Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
proposals to build new coal plants are now more likely to stir controversy
and protest than plans for new nuclear reactors.
As a primary energy source, after World War II coal lost to oil the
number one spot that it had held since the 1700s. But it is now staging
a comeback. Between 2000 and 2006, coal consumption increased by
4.9 percent per year, due mainly to extraordinary growth in China. The
IEA forecasts that over the next 20 years or so (2006-30), growth in coal
demand will average 2 percent a year, compared to 1 percent for oil, 1.8
percent for gas and 1.6 percent for all types of energy. It is estimated that
almost all (97 percent) of this growth in demand will come, from devel-
oping countries, and from two countries in particular - China and India.
China - king of coal
China's output and consumption of coal has become truly staggering.
The country now produces 2.8 billion tonnes of coal a year, or 46 percent
of the world's total. Since 1997 China's annual coal output has increased
by 1.1 billion tonnes - or more than the US's entire production in 2007.
This has added an extra 2.2 billion tonnes of CO
2
every year to China's
greenhouse gases, now the largest of any country. The annual growth of
its production has been over 200m tonnes, or nearly Russia's total annual
output.
China's coal production has a huge impact on world coal prices. Any
change in its appetite for foreign coal has a big effect on the world coal
market, because the internal market for coal in China is now three times
the size of the total world seaborne coal trade. Nearly eighty percent of
China's total electricity generation is coal-fired (a ratio only exceeded
by Australia, South Africa and Poland). Coal's predominance in power
generation is expected to continue, and its use is expected to grow at 4.9
percent a year up to 2030.
Supercritical coal
The IEA reports that China has made “considerable progress in the imple-
mentation of state-of-the-art coal-fired technologies”. About half of all the
new coal plants China is
building have so-called “supercritical” technol-
ogy, using very high temperatures and pressures to generate electricity.
This boosts efficiency by getting more energy out of a given amount of
coal. The reason why China is now beginning to overtake countries such
as the US or Britain in the portion of its coal plants with supercritical
