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China’s coal solution has carbon downside across globe
China’s coal solution has carbon downside across globe | Special reports pages | The Seattle Times
Hexigten Qi, China —
The truth is 70gw of solar isn't going to do much. Between this and the reality that more coal will be built China will be over 10gt this year.
China’s coal solution has carbon downside across globe | Special reports pages | The Seattle Times
Hexigten Qi, China —
The new coal plant here is an industrial fortress of boilers, tanks and towers that stretches across a lonely plateau in Inner Mongolia.
All day long and through the night, it vents huge gray clouds of steam and emits an awful stench.
Though it may seem odd, this is part of China’s campaign to combat the nation’s notorious urban smog. The plant transforms low-grade coal into a cleaner-burning methane gas that can be piped to cities, replacing dirtier fuels that now are used to cook meals, heat homes and produce electricity.
The Chinese leadership has called for the accelerated development of these coal-to- gas plants, and more are under construction in areas distant from major urban centers.
But embracing this technology to fight air pollution involves a serious environmental trade off. The plants that produce this gas spew far more carbon emissions than those that burn coal to generate electricity.
“They’re going to lock in emissions. China — and the world — will bear the consequences for decades,” said Robert Jackson, professor of environment and energy at Stanford University.
A study published last year in Energy Policy found that producing, transporting and combusting this coal-generated gas results in up to 82 percent more carbon emissions than burning China’s coal directly to generate electricity.
If all the plants with initial government approval are built, they could boost the nation’s annual carbon emissions by more than 7 percent over 2012 levels, according to an analysis prepared for The Seattle Times by a co-author of that study.
Such large-scale development would be a significant blow to global efforts to curb CO2 emissions, which already are changing the planet’s climate and causing the oceans to become more acidic.
Those emissions are climbing at rates that pose far more severe risks to the planet, and reversing that trend is heavily dependent on China making cuts in its carbon emissions.
The gas plants are part of a broader expansion of the Chinese coal industry in Inner Mongolia and other provinces in the north and west.
The truth is 70gw of solar isn't going to do much. Between this and the reality that more coal will be built China will be over 10gt this year.
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