Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumAs Beijing Joins Climate Fight, Chinese Companies Build Coal Plants
When China halted plans for more than 100 new coal-fired power plants this year, even as President Trump vowed to bring back coal in America, the contrast seemed to confirm Beijings new role as a leader in the fight against climate change.
But new data on the worlds biggest developers of coal-fired power plants paints a very different picture: Chinas energy companies will make up nearly half of the new coal generation expected to go online in the next decade.
These Chinese corporations are building or planning to build more than 700 new coal plants at home and around the world...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/01/climate/china-energy-companies-coal-plants-climate-change.html?module=WatchingPortal®ion=c-column-middle-span-region&pgType=Homepage&action=click&mediaId=thumb_square&state=standard&contentPlacement=15&version=internal&contentCollection=www.nytimes.com&contentId=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2017%2F07%2F01%2Fclimate%2Fchina-energy-companies-coal-plants-climate-change.html&eventName=Watching-article-click
There's an interesting tool in the article which is worth looking at to see where the coal plants are operating, being built, retired, etc. It is at this link: http://endcoal.org/tracker/
kristopher
(29,798 posts)Everything You Think You Know About Coal in China Is Wrong
By Melanie Hart, Luke Bassett, and Blaine Johnson Posted on May 15, 2017, 12:01 am
Chinas energy markets send mixed signals about the nations policy intentions and emissions trajectory. Renewable energy analysts tend to focus on Chinas massive renewable expansion and view the nation as a global clean energy leader; coal proponents and climate skeptics are more likely to focus on the number of coal plants in Chinaboth in operation and under constructionand claim its climate rhetoric is more flash than substance.
In December 2016, the Center for American Progress brought a group of energy experts to China to find out what is really happening. We visited multiple coal facilitiesincluding a coal-to-liquids plantand went nearly 200 meters down one of Chinas largest coal mines to interview engineers, plant managers, and local government officials working at the front lines of coal in China.
We found that the nations coal sector is undergoing a massive transformation that extends from the mines to the power plants, from Ordos to Shanghai. China is indeed going green. The nation is on track to overdeliver on the emissions reduction commitments it put forward under the Paris climate agreement, and making coal cleaner is an integral part of the process.
From a climate perspective, the ideal scenario would be for China to shut down all of its coal-fired power plants and switch over to clean energy full stop. In reality, Chinas energy economy is a massive ship that cannot turn on a dime. The shift toward renewables is happening: Chinas Paris commitment includes a promise to install 800 gigawatts to 1,000 gigawatts of new renewable capacity by 2030, an amount equivalent to the capacity of the entire U.S. electricity system.1 While China and the United States have roughly the same land mass, however, China has 1.3 billion people to the United States 325 million.2 It needs an electricity system that is much larger, so adding the renewable equivalent of one entire U.S. electricity system is not enough to replace coal in the near to medium term. To bridge the gap, China is rolling out new technologies to drastically reduce local air pollution and climate emissions from the nations remaining coal plants.
This issue brief covers three things American observers need to understand about coal in China:
- Chinas new coal-fired power plants are cleaner than anything operating in the United States.
- Chinas emissions standards for conventional air pollutants from coal-fired power plants are stricter than the comparable U.S. standards.
- Demand for coal-fired power is falling so quickly in China that the nation cannot support its existing fleet. Many of the coal-fired power plants that skeptics point to as evidence against a Chinese energy transformation are actually white elephants that Chinese leaders are already targeting in a wave of forced plant closures.
Energy solutions that work well for China will not necessarily ...
Visit Center for American Progress for the full article: https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/reports/2017/05/15/432141/everything-think-know-coal-china-wrong/