China’s “war on pollution” may end up accelerating global warming
This week, the Chinese government vowed to launch a “war on pollution.” Public enemy number one will have to be coal-fired power plants, whose emissions kill more than a quarter-million people a year, according to Greenpeace. In fact, a coal industry forum this week declared that China’s coal consumption will peak by 2020 (link in Chinese), and then start falling by 0.4% annually thereafter.
This sounds like great news. But it also begs the question, with coal now providing at least 67% of China’s energy, where’s the cleaner energy that’s going to replace it coming from?
Stratfor Global Intelligence
China doesn’t have enough natural gas to meet its energy needs, and its nuclear sector is also relatively small. Clean technologies such as wind and solar are still immature. That’s why a lot of the country’s energy will come from “coal natural gas,” a.k.a. synthetic natural gas or syngas. Created by burning natural gas developed from coal, this form of energy creates a fraction of the pollutants spewed out by coal-fired power plants. But it also emits up to 82% more carbon dioxide and guzzles huge amounts of water.
Each dot represents the average water consumption by fuel type; the bar indicates the range of water volumes consumed by each fuel type. (While the production of shale gas requires a significant amount of water withdrawal, most of water used in the hydraulic fracturing process returns to the environment or is reused in the system.) World Resources Institute
Cleaning up air pollution is clearly the priority. The rapid growth in demand for syngas will see the government accelerate the approval of new projects, according to the forum, aiming for 2015 production of between 15 billion and 18 billion cubic meters a year (530-636 billion cubic feet). ”With the present rapidly developing coal-to-gas projects, there is high enthusiasm for coal natural gas projects everywhere,” said Zhang Fang, associate dean of the China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Planning Institute, at the coal forum. ”By 2020, China coal natural gas production will reach 60 billion cubic meters.”
That’s pretty scary, given that China already belches out a quarter of the world’s energy-related carbon dioxide emissions.
PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency
China emitted 9.9 billion tonnes of CO2 (pdf, p.10) in 2012, a 3.3% increase on the previous year; that increase came largely from coal-fired power plant production. That was an improvement from the 10% annual increase that China had averaged for the last decade or so. But imagine what will happen as China’s coal-fired power plants are swapped out for syngas, emitting 82% more CO2.
And then there’s China’s water crisis. The vast majority of the approved syngas plants are in Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia, already two of China’s most parched regions. As World Resources International, a non-profit group, told us last year, these projects will draw water away from local farmers and herders.
World Resources Institute
It’s not like there aren’t other options. The government has stymied the development of shale gas, possibly because China needs its coal companies to stay in business. And while there are clean coal-burning technologies available—for example, sulfur-scrubbing and carbon-capture—those are expensive.
Additional reporting by Jennifer Chiu.
Mind the gap
Facebook’s enormous Asian opportunity, explained in two charts
By John McDuling @jmcduling 11 hours ago
Facebook is now a mobile company, so the chart above points out a pretty major hole—and opportunity—for the social network. The social network’s monthly active user (MAU) base in most parts of the planet (particularly in Europe and North America) basically matches the number of smartphones available in those areas.
The glaring exception is Asia, which also happens to be the largest smartphone market on the planet. Facebook’s monthly active users in Asia equate to less than half of smartphone users there. Even when existing WhatsApp users are added in, there’s plenty of room to grow in Asia’s mobile space. +
Of course, the discrepancy is partly explained by Facebook’s absence from most of China. The relatively low percentage of Asian users may also help explain why Mark Zuckerberg wants to bring free internet using drones to places like the Philippines.
This sounds like great news. But it also begs the question, with coal now providing at least 67% of China’s energy, where’s the cleaner energy that’s going to replace it coming from?
Stratfor Global Intelligence
China doesn’t have enough natural gas to meet its energy needs, and its nuclear sector is also relatively small. Clean technologies such as wind and solar are still immature. That’s why a lot of the country’s energy will come from “coal natural gas,” a.k.a. synthetic natural gas or syngas. Created by burning natural gas developed from coal, this form of energy creates a fraction of the pollutants spewed out by coal-fired power plants. But it also emits up to 82% more carbon dioxide and guzzles huge amounts of water.
Each dot represents the average water consumption by fuel type; the bar indicates the range of water volumes consumed by each fuel type. (While the production of shale gas requires a significant amount of water withdrawal, most of water used in the hydraulic fracturing process returns to the environment or is reused in the system.) World Resources Institute
Cleaning up air pollution is clearly the priority. The rapid growth in demand for syngas will see the government accelerate the approval of new projects, according to the forum, aiming for 2015 production of between 15 billion and 18 billion cubic meters a year (530-636 billion cubic feet). ”With the present rapidly developing coal-to-gas projects, there is high enthusiasm for coal natural gas projects everywhere,” said Zhang Fang, associate dean of the China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Planning Institute, at the coal forum. ”By 2020, China coal natural gas production will reach 60 billion cubic meters.”
That’s pretty scary, given that China already belches out a quarter of the world’s energy-related carbon dioxide emissions.
PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency
China emitted 9.9 billion tonnes of CO2 (pdf, p.10) in 2012, a 3.3% increase on the previous year; that increase came largely from coal-fired power plant production. That was an improvement from the 10% annual increase that China had averaged for the last decade or so. But imagine what will happen as China’s coal-fired power plants are swapped out for syngas, emitting 82% more CO2.
And then there’s China’s water crisis. The vast majority of the approved syngas plants are in Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia, already two of China’s most parched regions. As World Resources International, a non-profit group, told us last year, these projects will draw water away from local farmers and herders.
World Resources Institute
It’s not like there aren’t other options. The government has stymied the development of shale gas, possibly because China needs its coal companies to stay in business. And while there are clean coal-burning technologies available—for example, sulfur-scrubbing and carbon-capture—those are expensive.
Additional reporting by Jennifer Chiu.
Mind the gap
Facebook’s enormous Asian opportunity, explained in two charts
By John McDuling @jmcduling 11 hours ago
Facebook is now a mobile company, so the chart above points out a pretty major hole—and opportunity—for the social network. The social network’s monthly active user (MAU) base in most parts of the planet (particularly in Europe and North America) basically matches the number of smartphones available in those areas.
The glaring exception is Asia, which also happens to be the largest smartphone market on the planet. Facebook’s monthly active users in Asia equate to less than half of smartphone users there. Even when existing WhatsApp users are added in, there’s plenty of room to grow in Asia’s mobile space. +
Of course, the discrepancy is partly explained by Facebook’s absence from most of China. The relatively low percentage of Asian users may also help explain why Mark Zuckerberg wants to bring free internet using drones to places like the Philippines.
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