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China Cancels Over 100 Coal-Fired Power Plants (reuters.com)
In an effort to improve air quality, the Chinese government has canceled over 100 coal-fired power plants in 11 provinces -- totaling a combined installed capacity of more than 100 gigawatts. Reuters reports: In a document issued on Jan. 14, financial media group Caixin reported, the National Energy Administration (NEA) suspended the coal projects, some of which were already under construction. The projects worth some 430 billion yuan ($62 billion) were to have been spread across provinces and autonomous regions including Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Shanxi, Gansu, Ningxia, Qinghai, Shaanxi and other northwestern areas. Putting the power projects on hold is a major step towards the government's effort to produce power from renewable sources such as solar and wind, and wean the country off coal, which accounts for the majority of the nation's power supply. To put it in perspective, some 130 GW of additional solar and wind power will be installed by 2020, equal to France's total renewable power generation capacity, said Frank Yu, principal consultant at Wood Mackenzie. "This shows the government is keeping its promise in curbing supplies of coal power," Yu said. Some of the projects will still go ahead, but not until 2025 and will likely replace outdated technology, he said.
It must be...
Because apparently last year was the 'hottest year on record', even though it was a very mild summer in the U.K. And nothing like the drought of 1976. And 'since records began' means 'in the past 150 years', and the planet has existed for millions of years.
There is no such thing as 'catastrophic man-made global warming', which is why they renamed it 'climate change'.
Are you sick of 'Climatedot' pushing this nonsense every single day yet?
www.climatedepot.com
www.wattsupwiththat.com
I never believed China would be up to this. Great!
First world skeptics ready with hard data to prove how miniscule this effort is compared to what developing countries need to do.
Chinese government officials announced that they are getting really pissed off with the smog.
While China is meeting multiple goals with this move, China already has three times as much coal-fired capacity as the US, and that is currently running at about half-capacity. This is mostly to do with curbing speculative investment in the industry that is likely to lead to problems later.
GIven the nuclear and hydroelectric projects under advanced stages of construction, and current and predicted energy use, they simply don't need this coal capacity.
Wind/solar will also add to capacity, but it's not replacing the coal generation capacity these stations would have provided like the article implies.
That's one of the advantages of authoritarian regimes. Seeing the nuclear industry over here bickering about indemnizations to carry through something which was decided in a democratic manner (and pocketing lots of tax payer money for that), how much nicer would it have been to watch those overpaid C*Os be put in jail?
That said, I still prefer our not-so effective, more democratic regimes.
To put it in perspective, some 130 GW of additional solar and wind power will be installed by 2020, equal to France's total renewable power generation capacity, said Frank Yu, principal consultant at Wood Mackenzie.
France has nowhere near 130 GW of installed renewable power generation.
Currently we're running near peak demand at 92 GW due to the horrible cold, we've got about 55 GW of nukes running flat out (5 reactors are off line for maintenance) and about 15 GW of fossils, 13 GW of hydro, 2.6 GW of solar and 2.6 GW of wind.
How many of the other figures in this article are bullshit?
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Assuming we're in for an 11C increase in temperature before the turn of the century if we stay the course, the thing that strikes me as the most insane on this entire discussion is we've got people who think a carbon tax would fix the issue.
That's right. We've literally got an entire community of elites saying taxes, not technology, not changes in behavior, not a international effort, but taxes, will save the world. What a farce.
Your options on that one are, the threat is far more serious than first imagined and they are trying to get some cash together to build an ark, or we're trotting out a monster to scare people into emptying their wallets which is not something I'd cry wolf over.
The worlds problems are going to get very serious with the 3rd world attempting to obtain 1st world living standards. The US, for all it's problems, has a moderate and fairly responsible population growth rate compared to most countries. China and India in particular are going to see mass die-offs due to pollution and corruption, and the west has hit it's tolerance limit on immigration; pew research is showing in the US a newborn male today has a 1 in 2 shot of procreating, go look at their publications on marriage. We've seen the tip of the ice berg in regards to racism and bigotry coming back into style.
The frozen sea. Ice which should show up in October didn't show up until December and January.
{...}
And always. https://xkcd.com/1732/
And another ob. xkcd.
To quote the strip:
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
While some my scoff and call this a worthless effort, I disagree! Could they do more? Of course... but so could everyone else! Changing energy generation for a large country is a monumental undertaking and you will always have the greedy who would rather stab their own child in the eye than lose a single dollar but this shows a large counter-investment is going into renewable power sources. It's depressing that there is so much resistance to this change but it's slow, steady and unstoppable. Even the incoming US administration cannot turn the tide of this fight against pollution. Progress is slow at first, then really fast and completely unstoppable.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Interesting that the article makes no mention of China's plans to build more nuclear power plants.
