel industry. And, after tweaking the Chinese, U.S. officials should follow up by reforming AD/CVD laws so that import restrictions could be imposed only when economic analysis shows that benefits would outweigh the costs. It makes no sense to respond to economic harm caused by low-steel prices by imposing policies that do even more damage to the U.S. economy.

Econ !

That destroys the US economy – maintaining downstream manufacturing is key to economic resilience, jobs, and innovation – key to economic growth

Ettlinger and Gordon 11

(Michael Ettlinger, Vice President for Economic Policy at the Center for American Progress, Kate Gordon, Vice President for Energy Policy at the Center for American Progress, April 2011, “The Importance and Promise of American Manufacturing”, https://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/issues/2011/04/pdf/manufacturing.pdf)

First, jobs in the manufacturing sector are good middle-class jobs for millions of Americans. Those jobs serve an important role, offering economic opportunity to hard-working, middle-skill workers. This creates upward mobility and broadens and strengthens the middle class to the benefit of the entire economy.

What’s more, U.S.-based manufacturing underpins a broad range of jobs that are quite different from the usual image of manufacturing. These are higher-skill service jobs that include the accountants, bankers, and lawyers that are associated with any industry, as well as a broad range of other jobs including basic research and technology development, product and process engineering and design, operations and maintenance, transportation, testing, and lab work.

Many of these jobs are critical to American technology and innovation leadership. The problem today is this: Many multinational corporations may for a period keep these higher-skill jobs here at home while they move basic manufacturing elsewhere in response to other countries’ subsidies, the search for cheaper labor costs, and the desire for more direct access to overseas markets, but eventually many of these service jobs will follow. When the basic manufacturing leaves, the feedback loop from the manufacturing floor to the rest of a manufacturing operation—a critical element in the innovative process—is eventually broken. To maintain that feedback loop, companies need to move higher-skill jobs to where they do their manufacturing.

And with those jobs goes American leadership in technology and innovation. This is why having a critical mass of both manufacturing and associated service jobs in the United States matters. The “industrial commons” that comes from the crossfertilization and engagement of a community of experts in industry, academia, and government is vital to our nation’s economic competitiveness.

Manufacturing also is important for the nation’s economic stability. The experience of the Great Recession exemplifies this point. Although manufacturing plunged in 2008 and early 2009 along with the rest of the economy, it is on the rebound today while other key economic sectors, such as construction, still languish. Diversity in the economy is important—and manufacturing is a particularly important part of the mix. Although manufacturing is certainly affected by broader economic events, the sector’s internal diversity—supplying consumer goods as well as industrial goods, serving both domestic and external markets— gives it great potential resiliency.

Finally, supplying our own needs through a strong domestic manufacturing sector protects us from international economic and political disruptions. This is most obviously important in the realm of national security, even narrowly defined as matters related to military strength, where the risk of a weak manufacturing capability is obvious. But overreliance on imports and substantial manufacturing trade deficits weaken us in many ways, making us vulnerable to everything from exchange rate fluctuations to trade embargoes to natural disasters.

Economic decline and protectionism cause Middle East instability, resource wars, increased conflict, and nuclear escalation.

Harris and Burrows 2009

(*counselor in the National Intelligence Council, the principal drafter of Global Trends 2025, **member of the NIC’s Long Range Analysis Unit “Revisiting the Future: Geopolitical Effects of the Financial Crisis”, Washington Quarterly, http://www.twq.com/09april/docs/09apr_burrows.pdf)

Increased Potential for Global Conflict Of course, the report encompasses more than economics and indeed believes the future is likely to be the result of a number of intersecting and interlocking forces. With so many possible permutations of outcomes, each with ample opportunity for unintended consequences, there is a growing sense of insecurity. Even so, history may be more instructive than ever. While we continue to believe that the Great Depression is not likely to be repeated, the lessons to be drawn from that period include the harmful effects on fledgling democracies and multiethnic societies (think Central Europe in 1920s and 1930s) and on the sustainability of multilateral institutions (think League of Nations in the same period). There is no reason to think that this would not be true in the twenty-first as much as in the twentieth century. For that reason, the ways in which the potential for greater conflict could grow would seem to be even more apt in a constantly volatile economic environment as they would be if change would be steadier. In surveying those risks, the report stressed the likelihood that terrorism and nonproliferation will remain priorities even as resource issues move up on the international agenda. Terrorism’s appeal will decline if economic growth continues in the Middle East and youth unemployment is reduced. For those terrorist groups that remain active in 2025, however, the diffusion of technologies and scientific knowledge will place some of the world’s most dangerous capabilities within their reach. Terrorist groups in 2025 will likely be a combination of descendants of long established groups inheriting organizational structures, command and control processes, and training procedures necessary to conduct sophisticated attacks and newly emergent collections of the angry and disenfranchised that become self-radicalized, particularly in the absence of economic outlets that would become narrower in an economic downturn. The most dangerous casualty of any economically-induced drawdown of U.S. military presence would almost certainly be the Middle East. Although Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons is not inevitable, worries about a nuclear-armed Iran could lead states in the region to develop new security arrangements with external powers, acquire additional weapons, and consider pursuing their own nuclear ambitions. It is not clear that the type of stable deterrent relationship that existed between the great powers for most of the Cold War would emerge naturally in the Middle East with a nuclear Iran. Episodes of low intensity conflict and terrorism taking place under a nuclear umbrella could lead to an unintended escalation and broader conflict if clear red lines between those states involved are not well established. The close proximity of potential nuclear rivals combined with underdeveloped surveillance capabilities and mobile dual-capable Iranian missile systems also will produce inherent difficulties in achieving reliable indications and warning of an impending nuclear attack. The lack of strategic depth in neighboring states like Israel, short warning and missile flight times, and uncertainty of Iranian intentions may place more focus on preemption rather than defense, potentially leading to escalating crises. Types of conflict that the world continues to experience, such as over resources, could reemerge, particularly if protectionism grows and there is a resort to neo-mercantilist practices. Perceptions of renewed energy scarcity will drive countries to take actions to assure their future access to energy supplies. In the worst case, this could result in interstate conflicts if government leaders deem assured access to energy resources, for example, to be essential for maintaining domestic stability and the survival of their regime. Even actions short of war, however, will have important geopolitical implications. Maritime security concerns are providing a rationale for naval buildups and modernization efforts, such as China’s and India’s development of blue water naval capabilities. If the fiscal stimulus focus for these countries indeed turns inward, one of the most obvious funding targets may be military. Buildup of regional naval capabilities could lead to increased tensions, rivalries, and counterbalancing moves, but it also will create opportunities for multinational cooperation in protecting critical sea lanes. With water also becoming scarcer in Asia and the Middle East, cooperation to manage changing water resources is likely to be increasingly difficult both within and between states in a more dog-eat-dog world.