China Still Expanding Coal Power Capacity
By Paul Homewood
Reuters report that China is adding more coal power capacity this year and next:
SANHE, China (Reuters) – China Energy Group, the country’s biggest power generator, will add more than 6 gigawatts (GW) of new ultra-low emission coal-fired capacity this year as it bids to meet growing electricity demand, a senior official with the firm said on Thursday.
The company also expected to build another 5 GW of low-emission capacity next year, Xiao Jianying, the head of the state-run firm’s coal-fired power department, told Reuters.
“China still has quite a big demand for electricity. The government now supports regions with poor wind and solar resources to use coal-fired power … it’s a more practical measure, as gas is still too expensive,” said Xiao.
China Energy operated coal-fired plants with a total capacity of 175 GW at the end of 2018, 77.4% of its total capacity and about 10% of the entire country’s capacity.
Xiao said the company would gradually shut down small and polluting coal-fired power units and replace them with efficient ones, noting that total capacity would continue to increase but at a slower rate of growth.
Of course, some older inefficient capacity will be taken out, but clearly this new capacity will be around for decades to come.
Bear in mind that these are just the figures for China Energy, which accounts for about a tenth of China’s total generation.
According to China Portal, the country as a whole has already added 17 GW of thermal capacity in the first two quarters this year, most of which will be coal-fired. This equates to 1.5% of current thermal capacity:
https://chinaenergyportal.org/en/2019-q2-electricity-and-energy-statistics/
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Should be simple for the Green New Deal to urgently transition to solar and wind by 2050…
https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-worlds-coal-power-plants
China takes its coal-delivering infrasructure very seriously:
Impressive !
It was good to see some members of the Assemblée Nationale refusing to be lectured by the Greta goddess. Perhaps she should take thetrans Siberian to China and see how she gets on there.
‘China Still Expanding Coal Power Capacity’
Why wouldn’t they?
They’re certainly hell-bent on fulfilling their Paris Agreement commitments!
When looking at a graph of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, it becomes incomprehensible that Britain and other Western countries want to strangle their economies to reduce emissions which truly are insignificant.
Reblogged this on Climate- Science.
Hopefully they can get the smoke stack scubbers to clean it all up
There are several different things to consider. Flue gas desulphurisation and particulate dropout are not too hard to implement at a basic level. NOx is harder, and CCS utterly uneconomic and problematic. What did you have in mind?
https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-worlds-coal-power-plants
Move the slider from 2000 to the end and watch the UK go dark and the Far East light up massively.