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UK guarantees £2bn nuclear plant deal as China investment announced

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-somerset-34306997

Chancellor George Osborne has announced that the UK will guarantee a £2bn deal under which China will invest in the Hinkley Point nuclear power station.

Mr Osborne, who is in China, said the deal would pave the way for a final investment decision on the delayed project by French energy company EDF.

He said it would also enable greater collaboration between Britain and China on the construction of nuclear plants.

Reports suggest one such reactor could be built at Bradwell-on-Sea in Essex.

Energy Secretary Amber Rudd told the Financial Times she wanted Beijing to take the lead in developing new nuclear plants in Britain.

She said China was expected to lead the construction of a Beijing-designed nuclear station at the Essex site.

Hinkley in numbers

£25bn Cost of new Hinkley plant
£5.2bn Cost overrun of EDF’s Flamenville plant in France
£89.5 Price per MW/hr guaranteed to EDF by government
£44 Current price per MW/hr of wholesale electricity in UK

World Nuclear News, Ofgem

EDF welcomed news of the government guarantee, but did not say if it put the project back on track.

Earlier this month, EDF admitted the Hinkley project in Somerset, which was intended to allow the plant to generate power by 2023, would be delayed.

In February, the firm announced that it had pushed back its decision on whether to invest in the plant.

It cannot afford the estimated £24.5bn cost of the plant on its own, so has been looking for financial partners to invest, particularly in China. This has proved difficult, which is why the government has had to step in to guarantee part of the cost.

The new power station would be Britain’s first new nuclear plant for 20 years and is expected to provide power for about 60 years.

Speaking in Beijing at a joint news conference with China’s Vice-Premier Ma Kai, Mr Osborne said: “We want the UK to be China’s best partner in the West. [This guarantee] paves the way for Chinese investment in UK nuclear [to help provide] secure, reliable, low carbon electricity for decades to come.”

He also announced a new £50m joint research centre for nuclear energy.

The difficult economics of nuclear power

By Richard Anderson, BBC business reporter

Nuclear power plants are mind-bogglingly expensive to build.

In China, relatively cheap labour means they typically cost between £6bn-£10bn, with the state-controlled economy providing the necessary regulatory and financial support.

But in the free markets of the West, they cost many times more. No private company can afford this amount of money, particularly given it will be almost 10 years before the plant is operational and can begin generating a cash return.

This is why governments have to get involved, providing subsidies of one sort or another.

Hence George Osborne’s announcement. The government has already guaranteed EDF a price – many would argue a very high price – for the electricity it generates at Hinkley, and now it is enticing the Chinese with investment guarantees.

Nuclear power: Energy for the future or relic of the past?

Q&A: Nuclear strike price

Mr Osborne said Chinese companies would receive a substantial stake in the project, with the UK government acting as guarantor for the investment.

The guarantee will be provided by the government’s Infrastructure UK Scheme, which provides finance for projects that have had difficulties raising money from private investors.

Ms Rudd told the BBC that nuclear power played an important part in Britain’s energy security.

“We want low-carbon electricity and if we’re going to hit our ambitious [emissions reduction] targets then we have to have nuclear,” she added.

Analysis

By Robert Peston, BBC economics editor

What is most striking about George Osborne’s Chinese tour is he is doubling his political and economic bet on the world’s number two economy at a time when that economy is looking its most fragile for 30 years.

Today’s manifestation of the China bet is confirmation of a long-trailed loan guarantee – initially worth £2bn but likely to rise substantially – to bind in Chinese and French nuclear giants to their promised massive £24.5bn investment in the Hinkley Point C new nuclear plant.

This is certainly long-term strategic planning for more power security by Osborne and the government (well they would say). With oil fluctuating at between $40 and $50 a barrel, Hinkley’s prospective electricity looks scarily expensive.

China’s huge economic changes

The government has said Hinkley will provide up to 7% of Britain’s electricity needs from 2023.

EDF, which will continue to control the venture, has agreed to provide electricity from Hinkley at a guaranteed minimum price of £89.50 per MW/hr for 35 years. Renewable energy technologies have been given a guaranteed price for 15 years._85687811_energy_strike_prices_v3

Ms Rudd rejected criticisms that this was too expensive, saying nuclear power was “reasonably priced” compared with other low carbon sources of power.Vincent de Rivaz, chief executive of EDF Energy, said the chancellor’s announcement was “further progress towards a final investment decision” on the plant.

He said: “The chancellor’s approval of the infrastructure guarantee is a clear sign of the government’s commitment to Hinkley Point C. The government’s determination to bring about a renewal of infrastructure and to attract inward investment to the UK are demonstrated by this good news.

