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Thursday, January 04, 2007 Part I: China's Coal FutureTo prevent massive pollution and slow its growing contribution to global warming, China will need to make advanced coal technology work on an unprecedented scale. By Peter Fairley
A visitor arriving in Shanghai immediately notices China's technological conundrum. Through the windows of the magnetically levitated train that covers the 30 kilometers from Pudong International Airport to Shanghai at up to 430 kilometers per hour, both the progress the country is making and the price it is paying for it are apparent. Most days, a yellow haze hangs over Shanghai's construction frenzy. Pollution is the leading cause of death in China, killing more than a million people a year. And the primary cause of pollution is also the source of the energy propelling the ultramodern train: coal. To keep pace with the country's economic growth, China's local governments, utilities, and entrepreneurs are building, on average, one coal-fired power plant per week. The power plants emit a steady stream of soot, sulfur dioxide, and other toxic pollutants into the air; they also spew out millions of tons of carbon dioxide. In November, the International Energy Agency projected that China will become the world's largest source of carbon dioxide emissions in 2009, overtaking the United States nearly a decade earlier than previously anticipated. Coal is expected to be responsible for three-quarters of that carbon dioxide. And the problem will get worse. Between now and 2020, China's energy consumption will more than double, according to expert estimates. Ratcheting up energy efficiency, tapping renewable resources with hydro dams and wind turbines, and building nuclear plants can help, but--at least in the coming two decades--only marginally. Since China has very little in the way of oil and gas reserves, its future depends on coal. With 13 percent of the world's proven reserves, China has enough coal to sustain its economic growth for a century or more. The good news is that China's leaders saw the coal rush coming in the 1990s and began exploring a range of advanced technologies. Chief among them is coal gasification. "It's the key for clean coal in China," says chemical engineer Li Wenhua, who directed advanced coal development for Beijing's national high-tech R&D program (better known in China as the "863" program) from 2001 through 2005. Gasification transforms coal's complex mix of hydrocarbons into a hydrogen-rich gas known as synthesis gas, or "syngas." Power plants can burn syngas as cleanly as they can natural gas. In addition, with the right catalysts and under the right conditions, the basic chemical building blocks in syngas combine to form the hydrocarbon ingredients of gasoline and diesel fuel. As a result, coal gasification has the potential both to squelch power plants' emission of soot and smog and to decrease China's growing dependence on imported oil. It could even help control emissions of carbon dioxide, which is more easily captured from syngas plants than from conventional coal-fired plants. Despite China's early anticipation of the need for coal gasification, however, its implementation of the technology in power plants has lagged. The country's electricity producers lack the economic and political incentives to break from their traditional practices.
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Comments
gabrielg01 on 01/04/2007 at 1:48 PM
298
America's increasing presence and domination in the Middle East and Central Asia is driven by the goal to project economic power all over the world. Today we have military bases even in the formerly Soviet states of Central Asia (Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kirgyzstan). Check this link out:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2002/020209-attack01.htm
The point is that even if the USA is not reliant on this oil, these oil reserves represent such a gigantic value that dominating them gives America the economic power levers to the world economy. Or so the assumption goes.
This assumption is being challenged, and possibly proven wrong today. Brasil is shifting to ethanol (several South American countries will follow suit), and China is shifting to liquefied coal. Europe will shift to liquefied coal too, when they get fed up with the Russian bullying and blackmailing. Nuclear power will see a new renaissance as well. There will be a convergence of green technologies too: much improved batteries, fuel-cells, photovoltaic and windpower. All this will lead to increased independence from the oil-bullies.
The oil-bullies of the world, OPEC, America and Russia will be left with much diminished economic domination. As for us Americans, we will never get our money's worth out of these oil-adventures. The oil and military barons will get rich of course, but the rest of us will see no benefit.
jpdemers on 01/05/2007 at 2:10 AM
32
The US has coal reserves rivaling those of China. We will no doubt follow China's lead and build our own gasification plants -- I don't see that we even have a choice.
badspine on 01/19/2007 at 2:59 PM
1
I did a project on Fischer Trospch (Ft) fuels for my grad school and many aspects of Ft fuels would be great for America. One of the major problems with adopting these fuels is environmental regulations (according to some environmentalists / alarmists, the Ft process for creating fuel causes as much polution as burning natural fossil fuels) and the threat of Saudi Arabia and OPEC crushing the oil market by lowering oil prices dramatically (look up a company called syntek (I think thats the spelling) in the 1980s.
There are backers that are very interested in pursuing Ft fuels. Recently, the CEO of Jet Blue Airlines contacted General Electric about this idea. GE was too afraid to pursue this technology, due to Saudi Arabia and OPEC's ability to effect oil prices. The only way American companies would build Ft plants is if the United States government promised to buy the fuel if the price / barrel (PPB) dropped below a certain point. However, certain groups would proclaim this as government welfare for oil companies. So, despite being an excellent idea, Ft fuels may not be seen being produced in America anytime soon.
China is a different story altogether. They really have no social conscious and no special interest groups to deal with. They just do whatever is necessary to move along. For example, they don't respect copyright laws, do business readily with countries that don't respect child labor laws, etc. In many ways adopting a dramatic shift in energy production is much easier in China than the U.S. In particular, the U.S. can't even drill for oil in its own territory, let alone pursue new courses of fuel production because of environmental concerns (but yet, we're oil bullies).