China Digs Coal…Bigtime

by BWK ~ February 8, 2008

Get used to the image, dear friends, because China’s coal output is predicted to reach 2.55 billion tons in 2007 and a mind-bending 3 billion tons by 2010. (That is about 100 tons per second, in case you are wondering.)

These lofty numbers are courtesy of Guo Yuntao, managing director of China Development Research Center of Coal. China’s coal output is expected to peak at about 4 billion tons per year between 2020 and 2030, stated Guo to the assembled throngs at the ongoing Coal Tech Asis 2007 Conference in Beijing (where else?) And this 4 billion ton number will only be limited by China’s geological conditions within the mines, certainly not by the utterly exploding demand for electrons at the “load” end of the Chinese grid.

Former Soviet Premier Nikita Kruschev once boasted about how the USSR was “turning out missiles like they are sausages.” In a more current example of the ability of a state-controlled economy to crank out products that burn on one end, China is currently building giant, 500-MW coal-fired power plant systems in an almost assembly-line fashion. And China is installing and commissioning these coal-burners at an astounding rate of THREE per WEEK!!! Each year as of late, China has added more electrical generation capacity than the entire nation of Germany. And Chinese electrical generation capacity has been growing at a steady rate of over 15% per year for the past five years.

China is, of course, not party to the Kyoto protoclos on greenhouse gas emissions. And thus the CO2 emitted by China’s growing fleets of coal-plants is not under any sort of international regulatory regime. But absent Chinese participation in Kyoto, the rest of world, including other developing countries such as India, would have to reduce their collective CO2 emissions by over 50% within less than a decade (the next decade, that is) just to match the now-outdated 1990 Kyoto emission levels. Well, there are few things that are certain in this world. But one of those certainties is that such a situation ain’t gonna occur, no way, no how.

Yet the Kyoto-True-Believers are presently in Bali, pushing on (during a two-week junket, by the way) with their CO2-limiting advocacy. They are either ignorant of what is occurring in China, or simply apathetic to this problem. But the weather in Bali is delightful, I am told. For now.

Best, BWK