Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumChina's Plan to Clean Up Air in Cities Will Doom the Climate, Scientists Say
China is erecting huge industrial complexes in remote areas to convert coal to synthetic fuel that could make the air in its megacities cleaner. But the complexes use so much energy that the carbon footprint of the fuel is almost double that of conventional coal and oil, spelling disaster for earth's climate, a growing chorus of scientists is warning.
Efforts by China to develop so-called "coal bases" in its far-flung regions have received scant attention beyond the trade press, but scientists watching the effort say it could cause climate damage that eclipses worldwide climate protection efforts.
The facilities, which resemble oil refineries, use coal to make liquid fuels, chemicals, power and "syngas," which is like natural gas but extracted from coal. The fuels and electricity are then transported to China's big cities to be burned in power plants, factories and cars.
Currently 16 coal base sites are being built and many are operational. One being constructed in Inner Mongolia will eventually occupy nearly 400 square miles—almost the size of the sprawling city of Los Angeles.
I thought they were putting all their yuan into windmills and solar panels? Wha' happened?
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Agnosticsherbet
(11,619 posts)China's coal production has more than doubled since 1990, from one billion tonnes then[4] to 2.72 billion in 2008.[5] (Other sources have slightly different estimates. For example, the World Coal Institute estimated China's 2008 hard coal production at 2.761 billion tonnes.)[6] Coal production in China was estimated at almost 3.4 billion short tons (i.e. 3.084 billion tonnes) in 2009.[7] China's coal production was estimated to be 3.47 billion tonnes in 2011.[8] Coal power is managed by the State Power Grid Corporation. (Note, 1 tonne = 1000 kg or 2,205 pounds.)
In 2007, China’s demand for coal outpaced its supply and it became a net importer of coal for the first time. The World Coal Institute estimates that China imported 46 million tonnes of coal; imports reached 190 million tonnes in 2011.[9]
It is clear that they are doing this because they have the God awful need for power and Solar Power can not be expanded fast enough to meet the industrial needs of the world largest manufacturer of Consumer products and shit.
kristopher
(29,798 posts)In the UK the conservatives are trying to build on their destruction of their domestic renewable/efficiency agenda and doubling down by trying to spread their disease to the rest of Europe. Canada is becoming one of the world's most aggressive agents working against climate change control and the coal/uranium interests in Australia are dead set on getting rid of any trace of support for renewables.
Agnosticsherbet
(11,619 posts)World wide fossil fuel interests did not drive China's run away industrialization in order to fill the consumer fantasies of the middle classes of the middle, affluent, and wealthy classes of the developed world. Consumerism is what drives China's industrialization. Consumerism requires a lot of energy, so it is consumerism that drives the actions of the energy companies, whether they are fossil fuel based, nuclear, solar, or some other renewable.
FreakinDJ
(17,644 posts)
pscot
(21,024 posts)We just can't stop.
eppur_se_muova
(36,261 posts)to the question, "How to commit ecocide ?".
NickB79
(19,236 posts)Build the complexes far from the megacities, and you address the smog concerns that have the Chinese people in an uproar. Social unrest problem solved.
It allows them to keep using uber-cheap coal, especially the massive reserves still to be tapped in Mongolia, for decades to come. Escalating energy cost problem solved.
By converting the coal to syngas and liquids, they could transport it via pipelines instead of by rail, further reducing costs. The former plan was a massive rail line running from Mongolia to coastal cities, at a steep price per ton of coal.
Finally, the Chinese have massive reserves of natural gas that's currently uneconomical to extract until they improve their fracking tech: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-11-14/2014-outlook-shale-fracking-goes-global
By switching over to syngas now, they can easily sub in fracked gas once they bring that energy source online.
It's a capitalist's wet dream, and an environmentalist's worst nightmare.
Once again, I reiterate my previous position: we're fucked.
kristopher
(29,798 posts)When you move to a process that is far more energy intensive to do the same work, it is economically stupid.
Your judgment that this is "brilliant" is a lot like your claim in 2008 that we'd be running out of fossil fuels as of 2013.
By Sophie Vorrath on 13 February 2014
China has upgraded its target for national solar installations for 2014, raising it to 14GW from 10GW, the target that was previously set by the state energy regulator, in January.
Deutsche Bank reports that China’s National Energy Administration published a statement on its website on Wednesday revealing the new amount of new solar capacity that would be eligible for incentives, 6GW of which would be targeted for utility scale, 8GW for distributed generation.
