Big Talk From China On Pollution, But Coal Capacity On Track To Jump 20% By 2020

[hatrack]

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For the last month, severe air pollution has choked Beijing and coal is estimated to cause about 40 per cent of the smog in the nation's capital. Other cities in the north, such as Shijiazhuang, have recorded air quality of 1000 PM2.5. PM2.5 are fine particles less than 2.5 micrometres in diameter that can lodge in the lungs and get into the bloodstream. The World Health Organisation says anything over 25 PM2.5 is a health hazard.

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But the biggest air polluters are the coal-fired powered stations that ring Beijing. There are about 22 major plants, working overtime to service the increase in production of steel and cement and also to provide additional electricity to the cities and homes in northern China during the winter months.

The Chinese Government is telling the world it will dramatically slash its coal production, and last week announced it would spend $360 billion on renewable energy to ease the pollution crisis. But the reality is China has big plans for coal. Two hundred coal-fired power plants will be built in the coming decade. Some of the older plants will be decommissioned, but even by 2020 coal capacity is estimated to increase by 20 per cent.

Critics like Dong Liansai from Greenpeace East Asia say renewable energy will not be able to compete with the all-powerful coal lobby. "Energy demand is a fixed number and if we are adding too many coal projects there is going to be less space for renewables to develop," he said.

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http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-01-08/chinese-air-pollution-crisis-caused-by-ongoing-coal-use/8168702

[DetlefK]

1. Protecting the environment is a luxury that China doesn't have.

The chinese economy needs to produce, come hell or high water.
There must be well-paying jobs that keep the people docile, come hell or high water.
Because high jobless-rates would threaten the very fabric of Communism.

China wants to produce more steel? They are already producing more steel than they can sell, but those people need a job.

And even if China builds hundreds of new coal-fired plants, that means nothing. China has skyscrapers, stadiums, airports and shipyards that sit around unused. They were built as a job-ceation program. I predict the same with the plants.

China's economy is hungry:
It's producing products nobody needs from ressources they don't have. All for the great goal of neverending massive industrial growth.

In the grand scheme of things, toxic air and toxic ground-water mean nothing to the chinese leadership.