China has given the green light to more than 150 coal power plants so far this year despite falling coal consumption, flatlining production and existing overcapacity.
According to a new Greenpeace analysis, in the first nine months of 2015 China’s central and provincial governments issued environmental approvals to 155 coal-fired power plants — that’s four per week.
The numbers associated with this prospective new fleet of plants are suitably astronomical.
Should they all go ahead they would have a capacity of 123GW, more than twice Germany’s entire coal fleet; their carbon emissions would be around 560 million tonnes a year, roughly equal to the annual energy emissions of Brazil; they would produce more particle pollution than all the cars in Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin and Chongqing put together; and consequently would cause around 6,100 premature deaths a year.
But they’re unlikely to be used to their maximum since China has practically no need for the energy they would produce.
Coal-fired electricity hasn’t increased for four years, and this year coal plant utilisation fell below 50%.
It looks like this trend will continue, with China committing to renewables, gas and nuclear targets for 2020 — together they will cover any increase in electricity demand.
Wasted trillions
What looks to have triggered this phenomenon is Beijing’s decision to decentralise the authority to approve environmental impact assessments on coal projects starting in March of this year.
But it’s been a problem years-in-the-making, driven by the Chinese economy’s addiction to debt-fuelled capital spending.
Almost 50% of China’s GDP is taken up by capital spending on power plants, factories, real estate and infrastructure.
It’s what fuelled the country’s enormous economic growth in recent decades, but diminishing returns have fast become massive losses.
Recent research estimated that the equivalent of $11 trillion (more than one year’s GDP) has been spent on projects that generated no or almost no economic value.
Since the country’s power tariffs are state controlled, energy producers still receive a good price despite the oversupply.
And boy is it a huge oversupply: China’s thermal power capacity has increased by 60GW in the last 12 months whilst coal generation has fallen by more than 2% and capacity utilisation has fallen by 8%.
With thermal power generation this year is equal to what it was in 2011, China has essentially spent four years building 300 large coal power plants it doesn’t use.
Total spend on the upcoming projects would be an estimated $70 billion, with the 60% controlled by the ‘Big 5′ state-owned groups potentially adding 40% to company debt without any likely increase in revenue.
Basically, if these plants get built China’s coal bubble will be inflating faster than ever.
Environmental impacts
Because there’s no room for this much new coal, and because China is sticking to its 15% non-fossil fuel target by 2020, older plants will likely be closed.
Because of that it’s unlikely the new fleet would cause a net increase in carbon emissions, particulate pollution or premature deaths.
To appreciate the sheer scale of the plan, however, here are some of eye-watering stats:
Assuming they operate the same number of hours per year as the most efficient Chinese coal plants did in 2012, these 155 would produce 96,000 tonnes of SO2 pollution, 124,000 tonnes of NOx and 29,000 tonnes of particulates per year.
Modelling suggests that this would cause 6,100 premature deaths a year — that’s 150,000 over a 24-year operating life.
Around Shenyang, where there are reports of record pollution levels 50 times worse than the World Health Organisation’s recommended limit, there are plans for five new coal plants.
Annual carbon emissions of 560 million tonnes would equal 6% of China’s total CO2.
But here’s an oft-overlooked consequence of these coal plants: water.
Nearly half of the proposed power plants are in areas of extremely high water stress, a further 5% are in high water stress regions and another 6% are in arid places.
Demanding at least 310-370 million cubic metres of water every year (which would meet the needs of 5-6 million city dwellers), these projects would exacerbate the conflict between urban, agricultural and industrial consumption.
So they’re not only a waste of money.
Oil, gas, coal getting stored.
For winter or nuclear winter.
probably related to GDP and econ stimulus... building goal plants are a good source of inflating growth
also, a lot of these are replacement projects... "clean coal" i mean, they're still dirty as fuck but a huge improvement over what was there before.
don't think it's related to winter because most of these projects take a while
that said, general winter 'extra heating' has made air quality horrible recently
my best friend works in Beijing and says the air so bad can hardly breath, feel breathless outside because the air is so polluted
which isn't to say everywhere is bad... same friend spent some time recently in Zhejiang at the air was amazing
but Beijing is a effing post-apoc war zone right now
"China has given the green light to more than 150 coal power plants so far this year [ ....] Modelling this expansion, Greenpeace EnergyDesk suggests that this would cause 6,100 premature deaths a year — that’s 150,000 over a 24-year operating life."
Has Greenpeace modeled the deaths from Fukushima, yet?
Breathable air disappearing in China. Flight capital and expats appearing overseas.
Wrong. Last summer China shut down thousands of inefficient factories and electrical plants. The air was much cleaner. In Qingdao, where I live, we had many Montana quality air days. The air is improving here, but you wouldn't know. You never leave your traailer park.BTW, life expectancy is improving in all income groups here. In America, the uneducated white person is dying sooner.
The air is improving here, but you wouldn't know. You never leave your traailer park.
Oh boy, here we go again. Don't make us start posting pictures of your glorious shitizens pooping in public. It didn't go well for the last (paid) keyboard warrior who started talking America smack. Speaking of which...you sure you got this all cleaned up??
http://www.chinahush.com/2009/10/21/amazing-pictures-pollution-in-china/
Where do you troglodytes get this "information" about China? It looks like your handlers feed it to you for consumption. Why don't you get a passport and spend some time there? Oh, await. Then you will have to admit that your whole worldview is false.
Stay in your trailer park and don't turn off your TV. Keep believing that stuff about "shittting in the streets" if it makes you feel better. You seem to have a preoccupation with feces. I'll bet it smells really bad in your trailer.
Cough - fuck - weez - where ma flimsy hospital face mask - cough cough - where ma smokes
That should be great news for Greenpeace cause they think there's too many peeps on the planet anyway!
