Replies to post #91851 on Your Economy (No Politics) (YE1)

[al44]

trader guy-

I live right in the middle of the shale boom. There are at least 10 wells within 10 miles of me. I think only 2 are actually pumping nat gas and the rest are capped due to over capacity. I can't speak for end use pollution but there is no pollution here at the pump sites. They are well maintained and checked daily. There were problems in the Dimmock area that the environmentalists like to refer to. But what they don't tell you is those problems existed prior to any well drilling. The methane was in water supplies before any well drilling was initiated. There is so much nat gas here that a pipeline is proposed to carry it to a port for export. Below the Marcellus is another field of gas and oil that seems far larger than the Marcellus itself. Test wells are exploring that possibility right now. Batteries, wind and solar are not bad things and could be a nice supplement to the energy situation IMHO. Total dependency on them for energy would be a disaster, again IMHO.

My 2 cents

........al

[mr40]

If China Is So Committed To Renewable Energy, Why Are So Many New Coal Plants Being Built?

It seems like a contradiction: a country claiming that they are committed to improving its air quality, who has put up more windmills, solar panels, and hydropower dams than anywhere else in the world, as well as issuing piles of forward-thinking environmental policies, that is still building large amounts of brand new coal-fired power plants.

So how do we account for this apparent contradiction? Is China’s position on renewable energy little more than political doublespeak? Does the country want its coal and clean skies too?

China, a country known for its smoggy skies and hazardous environmental conditions has rapidly become the global leader in developing and implementing renewable energy technologies on a mass scale. The country’s central government understands that there is a problem that needs to be fixed as fast as possible. In the words of Energy Innovation’s Hal Harvey, who has been instrumental in advising China on energy issues, “They get it.”


Smoke billows from a chimney of the cooling towers of a coal-fired power plant in Dadong, Shanxi province, China.

However, the most coal-fired energy capacity in the world is also in China.

Even as China adds mountains of renewable energy capacity and develops progressive government policies to improve air quality, the old incumbent coal is still maintaining its leading position — and its looking to do so for a long time yet.

China’s National Action Plan for Air Pollution Prevention and Control's mid-term review, which was released on July 5th, shows that the eight provinces which make up their ‘key regions,’ added on a massive 50.8 GW of new coal-fired energy capacity between the years of 2013-15. For scale, the country’s total installed energy capacity in 1980 was 66 GW. On top of this, the report showed that 42 GW of additional coal-fired capacity is currently under construction, with 11 GW more being approved just last year. Meanwhile, just 10.8 GW of coal-fired capacity in these provinces was taken offline during this same period. Considering that each coal-fired power plant has a lifetime of thirty to fifty years, it seems as if China has hedged its biggest energy bet on coal for the foreseeable future.

But as the National Action Plan for Air Pollution Prevention and Control, a mandate from China's State Council, has already banned the increase of coal-burning energy capacity, how can these numbers be explained?

First of all, not all coal is equal and neither is every coal-fired power plant. At the same time that China is transitioning from fossil fuels to renewables the country is also transitioning from high-polluting, cheap coal to premium, ultra-supercritical coal, which is burned at a very high temperature and at a very high rate of efficiency. Some of these new coal plants in China are better than anything seen yet in the US, and in the words of Harvey, China is “backing out really crappy old coal with better coal.”

“New power plants certainly have much more aggressive emission control technologies than older plants, although many older plants are being fitted with these control technologies as well,” said Lauri Myllyvirta, a researcher at Greenpeace. “China has managed to reduce SO2 and NOx emissions from the power sector very rapidly in the past few years, above all due to retrofitting and due to stagnating power generation from coal, which has allowed emission controls to catch up. Where the logic falls apart is that very little capacity is being retired.”









http://www.blacklistednews.com/20%2B_Shocking_Photos_Showing_How_Bad_Pollution_In_China_Has_Become/41144/0/38/38/Y/M.html