Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
with thirteen utilities and coal companies to build a demonstration coal-
fi red power plant in Illinois with underground carbon sequestration
because of massive cost overruns. The original cost of $950 million in
2003 had climbed beyond $1.5 billion by early 2008, with further rises
on the horizon.
What began as a minor annoyance to coal producers has evolved into
a near-national consensus against the use of coal. Opposition has come
from environmental, health, farm, and community organizations and an
increasing number of state governments. The public at large has turned
against coal as well. In a September 2007 national poll by the Opinion
Research Corporation about which electricity source people would
prefer, only 3 percent chose coal.
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China
Because coal is cheap and abundant, it has become the fuel of choice in
developing countries, particularly in China and India, the largest two
nations on earth. China has the world's third-largest coal reserves, after
the United States and Russia. China produces 80 percent of its electricity
from coal and burns more of it than the United States, European Union,
and Japan combined—39 percent of annual world coal consumption.
Coal consumption in China doubled between 2000 and 2008.
China burns more than twice as much coal as any other country and
intends to increase its dominance in this arena. At the start of 2007,
about 550 additional coal-burning plants were under construction in
China, and the expectation is that it will open one new coal-fi red plant
each week over the next fi ve years, an incredible pace of construction.
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The country plans to increase coal production by 30 percent by 2015.
The polluting emissions from the increase will swamp any emission
reductions elsewhere.
Experts say the least effi cient plants in China today convert 27 to 36
percent of the energy in coal into electricity. The most effi cient plants
achieve effi ciencies as high as 44 percent, meaning they can cut global
warming emissions by more than a third compared with the weakest
plants. In the United States, the most effi cient plants achieve around 40
percent effi ciency. But by continuing to rely heavily on coal, China
ensures that it will keep emitting a lot of carbon dioxide; even an effi cient
coal-fi red power plant emits twice the carbon dioxide of a natural gas-
fi red plant.
China is the world's largest emitter of mercury. Estimates are that half
of the atmospheric mercury in the United States comes from overseas,
