dohboi wrote:The fall in coal use was driven by a variety of interlinking factors including:
1. A record increase in low-carbon power capacity.
2. The implementation of ambitious coal reduction targets.
3. Slower growth in heavy industry.
4. Improvements in efficiency.
5. Greater use of natural gas.
6. Better than usual conditions for hydropower.
Only one of these six factors – high hydropower utilization rates – is a yearly fluctuation, the rest potentially reflecting long term structural shifts.
It's the same old pattern all over again. Japan and Korea went through the same reductions in growth. They too once had 10+ percent GDP growth. Then they saw growth decelerate to levels more consistent with the rest of the industrialized world. Thus I think "maturing" would be the better term to pick.GoghGoner wrote:What caused the slowdown in copper consumption in China? Or rubber? Etc...?
Slowing growth. China's GDP growth is now back to levels not seen since the 1980s. Maturing or collapsing is the question.
Chinese Economy through 2020China’s economic success is not unique and is part of the “Asian economic miracle.” China’s economic development model is still largely a replication of that adopted by other more advanced East Asian economies, in our view.
China is at a similar inflection point. According to the data compiled by Maddison, Japan and Korea reached the $7,000 level in the late 1960s and 1980s, respectively. Thus the Chinese economy is now at an inflection point similar to that in the Japanese economy 40 years ago (i.e., around 1969) and the Korean economy 20 years ago (i.e., around 1988). We find that beyond this inflection point, overall GDP growth tended to decelerate and inflation to accelerate in both Japan and Korea.
Specifically, with regard to economic growth, while the 10-year average GDP growth rate for Japan during 1960-69 and Korea during 1979-88 was 10.4% and 10.0%, respectively, the rate in 1970-79 and 1989-1998 decelerated to 5.2% and 6.3%, respectively.
Risks
Both Japanese and Korean economies were hit by serious crises in the decade after their economies crossed the inflection point. These experiences suggest that the future development for the Chinese economy over the coming decade will probably not be entirely “accident-free”.
The particular crisis experiences of Japan and Korea point to the vulnerability of the Chinese economy and the types of possible risks that could seriously destabilize the economy. There are two—an energy crisis or a financial crisis.
In view of China’s rising dependency on crude oil over the coming decade, a sharp increase in crude oil prices for a prolonged period of time could deal as large a negative impact on the Chinese economy as was the case for Japan duding the oil crisis in the mid-1970s. In fact, the oil crisis in the mid-1970s caused the Japanese economy to gear down on a permanent basis.
The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said in its annual report on Thursday that it would implement policies aimed at reducing coal consumption and controlling the number of energy-intensive projects in polluted regions.
China is trying to strike a balance between improving its environment and restructuring away from an economy dominated by energy intensive industries like steel making and construction towards one focused more on consumption and the service sector.
What’s needed is not just better accounting but a new global industrial system, a new way of providing for human wellbeing, and fast.
That means a revolution.
Yes, China has been retiring older plants as they build new ones. The old ones generally were inefficient and had no pollution control equipment while the new ones are efficient and have top of the line pollution control equipment on them. But the old ones were also small while the new ones are large. So total coal capacity and utilization still grew rapidly this past decade. Back in 2003, China had around 400 GW of capacity. Last year, it was more than double that at over 800 GW. Some are forecasting it to rise as high as 1367 GW in the next 10 years. If true, that would be a rise of nearly 1000 GW of coal capacity between 2003 and 2025. Compare that to the total nuclear capacity of 50 GW mentioned in the article.dohboi wrote:I do wonder if they are going to be retiring old coal dirtier coal plants as they build the new ones. I don't have data on that, though. Any insights would be welcome.
China coal capacity forecast to hit 1367 GWChina’s installed coal capacity will increase from 846 GW last year to around 1016 GW by 2018 and more than 1367 GW in 10 years’ time, according to a new report.
And while this rise in coal consumption will cement China’s status as the world’s biggest polluter, the study from research firm GlobalData stresses that the country is “showing signs of embracing clean coal technology for its new and existing power plants”. China has implemented tighter emission standards for coal-fired power plants, including reduced allowances for sulphur dioxide, nitrous oxide and soot. Government policies, laws and regulations are encouraging the construction of large-scale, coal-fired units with higher efficiency, lower water usage and more effective emission controls.
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
ROCKMAN wrote:And just a few months later in 2014 Reuters - China approved the construction of more than 100 million tonnes of new coal production capacity in 2013 - six times more than a year earlier and equal to 10 percent of U.S. annual usage - flying in the face of plans to tackle choking air pollution. The scale of the increase, which only includes major mines, reflects Beijing's aim to put 860 million tonnes of new coal production capacity into operation over the five years to 2015, more than the entire annual output of India.
sparky wrote:.
By the way , in real estate mad China ,with the growth in the suburbs, those inner city locations are now quite valuable
dohboi wrote:Yeah, I noticed that inconsistency.
I do wonder if they are going to be retiring old coal dirtier coal plants as they build the new ones. I don't have data on that, though. Any insights would be welcome.
Depends what type of emissions you are talking about. Easier to capture emissions like sulphur dioxide and particulates are down overall despite the increase in coal use:Tanada wrote:One has to wonder if the cleaner emissions standard from China will be overwhelmed by the larger size and number of plants putting out less pollution per ton consumed, but consuming vastly more tons of coal.
Pollution Control of Coal-Fired Power Generation in ChinaThe total annual discharge of particulate matter has been reduced from 4 million tonnes in the early 1980s to 1.5 million tonnes in 2012.
The rapid decrease in sulfur dioxide emissions began in 2005 when desulfurization facilities were widely applied. Sulfur dioxide emissions were reduced from 13 million tonnes in 2005 to 8.83 million tonnes in 2012; sulfur dioxide emissions per unit electricity were reduced from 6.4 g/kWh to 2.26 g/kWh, which is better than the 2.8 g/kWh recorded in the U.S. in 2011. Presently, desulfurization is applied to approximately 90% of all coal-fired power plants in China, which is approximately 30 percentage points higher than that of the U.S. in 2011.
NOx emissions in China: historical trends and future perspectivesNitrogen oxides (NOx) are key pollutants for the improvement of ambient air quality. With the rapid economic development and urbanization in
China, air pollutant emissions have been increasing at an unprecedented rate over the last decade.
In this study we estimated the historical NOx emissions of China from 1995 to 2010. With the rapid growth of energy consumption, NOx emissions were estimated to more than double from 11.0 Mt in 1995 to 26.1 Mt in 2010. Although several control measures have been introduced for power plants and transportation, they were insufficient to constrain the strong increase of NOx emissions.
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