‘Rip-off’

But Greenpeace’s chief scientist Dr Doug Parr described the £2bn guarantee from George Osborne as “signing up the country for the ultimate rip-off deal”.

He added: “Instead of locking two generations of UK consumers into paying billions to foreign state-owned firms, Osborne should invest in the flexible, smart, and truly clean energy system that can power a 21st Century Britain without leaving a pile of radioactive waste as legacy.”

Other critics have raised concerns about the design of the new reactor, which will use new so-called EPR technology. Similar reactors being built in France and Finland are both late and way over budget.

The union Unite welcomed the government’s commitment to non-carbon nuclear power, but it said it should not allow China to build a plant in the UK, describing its nuclear technology as “unproven”.

10,000 protest in Chinese city over planned coal-fired power plant

Mimi Lau in Guangzhou mimi.lau@scmp.com

Big demonstration staged against energy project in northeastern Guangdong, home to reservoir that supplies water to Hong Kong

Around 10,000 residents of Heyuan in northeastern Guangdong took to the streets on Sunday to protest against a new coal-fired power plant, according to demonstrators.

Minor scuffles broke out between the demonstrators and members of the mainland’s special police but there were no reports of injuries.

The demonstration began with thousands of people staging a peaceful sit-in outside city government offices at about 8am. Many wore surgical masks and stickers denouncing the plant.

Police dispersed the crowd at around 10am, sending the protesters into the streets, where the numbers quickly swelled to around 10,000 before noon.

The crowd marched through the downtown area, chanting “Give me back my blue sky” and “Go away power plant”. Some protesters held small signs that read: “Stop feeding people with smog”.

“This is not just a small fraction of people with an ulterior motive but a concrete outpouring of public opinion from the entire Heyuan public. From babies to the elderly, everyone is appealing to our government to stop polluting our sky,” a woman protester said, refusing to be named.

Xinhua carried a report on the demonstration and put the number of participants in the thousands. But photos of the gathering suggested the crowd could be much bigger.

The city is home to the Xinfengjiang Reservoir, a major source of water for Hong Kong, and already has one coal-fired plant supplying electricity.

Shenzhen Energy is spending 8 billion yuan (HK$10.12 billion) to build the new plant, which will generate 11 billion kWh annually. The Shenzhen government is the major shareholder in Shenzhen Energy.

Construction was due to begin this year, according to local media.

Protesters staged another sit-in about 200 metres from the administration office around lunchtime.

Huang Jianzhong, the deputy party secretary of Heyuan, addressed the crowd in the afternoon, saying the project was only in the preliminary study stage. Another march began at 4pm that saw main roads blocked.

The city government could not be reached for comment.

Last month, residents collected more than 30,000 signatures against the project.

Source URL (modified on Apr 13th 2015, 4:43am): http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1765010/10000-protest-chinese-city-over-planned-coal-fired-power-plant

ZTE to expand wireless charging facilities for Tesla-like electric buses across China

http://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/article/1755129/zte-expand-wireless-charging-facilities-tesla-electric-buses-across-china

electric_bus_xinhua

A China-made electric bus, among a new fleet of green cars rolled out across the mainland. Photo: Xinhua

Telecoms giant ZTE Corp is about to launch a wireless charging service for electric buses in several mainland cities, a step towards becoming a key player in the growing market of alternative-fuel vehicles.

Academus Tian, vice-president of ZTE’s New Energy division, said its technology would go into operation for 10 bus routes in June, with the transport companies paying for the service.

Tian declined to specify which cities would receive the service or the price the companies would pay, but ZTE already had wireless charging stations in seven mainland cities, including Chengdu in Sichuan , Kunming in Yunnan and Shenzhen.

A Tesla Motors Model S electric car recharged by connecting to a charger inside an auto store in Germany. A big complaint among electric-vehicle drivers in China is the lack of enough recharging stations. Photo: Bloomberg

A Tesla Motors Model S electric car recharged by connecting to a charger inside an auto store in Germany. A big complaint among electric-vehicle drivers in China is the lack of enough recharging stations. Photo: Bloomberg

The company planned to invest 3.5 billion yuan (HK$4.4 billion) in the technology within two years, local media reported earlier this year, although Tian cautioned that the amount was “not fixed”.

The system involves an energy transmission module, buried underground, and a reception module installed on the vehicle. The stations can be built at bus terminals or car parks.

The mainland government is making a concerted push towards increasing reliance on “green” vehicles, with the transport ministry announcing last month that officials aimed to add 200,000 buses and 100,000 taxis powered by alternative fuels by 2020.