Found this with a quick Google search:
http://dailycaller.com/2016/09...
China intends to bring 58 gigawatts of nuclear generating capacity into operation by 2020, up from the current capacity of roughly 27 gigawatts, according to World Nuclear News. China plans to follow this by getting about 10 percent of its electricity from 150 gigawatts of nuclear power by 2030, according to the World Nuclear Association.
Why mention plans to reduce coal use, increase wind and solar use but not mention the plans to also increase the use of nuclear power?
There is a bias in all news. The bias is in not only what they choose to report but what they choose to leave out. I've begun to seek out news from places that wear their bias on their sleeve, that way at least I know what they likely chose to report and leave out.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
When the economy tanks so does the need for energy. Canceling 100 power plants would usually raise a few eyebrows but in the age of Greenpeace and ignorance you can hide all that behind buzzwords like solar, wind and renewable.
Trump will build the 100 plants in the US.
Wow, China are really taking their climate change conspiracy to make America less competitive seriously. It's almost like they don't know that it's all fabricated and that Trump's talking out of his toupeed rectum.
there's a nice "global warming" infographic video over at wired.com
it would also be nice to have a plot of how global "background radiation levels" have developed in the same time span? did it get more, less or did it stay the same?
The reference to the 'total renewable energy in France' is a joke. France has 66 Million inhabitants. China more than 1.3 Billion. So even though it sounds impressive at first sight, it's a very, very small portion of their total energy requirement.
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
Because the situation accurately reflects the meaning of the word.
Your question is basically "explain what this word means".
There are books for exactly that, check one next time you meet an unfamiliar word.
Now that Chinese companies have the lead in Solar panel manufacturing it makes sense for the Chinese to support their home industry rather than building coal plants and importing turbines from GE
**Life is too short to be serious**
Imagine how bad the smog must be for the Chinese to actually take steps against it.
http://i.cubeupload.com/T6cyLu.png
Size doesn't really matter, because most renewable schemes scale with area. Population density does. France has 116/km^2, China has 145/km^2, so almost a 25% higher overall population density. That translates to a little bit less space for wind, solar, hydro and so on per capita, but not by enough to make it infeasible. Add in nuclear power, and the scaling is quite easy - building a nuclear power plant is hard, but doubling the generating capacity doesn't come close to doubling the land area, as long as you have a supply of uranium (China has uranium mines, France doesn't).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
It always annoys me that wind and solar projects get away with X GW of installed power generation. While they deliver on average 20-40% of that number.
I would rather see installed an estimated Y TWh of energy generated per year.
Did you really forget the whole ridiculous "freedom fries thing" where Saddam was supposed to have been supplied with Uranium by the French out of their former colony of Niger?
Here is more with a specific mention of the Uranium issue:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France%E2%80%93Niger_relations
China owns something like a third of the total foreign held US debt
The amount of US debt China owns is less than 10% of the total amount outstanding. Currently around $1.3 Trillion which is a big number but only a single digit percentage of the total debt. Most of the US debt is actually held by Americans. Of the $12.9 trillion chunk of debt owned by Americans, $5.3 trillion is held by government trust funds such as Social Security, $5.1 trillion is held by individuals, pension funds and state and local governments and the remaining $2.5 trillion is held by the Federal Reserve. Basically most of the debt is IOUs to the American people.
Interestingly Japan owns almost as much US debt as China does at $1.1 Trillion. But Japan isn't so scary so people gloss over that fact.
Although China needs the US as badly as the US needs China, if we try to bluster our way into something stupid, just calling the debt will make for a rather unpleasant time as the world economy topples.
China has no ability whatsoever to "call" the US debt. Treasury bonds don't work like that. China bought those treasuries to keep their currency exchange rate under control. Furthermore even if China wanted to get rid of their US denominated debt, they have absolutely no one else they can sell it to. There simply are no buyers for that much US debt at anywhere close to face value. If they hold a fire sale they absolutely screw their own economy in the process.
China's renewable energy sector is growing faster than its fossil fuels and nuclear power capacity. In 2015 China became the world's largest producer of photovoltaic power, at 43 GW installed capacity. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Are you telling me that electric lights are most frequently needed when my solar panels are the least capable to produce the electricity to light them? Who would have figured?? I don't see anything about that in the leaflets those greens littered the neighborhood with last week.
This is the kind of thing a one party dictatorship can do. Obviously it cuts both ways but we never really acknowledge that this kind of thing is impossible to do in a democracy without some immediate catastrophic event compelling people to action.
From other articles, it is clear the Chinese are cancelling these projects because they would have caused an over capacity of power.
What is not mentioned, is why they scheduled so many plants to begin with.
Either bad planning, excess corruption, or the Chinese economy is slowing faster than predicted.