Quotas have also been set for individual provinces, and projects exceeding a region’s quota will not get a subsidy, according to the announcement.
Eastern provinces of Shandong, Jiangsu and Zhejiang received the highest quota of 1.2GW each, reports Deutsche Bank. And if grids are unable to absorb the power generated, the agency may reduce the quotas.
The new target is consistent with many analyst predictions, after a record year in 2013, when China added 12GW of solar power in 2013, doubling its rate of solar installations. Before this, no country had ever added more than 8GW of solar power in one year...
http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/china-sets-new-solar-target-14gw-2014
NickB79
(19,236 posts)I note that your link does nothing to refute the OP or everything I said. It just shows that China is intent on exploiting ALL available energy resources available to them in their push for superpower status.
Since when has that ever stopped nations from doing something? Given the level of control the Chinese government has over Chinese industry and the fact they need to continue providing employment to the largest population on Earth or face civil unrest, continuing to support an industry long after it should have died is potentially in their best short-term interests.
kristopher
(29,798 posts)...that in your mind nothing could possibly contradict it. It doesn't matter that there is literally no sourcing for the hyperbolic statements in the article; that isn't a factor for you at all. It is DOOOOOOOOM so it must be true. Yes, in the doomer mind, there is nothing - not even a long, long history of being shown to be completely out of touch with reality - that convinces you of your own gross fallibility.
You said it was economically brilliant. It isn't. It is economically stupid - especially in light of the alternatives like solar and wind that ARE "economically brilliant".
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)Chinese coal production of 3.66 billion tonnes at the end of 2012 already accounts for nearly half the global total, according to official data. The figure dwarves production rates of just over 1 billion tonnes each in Europe and the United States.
Much of China's new capacity is in regions like Inner Mongolia and Shaanxi, reflecting a strategy to close small mines in marginal locations like Beijing and consolidate output in a series of huge "coal industry bases" that will deliver thermal power to markets via the grid.
While expanding output at such bases, China has shut more than 300 million tonnes of old capacity in the last decade, but critics say new mines are rapidly outpacing closures and the policy merely shifts China's environmental problems elsewhere.
"The scale of these coal bases has been rarely seen in other places in the world, with open-cast coal mines, coal power plants, and coal chemical plants all combined together."
From China.org:
Shenhua Ningxia Coal Industry Company, a division of Shenhua Group (601088.SH; 1088.HK), China's biggest coal producer, has begun construction of a 1000 square kilometer coal-chemical complex in northwest China's Ningxia province. The 280 billion yuan (40 billion USD) project, located at Ningdong, 42 kilometers southeast of provincial capital, Yinchuan, will include coal production, electricity generation and coal chemicals, including coal to liquid fuel conversion (CTL). A methanol plant is already in production, a propylene plant is due to complete construction in 2009, and two coal-to-oil plants are expected to begin operation in 2012. The entire project will be completed in 2020.
Ningdong has proven recoverable coal reserves of 27.3 billion tons. By 2020 it will be one of 30 key coal production areas in China with an output of more than 100 million tons per year. The coal is high quality, with low sulfur content, ideal for both chemical industry and power generation. By the time the base is fully operational in 2020 it will have eight power plants with a capacity of 30 million KW of which 10 million KW will be exported to other provinces.
Mr Ding Ning, director of the project administration office said that the three main chemical products would be dimethyl ether, olefin and methanol. At the end of the first phase of construction in 2010, the base will have an annual production capacity of 250,000 tons of methanol, 210,000 tons of dimethyl ether and 520,000 tons of olefin. By 2020 annual production capacity will have grown to 1,210,000 tons of dimethyl ether and 1,220,000 tons of olefin. There will also be a research and development facility to examine production of new materials. It is expected that all output will be sold on the domestic market.
Coal liquefaction projects have many drawbacks from the point of view of the environment and resource conservation. Firstly they consume vast amounts of water, which is a huge concern in China's dry northwest. Fifty-seven percent of the land area of Ningxia is desert. The Ningdong coal-chemical base will draw 100 million tons of water from the Yellow river every year. Secondly, the process of liquefying coal emits much more carbon dioxide than conventional coal fired power stations. When fully operational, the Ningdong base will discharge 80,000 cubic meters of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) per day according to Mr. Ding. Finally, while liquefied coal fuels provide an alternative to crude oil, they are not necessarily an efficient use of coal. It takes four to five tons of coal to produce one ton of oil, so coal to oil projects deplete coal reserves much more rapidly than conventional coal power generation.
