Comments on: Putting China’s Coal Power Sector in its Proper Perspective

By: The Green Leap Forward 绿跃进 » Safety is your responsibility and MINE: The Heilongjiang coal mine disaster in context

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 06:30:41 +0000

[...] of swchedyle) and plans to shut a further 31 GW in the next three years (see previous post “Putting China’s Coal Power Sector in its Proper Perspective“). The government is also carrying out a deliberate plan of closing smaller inefficient [...]

By: The Green Leap Forward 绿跃进 » Deconstructing China’s Energy Intensity–A Lesson in Fuzzy Math

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 16:06:38 +0000

[...] of the most noteworthy programs have been the shutting down of old, inefficient coal-fired capacity and the Top 1000 Energy-Consuming Enterprises program. Additionally, many industrial enterprises [...]

By: Alex

Alex — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 09:43:05 +0000

@GreenerChina It’s much less a technology issue, at least on the large generation company’s part. Most large stations, anything reasonably modern and above 100MW is actually already extremely Western.

Much of the problem lies in:

A) Bad coal - uncleaned/unwashed, variable levels of ash (which really kicks on to filters and in turn emissions), variable levels of ‘not coal’ (ever visited a ‘fake coal’ mine?), and

B) High economic activity where dormant stations/industry generators are fired up. At 25MW or less they’re not very efficient, usually old, and not really used all that much, but if energy is needed they will be. This was the case in 2008.

Bad reporting my individuals which put words together nicely, but fail in reportage.

By: Mao Ruiqi

Mao Ruiqi — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 10:42:21 +0000

Why do I feel so uncomfortable that your lead “good-news” is the meeting of goals set by the government? I’m sure this not like the goal-setting and achieving practices of the Great Leap Forward, yet I am left with a nagging sense of doubt.

By: Polluting Power: China’s Top 10 Power Companies

Polluting Power: China’s Top 10 Power Companies — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 02:11:19 +0000

[...] at The Green Leap Forward has run down some of the bad points and, since he is a “glass half full” kind of guy, [...]

By: sustainablejohn

sustainablejohn — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 11:22:05 +0000

Is the RPS actually law?

In the Medium-to-Long-Term Development Plan for Renewable Energy that was released in September 2007, it says grid companies should source at least 1% electricity from non-hydro renewables and power firms with ownership-adjusted power assets larger than 5GW source 3% of installed capacity from non-hydro renewables by 2010. The percentage will increase to 3% and 8% for grid and power companies respectively by 2020. BUT, there was no mention of RPS in the 11th Five-Year Plan for Renewable Energy, which was released later in March 2008.

By: Greener China

Greener China — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 04:32:51 +0000

Julian.

totally following you on this post, however there is one data point that I think is more important than the energy intensity factor… the carbon dioxide intensity.

That figure shows that while China’s energy production figures may be coming to par, the means by which it is doing it is resulting in 2-3x the emissions that one would find in Japan.

Imagine if the top 10 were to install Japan level technology and knock their emissions down 40%. That would put China squarely behind the US in emissions again. Seems to me that there is an opportunity there.

By: Max Parness

Max Parness — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 02:47:14 +0000

Thank goodness that someone in the China Energy & Environment blogosphere has pointed out that the statement that “greenhouse gas emissions from the three biggest Chinese power firms in 2008 were higher than those of the entire United Kingdom” is useless without having appropriate background info. It seems that these context free comparisons get made all the time and that they are rarely ever thought about critically- of course China has bigger GHG emission problems than the UK… China is a bigger country!

What really matters are things like co2 emitted per kwh, energy use/co2 use per capita, economic output per kwh and so on- these are measures that can actually be compared between countries.

Tangential: Julian, do you happen to know if there are any other countries in the world that have a program similar to China’s program to shut down inefficient coal fired power plants?