To gain some political capital, they are "spinning" this that the reason is to reduce CO2 emissions.
I'd put one CFP in Hollywood, another in Manhattan, a 3rd in SanFran, another in Belltown-Seattle, roll on with Palm Springs, Santa-Barbara, Georgetown & Madison units. Jeeez we got 100 to pass out to Providence and Baltimore ... and 10s-of-thousands of snowflake progressives to have them rammed up their rumpoid!
I have been hearing about alternate reasons for such a pull back. We have the ghost cities that China built in the belief that "If you build it they will come". They were rolling in money and were spending it in that magnanimous Command style.
The money isn't quite so flush now and they have to make decisions. Blaming it on "changing to 'cleaner' methods" sounds like a way to distract from the real reason ... "We have a shortage of funds and had to change our priorities!"
God: "I don't leave footprints!"
N/t
And you're mostly asleep when there's no sunlight. It's called "Night time". Try it some time. You'll find your need for electric lighting is zero when you're sleeping.
It's winter! Why is China covered with smog in winter and not summer? Warm and fuzzy environmental types would like to blame Big Business and Government, but is there another explanation?
The primary reason is that high sulfur coal is used to heat homes in winter. "Homes and small businesses that burn coal in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei contribute up to half of the air pollution in the region every winter, said Zhao Yingmin, chief engineer at the Ministry of Environmental Protection." http://english.caixin.com/2016... - but note that burning coal is generally outlawed in cities. The bulk of home consumption is in rural areas, and in the North where it is cold.
"In rural areas coal is still permitted to be used by Chinese households, commonly burned raw in unvented stoves. This fills houses with high levels of toxic metals leading to bad Indoor Air Quality (IAQ). In addition, people eat food cooked over coal fires which contains toxic substances." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Linfen, a city in northern China's Shanxi province has suffered greatly from unbreathable air. Citizens were told by the local environmental minister that "70 percent of sulfur dioxide emissions comes from citizens' coal use." There is skepticism, yet it is clear that industrial pollution is not entirely responsible. http://www.sixthtone.com/news/...
The seasonal differences in air pollution cannot be explained by the rather constant industrial use of coal. Large scale power plants are able to mitigate the offensive emissions somewhat. The difference that we see right now is due to millions of individual homes producing the worst kind of pollution.
...omphaloskepsis often...
Coal will still be there as expected, much to the chagrin of environmental activists.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
China's adding a lot of nuclear capacity instead. Good for China to lead in a reasonable replacement for coal. Not PV or wind, buy nuclear.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
After China took the suggestions of myself and others to investigate converting their most modern coal power plant designs to cogeneration and start using air scrubbers (which use water for the most part), resulting in the same quantity of coal producing twice as much end power and heating, they were able to shelve the bad designs. With the added solar and wind power they have now found is cheaper is coal, they sidelined an additional quantity of coal plants as well.
The game is over. We won.
Adapt.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I see everyone talking about this as a Chinese bid to slow global warming but I just see that as a highly unlikely motive for them. Far more likely is that it is an attempt to reign in their truely massive domestic polution problem and thus avoid the social unrest that could come from it. Currently, due to their polution problem in general, many Chinese citizens are exposed to air quality in their own homes equivalent to smoking several packs a day unless they can afford air filters (which cost far more than quite a few can afford) http://www.bbc.com/news/magazi... . Let that run long enough and people will start getting pretty upset when they start getting lung cancer in their 40s.
To put it another way, China only does things that might slow economic growth a bit (like cancel 100 very cheap to run coal plants) when the problem is very immediate. They've let the air quality drift to such a massively degraded level in some regions that I find it hard to believe that a problem like global warming, whose symptoms are really only now starting to be felt, is anywhere on their radar.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
One of the things that make nuclear ideal for China is it has a relatively small footprint per GW. The problem with renewables is they do not. China has a lot of competing vectors for physical space. Never mind the population. The land required for food and agriculture has always been primary. As it becomes industrialized, so has the demand for that land. China has tried to plan intensive cities to combat sprawl and land sterilization but as any planner can tell you it is difficult as best even with all the policy behind you. Before someone uses the argument, I will squash it. Yes China is a big country. Yes they do have parts of it that are indeed undeveloped with few people in it. However you also do not need power there either. Trying to produce from very far away and distribute it is not efficient to say the least. You need to generate as close to market as possible. Therein lies the issue with moving away from nuclear and towards renewable within the Chinese perspective (never mind peak power, and other other normal considerations).
If you think available generating capacity to be used at peak load is theoretical I do not understand why you are participating in this discussion.
It's kind of sad that you used the words "real generation " to try to justify a guess based on nothing but appalling ignorance.
There must be something that you are good at. Perhaps apply yourself to that instead.