And a long list of search results here: http://en.sxcoal.com/Search.aspx?category=news&keys=coal%20bases
NickB79
(19,236 posts)They are using programs that would otherwise not be economical as a massive jobs programs to employ their people and build a middle class. Are there more efficient paths they could take? Sure. But the more efficient paths, like state-of-the-art solar and wind turbine factories, don't appear to generate as many jobs as old-fashioned coal mining.
The Chinese appear willing to accept this general inefficiency as a way to prevent millions of people from finding themselves unemployed who don't have the education to do much of anything beyond manual labor and/or factory work.
NickB79
(19,236 posts)Shit, I'd hate to see what your definition of "not overblown" is. Maybe if they were building a complex the size of Arizona, you'd be a little concerned?
oldhippie
(3,249 posts)Not if the "same work" is more economically valuable than the cost of the increased energy put into it.
Putting more energy into a process that makes the resulting product cheaper to transport to a market that will pay more for it makes perfect economic sense.
kristopher
(29,798 posts)This entire article is hyperbolic over-reach. It makes a lot of claims with absolutely no support except allusions to the facilities size that are intended to create an impression of a monolithic plant instead what it is - a multifunction facility dispersed over a large area. It doesn't matter whether you concentrate 6 coal plants in an area the size of Los Angeles or whether you ring them around a city the size of Chicago, it is the amount of consumption and the cost of alternatives going forward that are the relevant factors.
The article has ZERO valid analytic content.
Grantham: Wind, solar to replace fossil fuels within decades
http://www.democraticunderground.com/112763985
(Coal Friendly) EIA Increases Short-Term Coal Retirement Prediction by 50%
http://www.democraticunderground.com/112764324
DOE: Large-Scale Solar Passes the Halfway Mark in Achieving SunShot Cost Targets
http://www.democraticunderground.com/112764334
ETA retro reply: Since you see fit to take my "economic argument" out of the context of the discussion of the OP that frames it, your post isn't worth the electrons you used to create it.
oldhippie
(3,249 posts)I was commenting on your theory of economics.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)Socially and economically expedient. Ecologically brain-dead.
pscot
(21,024 posts)Sounds similar to what's happening in our own late, great white north. Wht's sauce for the goose...Baste well.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)China, faced with ever-worsening pollution in its major cities—a recent report deemed Beijing "barely suitable for living"—is doing what so many industrializing nations have done before it: banishing its titanic smog spewers to poor or rural areas so everyone else can breathe easier. But China isn't just relegating its dirty coal-fired power plants to the outskirts of society; for years, it's been building 16 unprecedentedly massive, brand new "coal bases" in rural parts of the country. There, they won't stifle China's megacities; they'll churn out enough pollution to help smother the entire world.
The biggest of those bases, the Ningdong Energy and Chemical Industry Base, spans nearly 400 square miles, about the size of LA. It's already operational, and seemingly always expanding. It's operated by Shenhua, one of the biggest coal companies in the world. China hopes to uses these coal bases not just to host some of the world's largest coal-fired power plants, but to use super-energy intensive technology to convert the coal into a fuel called syngas and use it to make plastics and other materials.
Syngas is healthier to breathe when burned than typical coal—but as Motherboard has noted before, synthesizing the stuff emits nearly twice the carbon pollution. That's why when Inside Climate News, the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative environmental outfit, traveled to China to investigate the operation, they, and a number of climate experts concluded it would "doom the climate."
It's projected to finally be finished by the end of the decade, when it will produce a jaw-dropping 30,000 MW of power, sucking down 100 million tons of coal every year in the process. And it's just one of over a dozen such sprawling operations. It's projected to finally be finished by the end of the decade, when it will produce a jaw-dropping 30,000 MW of power, sucking down 100 million tons of coal every year in the process. And it's just one of over a dozen such sprawling operations.
As such, Ningdong does a fairly good job of epitomizing China's grave threat to the global climate system. A recent paper in Nature Climate Change noted that if all of the coal-to-gas plants get built, they'd produce 21 billion tons of CO2 alone. The Washington Post's Brad Plumer puts that in context: "The entire nation of China produced 7.7 billion tons of carbon-dioxide in 2011." Put simply, China's on a path to produce an unholy amount of carbon pollution.
Reporting on this development does not deserve to be belittled as kristopher did above.
Nihil
(13,508 posts)