"The Coal Trap" - Beijing Battling For Control Of Runaway Energy Industry - MSNBC

[hatrack]

Jan. 15, 2007 issue - It isn't the Great Wall or the Three Gorges Dam, but the launch last month of China's most robust—and efficient—coal-fired power plant was hailed as a critical feat. Make that "ultra-supercritical": that's the name for the technology behind the next-generation 1,000-megawatt electricity plant located near the city of Wenzhou, in bustling, coastal Zhejiang Province. The $2.3 billion plant, which abuts the East China Sea, employs energy-saving "clean coal" technology. Because its hulking boilers can heat steam to 600 degrees Celsius—well beyond the "critical" boiling point—the plant needs 17 percent less coal than an average Chinese power plant to produce a kilowatt hour of electricity.

Nothing in China needs improvement more urgently than the aging and coal-dependent energy industry. Coal is the world's cheapest and dirtiest energy source, and China has 1 trillion tons of proven reserves; only the United States and Russia have more. Such an ample supply has been serendipitous in a country where the demand for electricity has risen by 60 percent since 2000. China now accounts for one third of global coal consumption, devouring 2.2 billion tons last year to generate 80 percent of its electricity and 75 percent of its home heating. China's heavy industry would be lightweight without coal.

But like 19th-century England or the Soviet Union in its industrial heyday, China is seeing coal-driven growth turn ugly. As in India, another economic comer with power problems, China has been growing so fast, for so long, that the central government has lost control of the energy industry. Nearly half the coal plants built in China between 2001 and 2005 were small, old-fashioned models erected by local officials, often without Beijing's full approval. President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao are trying to change that. They've made energy efficiency a national priority—and the central government will spend hundreds of billions over the next 20 years building nuclear plants and developing renewable-energy platforms such as solar forests, wind farms, biomass fuels, not to mention qingjie meitan, or clean-coal technology.

Both Hu and Wen tout "sustainable" and "scientific" development as the key to curtailing the social costs of unfettered growth. But Beijing's effort to clean up and control the coal economy will take decades to produce results, and meanwhile China is courting a catastrophe that could impair the health of its people. The dilemma is ironic. If Hu and Wen succeed, China will become a cleaner country—but the transition will also help slow down the growth of a manufacturing juggernaut that has helped bring millions of Chinese out of poverty and drive down the cost of everything from toys to TVs worldwide. If the leaders fail, China's environmental problems will get worse.

EDIT

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16500200/site/newsweek/

[NewJeffCT]

1. well, it's a more positive step than anything Bush has done

Team Bush, once again lagging the world.

[madrchsod]

2. buy more shit from china so they can build more factories

so that we can buy more shit.. an endless cycle of bullshit

[valerief]

4. And lose more US jobs. Don't forget that part. nt

[Warpy]

3. The problem in China isn't so much the power plants,

the way it is here, it's the home heating problem. People there use blocks of compressed coal dust to heat their homes and many times cook their food. The blocks will last a family about a week and they are filthy, high sulfur coal that produces the most in heavy metals, acids and particulates in the atmosphere.

They are also all most Chinese households can afford.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

5. These pics show how bad the problem is, and why something MUST

be done about it.




Hidden hazards. Coal contaminants, some of which cause effects on bones and cancer, may be difficult for villagers to detect.
image credit: Chinese Acad. Prev. Med.

So-called "smoky coal," a low-quality product that releases large amounts of mutagens, is common in Yunnan province, where it is linked to high rates of lung cancer, particularly among women in Xuan Wei county. These women have among the highest lung cancer rates ever recorded: 125.6 cases per 100,000 women, compared to Chinese and U.S. national averages of 3.2 and 6.3 per 100,000, respectively, according to the U.S. EPA.

The discovery of Xuan Wei's tremendous cancer burden finally sparked action from the central government in the mid-1980s. A national stove improvement and dissemination program, launched in 1984 and coordinated by the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture, sought to provide ventilated coal stoves to rural villagers through a mix of government- and market-sponsored programs.

[jwirr]

6. I remember my dad using little "round" bricks of coal to heat the

house and also sometimes in the cookstove. I wonder if they are the same as they are now using in China?

[Warpy]

7. They are round

about 8 inches in diameter and a little taller. There are holes going through from top to bottom.

[jwirr]

8. The shape is different but they could still be the same content. Thanks.