Today we have answers to your questions from Orville Schell, the author of nine books about China – including “Virtual Tibet,” “Mandate of Heaven,” “Discos and Democracy” and “To Get Rich Is Glorious.” Earlier this month, Mr. Schell traveled to China and met with Chinese experts and officials to discuss global warming.
Given that the greenhouse gases from the large number of coal fired power plants China plans to build in the coming years will counteract many of the efforts by the industrialized world to reduce its CO2 emissions, have you seen any evidence of Chinese officials making attempts to curb the number of coal fired power plants that are scheduled to be built in the next decade or two (or move towards cleaner coal technologies)? — Lou Miller
This question gets to the heart of several matters.
Of all the environmental problems which confront China, there is none greater than that presented by the country’s abundance of coal. On the one hand, this bounty of coal has provided China with an ready source of energy with which to stoke its extraordinarily rapid economic growth rate (10-11% annually). Indeed, some 70% of China’s energy is derived from coal. And, because China is no longer self-sufficient in petroleum supplies - those felicitous days ended about a decade ago - it is ever more dependent on coal - on soft, dirty bituminous coal at that. Moreover, as the cost of oil rises, China becomes even more reliant on coal, especially in such industries as electrical power, cement, aluminum, and steel, which are all very energy intensive. (And approximately nine times less energy efficient than Japan and four to five times less efficient than the US).
To feed all this new development, China has recently been building in the neighborhood of one new conventional coal-fired power plant every week. (Never mind all the cement, steel, aluminum, etc. plants that are also coal fired.) And, it has been very difficult for the Central Government in Beijing to control this proliferation, because the logic of every region is that it will find a way to build as many power plants as it needs to compete with every other region, never mind if the Central Government disagrees and has not authorized them to do so. In this new world of hyper-development kultur where economic growth trumps just about everything else, and certainly trumps environmental imperatives, it is very difficult for Beijing leaders to slow down this process.
What is particularly depressing about this state of affairs is that each of these new “conventional” coal fired power plants will be operating for another thirty to forty years. Most will not easily be retro-fitted with conventional pollution controls, much less carbon capture. So, we not only see China writing a scenario for it’s short-term environmental fate with these plants, but also for the globe’s long term fate.
There are two problems with coal:
First, it produces myriad forms of “conventional” pollutants such as sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide (the famous SOX and NOX twins); mercury; and much particulate matter.
Second, the mining and burning of so much coal also produces and abundance of green houses gases such as carbon dioxide and methane.
While there are remedies (albeit, ones involving an added cost) for the former, there are as yet no practical or cost-effective ways to “capture” and then “sequester” carbon. So, carbon and methane continue to spew into our atmosphere adding to the “green house effect” with which everyone is becoming increasingly familiar through films such as Al Gore’s informative “An Inconvenient Truth.”
Chinese officials at the national level are becoming increasingly aware of this double barreled dilemma. But while they have begun to take measures to deal with the problems of “conventional pollutants” from the burning of coal, they have as yet eschewed responsibility for the problem of greenhouse gases. They argue that since the West’s “historical” contribution to the world’s “carbon load” is far more than China’s, and since the West had a right to “develop” during the Industrial Revolution, therefore China now must also be afforded an equal right to give its people a better material life.
In essence, the Chinese have thrown the issue back on the developed world, saying, “It is not fair to penalize our development as a remedy for your past indulgences.”
There is a certain logic to their argument. We would like to see a parity in solving the problem today, but they look at our historical account and see a pattern of excessive abuse and would like to be given the same rights… even if it melts the polar ice caps.
Instead of seeking out a common remedy whereby the US might lead the world in searching for and then formulating some plan to pool resources and allow China to continue to develop, albeit in a “clean” manner while still limiting both conventional pollutants and carbon emissions, the US has used China’s obduracy to opt out of any solution altogether, including the Kyoto Protocols.
The result is that while the US hides behind China, China hides behind the US. We find ourselves in a world where the two largest polluters are sitting the game out, even as our common globe becomes increasingly warmed, with all the attendant consequences.
