Michael norton
– “Mr. Putin said a long time ago, the Future is Methane, he is laughing at Europe as there has been almost record low wind, this year. He thinks Europe should be burning Russian Methane.”
That matter is addressed in considerable detail above. It’s as if you’re not reading other people’s comments. “Mr. Putin”, or rather the Russian government and Gazprom, are reluctant to sell more gas to the EU until Russian storage is full. Beyond that, they want firm contracts to fund long-term infrastructure expansion because their old gas fields are in terminal decline and their new fields in the north will need extra pipelines southwards in order to meet European demand.
I fully expect China to be represented at COP26 in Glasgow. China leads the world in renewable energy, and I expect they will negotiate hard for other countries especially the US to match their investment. If you read (or even just skim, as I did) the article I linked above, by a Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, you’ll see that Russia is looking to supply China with natural gas, so I expect that China is planning to phase out its coal generation like almost everywhere else has been doing.
China is huge and its internal politics are complicated. The provincial governments don’t always enforce the policies of the national government. It is some of the provincial governments that are continuing to increase coal consumption, in opposition to the national government’s policy.