Chinese Coal Consumption Just Fell for the First Time This Century
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/justin-guay/chinese-coal-consumption_b_5687972.html?utm_hp_ref=green&ir=Green
No wonder. If they'd keep going with coal, then they would have no choice but to shift from selling canned fresh air (multi-billion-USD business in China in 2013) to putting much of its population into gas masks for all outside times. At least.
In terms of CO2 emissions, huffingtonpost is definitely cherry-picking and walking in rose glasses, though.
There are attempts to estimate the full picture of energy and fuels production and usage in China, one of most obvious and often cited one - is
http://www.eia.gov/countries/cab.cfm?fips=ch . For the scale of the subject, it's not that long, and i like its style. The agency which made it - has quite solid reputation, too.
It predicts that China will become the largest oil importer this year, surpassing USA (already happened in Q4 2013, it says). And it mentions also that China became 2nd-large oil importer as recently as 2009. The gap between USA and Japan is large - the former imports ~1,5 times more oil than the latter, - and still, China lept through this gap in just 5 years. Which gives average annual growth of China oil imports at some 9%.
Its domestic oil production during same period was quite flat. The article predicts further and massive intensification in using liquid hydrocarbon fuels in China, including further growth of oil imports, and including almost 20% growth of domestic liquid fuel production by 2040 from things like (extremely dirty ecologically and in CO2 terms afaik) process of liquifying coal, and biofuels (massive use of at least some of which is disastrous in terms of land use - soil erosion, extra CO2 emissions due to that, among other things).
If to read about China's oil domestic oil production in detail (within the said paper), then it becomes quite obvious that "flat" oil production in fact creates more and more CO2 per barrel of oil pumped out, as aging oil fields of China require (and most already use) more complex methods to keep production from declining: hydraulic fracturing, steam and polymer flooding, water injection, CO2 injection and "others". All those require power - and lots of power if to talk China's scale, - to be implemented; and most power in China comes from where? Yep, from fossil fuels. The more such "enhanced oil recovery" methods are in use, and the more complex (energy intensive) they get - the more CO2 ends up being emitted by the oil industry.
Recent unprecedentally massive and long-term gas deal signed by China and Russia promises gigatons more of CO2 emitted in China. Overall gas consumption in the country is also quickly rising up until now and is expected to continue its rise. Much like with oil, China's imports of gas skyrocketed since the middle of 2000s. And that's even with tripled during 2002...2012 decade domestic production of gas, according to the same paper! Granted, natural gas is cleaner fuel than coal - i mean, some ~2 times less CO2 emitted per unit of energy generated, and it can work as vehicle's fuel in liquified form, too, - but with such a growth in oil and gas consumption, China's CO2 emissions will still continue to rise (assuming nearly flat coal consumption for at least few next years, that is).
China is aggressively looking to use its own shale gas reserves, too. It's one quite dirty tech with low EROEI, i hear. In other words, more CO2 per every car's gas tank full of fuel.
Water problem is also there. For a while - until quite much of mountain glaciers are still there, thawing, - China will have more-than-normal runoff from them. It's no joke, the country's largest rivers which literally feed a billion+ people - are created by those glaciers. But when most (eventually nearly all) of those glaciers melt out completely - increased runoff will halt, dry seasons will start downstream (late summer/autumn). Apart from a big hit to agriculture (and very life of hundreds of millions), this will also be a big punch to "advanced" gas technologies - synthetic gas, gas-from-coal, etc. As those demand lots of water (no wonder - coal is carbon, to create _hydro_carbons from it - one needs lots of water to get those hydrogen atoms from, and lots of power to make it happen, of course). Competition between people and large-scale industrial complexes will be ugly, to say the least. And dirty. Nobody will count how much CO2 goes out, when their very _existance_ (as a person, family or a business) is at stake "right now!".
Further in the said document, we see graphs for known and projected (by 2040) electricity generation in China. We see
- hydro dropping from present ~22% to ~18%. Just mentioned glaciers melt (and eventual decrease of present "temporarily increased" annual runoff) is involved in that decline, i am sure. Anyhows, hydro potential has its limit, and China is quite close to it already (and the world as a whole also is, in general);
- wind growing from ~5% now to ~12%. No wonder it's so little: intermittency problems and availability of wind resources, lands and matherials for large-scale wind farms are among most limiting factors for Wind power generation;
- nuclear growing from ~1% now to ~7%. No wonder it's so little: presently economically viable fission power plants suffer from fuel availability - all the richest ores are already used, price of nuclear fuel goes up dramatically during last ~2 decades last i heard. Plus, this is a pie most countries of the world will want to bite, and China - with its size, - won't have a luxury to have any bigger bite than ~7% of its electricity generation in 2040, it seems;
- solar growing from ~0,2% now to ~2% by 2040. Not surprised either. Solar technologies are good on paper and for some rich western families who have all the dollar needed to set them up and use. But when it's about industrial and general grid large-scale solar power plants - it gets expensive as hell to set up and to maintain, and it has even worse intermittency (daily, seasonal and weather-related - clouds) than wind, and it still uses much land, too (in compare to things coal-based, gas-based, nuclear or hydro);
- "other renewables" (which includes biomass/waste) are projected to grow from some ~1% to ~3%. That's by 2040. Huffingtonpost's "renewables is the future" is... Overoptimistic, at least;
- coal, now generating ~66% of China's electricity, is projected to still generate ~52% of it by 2040. Renewables in China being the future of energy generation?? Not by 2040, they won't be - coal will still be the king. So then, when??? By 2100, when world will already have some 800+ ppm CO2 and totally mad climate, desertification in most of Europe, Americas and Asia (see professor Emilio Dai works and maps for projected change of PDSI)?
I hate to upset people. But i hate more when some paper tries to make people think that things change for the better - while in fact, if to see at the whole picture, they surely are not.
It's psychology. Most people _want_ to believe things are going to be OK. Even if this is not what happens before their eyes. Yet, not me. Not me. And i hope, not you, jentlemen.
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