How about a Venn diagram overlay with the strike map?
scuttlebutt article?
See, total consumption of coal is down.....that means some old coal powered plants had been closed down....
with new, more efficient and clean plants being built....for one simple purpose: so that old ones can be closed down.....
another yardstick: the percentage of power generated from coal is down....meaning other sources of power is up---being nuclear, gas, or renewal....
while 155 power plants seem huge, considering that china has over 1.3 billion people.....so, divided by 155, that's like 1 plant for circa 8 million people...suddenly, the scale does not look that large... 8 million people, one lousy new coal powered plant...
"Modelling suggests that this would cause 6,100 premature deaths a year — that’s 150,000 over a 24-year operating life."
Haven't US funded terrorists killed something like 250,000 people in Syria in just the last few years? Maybe there are more pressing issues Greenpeace could be looking at.
When numbers come out of thin air, it is best to go large.
6100 is probably less than 'choking on fish bones' and certainly a non statistical margin of error part of the population in general.
Don't give me the 'each life is precious' whine and China in the same sentence.
Pointless over capacity, now there is a good point of debate.
Yeah right. Greenpeace has boatloads of credibility.
Damn right they do. Always on the spot to point at the USA for evey issue but totally unaware of hydrocarbon related pollution, air quality, or resource mismangement in some other countries.
They got the USA number.
Greenpeace does not give a shit about the air, pollution, resource extraction methods of any county that loves President for life Putin. He and Greenpeace go way back. He used to make sure the propaganda money got to them first when Vlad was a lowly Communist Intelligence Officer. Now he just laughs, does not give them a rouble, and dares the little hyprocrites to walk on Soviet controlled geography.
" I fuck little turds like you for breakfast" President for life Putin tells the Greenies today. Leaving the Greenies to wonder why he would enjoy feces at that time of day; but understand that dedicated pederasts have an affinity for ass and the waste products found there.
I always look to Greenpeace for health statistics. They would never publish anything dubious or self-serving. And they never base decisions on extremist political beliefs.
LOL.
Not to worry...preznit obomo is being to fix it when he does climate change and shit.
We gunna get ours den.
Meh, like Al Gore and his cronies will be able to do a damn thing about anything China wants to do...
"China has practically no need..."
Fuck you, you witless Greenpeace bastard.
An economy that actually produces something other than shit checks needs energy. Lots of it. For Chinese to have any hope whatever to attain a living standard comparable to the one enjoyed by your lazy, fat American ass, they'll need it all and much more besides.
Damn right they'll be using coal from Australia. When Saudi runs out of oil in 15 years the black stuff's going to get way too expensive to waste burning for electricity.
You ought to be asking where are the coal-fired power plants that should have been built in the USA, and all the factories they should have kept humming.
Guess what? Most of the scares around pollution were never more than another excuse to fiddle Americans out of "polluting" manufacturing jobs that paid a living wage to people whose dads couldn't get them busy-work internships at NGOs if their kids were too dim for a job at Goldman. Nothing was actually done about the pollution except to move it to poorer countries with governments that made even less effort to pretend to be democracies than ours did.
Do yourself a favour, kid. You're good at finding stuff out, I'lll give you that. Go find out who funds Greenpeace, and where they get their money. Then ask yourself what they might be really up to.
+1 but youre mistaken about china using coal. They will be using Siberian and probably arctic oil and gas.
The muricans and brits will be drilling in the antarctic.
Thats if we are all here still.
Fuck greenscam! ripoff artists!
Isn't Zerohedge regularly spreading irrational fears of nuclear energy? -> Zerohedge is also guilty of the deads by coal
Its not nuclear energy per se that is the worry.
The worry is shitty extant designs of the reactors.
"irrational fears of nookloor energy?"
LOL.
Allow me to retort: Chernobyl & Fukushima.
http://marshall.org/events/the-myth-of-carbon-pollution/
There's something very wrong with this article. Now don't take that to mean I endorse or decry what the Chinese are doing but some of the statements in the article are contradictory to say the least.
Firstly, the author goes to a great deal of trouble to tell us how many additional 'premature' (however that is defined) deaths there will be as a result of the building of all these new power stations. The article then goes on to say that there will be no net increase because old plants will be retired. Well, which is it?
The author makes a value judgement by calling the expenditure on the plants "wasted trillions". Who is he to judge whether this is wasted or not. If I was holding trillions of fast depreciating dollars as capital I would want to spend that capital as fast as I could on real, tangible, hard assets before they became totally worthless. If I wanted my country to grow in future and I knew that growth would be directly related to energy consumption then I might just spend the money building power plants even although the current demand would otherwise not justify that expenditure.
The author throws around a lot of seemingly impressive numbers but there is no context. Is double Germany's coal fleet a significant number? Germany has a high percentage of its power generated from wind. All of the numbers would mean so much more if they were expressed on a per capita basis rather than a gross basis because what the numbers hide is the sheer size of China.
Lastly, 6100 deaths seems to be an overly accurate number to me. Given the number of people that die daily across the entire globe I would have thought that 6100 was a rounding error.
So I guess China didn't get Obama's note about that terrible CO2 stuff, or maybe it makes a difference to your policy when you have engineers in charge, who know something about science, instead of lawyers and community activists.
Cancer rate in 1900 = 3%
Cancer rate today = 60%
Coal is benign compared to nuclear.........
Planning ahead .... it's much easier to convert a coal fired plant to oil .... than vice versa .... a pipe and a sprinkler head in the furnace .... voila ?
What is the equivalent in coal .... to maintain a 1 "Algore Year" carbon footprint lifestyle .... for one year .... I'm guessing most of us are consuming at a .05 "Algore Year" carbon footprint ?
You lost me at Greenpeace.
1.21 Gigawatts!!!!!!!!!