With an eye on that growing market, Tian said ZTE hoped to work with vehicle makers to ensure 30 per cent of new electric buses and vans would be equipped with wireless-charging abilities in the next two years, most of them using the company’s technology. “We have signed agreements with over a dozen car makers and more [are coming],” Tian said.

One hurdle the market faces is the relative scarcity of charging stations. US-based Tesla struck a deal with China Unicom to build 400 charging stations in more than 100 mainland cities, but Tesla’s Chinese customers have complained the coverage is not enough.

ZTE faces the additional challenge of bringing wireless charging costs in line with traditional systems. It’s now twice as expensive. “But the cost of wireless charging would [be] cut sharply if it attracts a large quantity of users,” Tian said.

The true costs of our electricity

Way Kuo says our calculation of the least costly way to generate electricity will be skewed, as long as the environmental harm of the use of fossil fuels is not properly accounted for

Smog is a major problem facing Beijing and many other places on earth today. It is also a reminder that environmental pollution has reached a critical point in human history.

The recent documentary Under the Dome, an in-depth report on environmental problems in China by Chai Jing , has triggered a heated debate over the credibility of its sources. But the debate has sidestepped one of the critical issues facing humanity: greenhouse gas emissions and their impact on the environment and the sustainability of earth.

Energy is a necessity in modern life. Our dependence on electricity has left noticeable carbon footprints on nature. Of the broad spectrum of energies, fossil fuels (coal, natural gas and oil) are still the major energy sources for electricity generation, accounting for 67 per cent of world electricity production as of 2012, in spite of pledges by governments around the world to increase the use of renewable green energies. The rest comes from cleaner energies like hydroelectric (17 per cent) and nuclear (11 per cent).

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, approximately 37 per cent of total carbon dioxide emissions are from electricity production, especially from burning coal. The level of atmospheric carbon dioxide is building up and that build-up is accelerating as electricity demand is expected to increase by 43 per cent over the next 20 years.

Nuclear energy, in comparison, ranks among the lowest of any electricity generation methods in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and is comparable, on a life cycle basis, to wind, hydropower and biomass energy. It emits one-fifteenth and one-thirtieth as much greenhouse gas as natural gas and coal respectively.

And yet, nuclear energy has been a controversial topic ever since its adoption for commercial use. There are as many opinions about this problem as there are experts. While it is praised as one of the possible solutions to the energy shortage, it is condemned by others as “an unbearable inheritance” for future generations. The nuclear accident at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in 2011 brought the safety concerns sharply into the public eye again.

People are haunted by the fear of nuclear disasters when, in reality, nuclear energy has a strong safety record. Nuclear power plants achieve a high degree of safety by using what is called the “defence-in-depth” approach with multiple physical barriers built into their operation. These physical barriers prevent operational disturbances or human failures and errors, which have been found to be the cause of 80 to 90 per cent of mishaps. Even the Fukushima nuclear accident, triggered by a magnitude 9 earthquake and catastrophic 14-metre-high tsunami, has been defined as “a profoundly man-made disaster”.

According to a report published in the March 2013 issue of Environment Science & Technology by scientists from Nasa, nuclear power has made greater contributions to the welfare of humankind than all other energies in use. The report pointed out that, even taking into account the serious consequences of the three biggest nuclear disasters in history, the benefits derived from the use of nuclear power between 1971 and 2009 have helped to prevent 1.8 million deaths resulting from causes related to the use of fossil fuels, especially coal.

Also, according to a December 2013 Lancet article by Chen Zhu, China’s former minister of health, and his colleagues, air pollution causes 350,000 to 500,000 premature deaths on the mainland each year. The main polluters are industry, coal and vehicles. This is believed to be a conservative estimate, and provides further evidence that carbon dioxide reduction is a necessity.

At present, nuclear power plays a significant part in a spectrum of energies in producing base-load power (a dependable source that can meet minimum demand) and this will continue for the foreseeable future. The other energy sources used for base-load power are fossil fuels.

In the past, increased use of nuclear energy to replace fossil fuels has contributed to a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions. Therefore, it will be devastating to continue the use of fossil fuels for base-load power instead of cleaner energies.

People demand nuclear safety, and yet tend to turn a blind eye to the adverse environmental impact of fossil fuels and the millions of deaths caused by coal mining. With modern technology and increases in oil prices, non-traditional fossil fuels such as oil sands in Canada, pre-salt deposits in Brazil and shale oil in the US have been discovered in abundance since the beginning of this century. Yet the development of this new generation of fossil fuels will do nothing to reduce water and air pollution but in fact will create more severe pollution than traditional oil because of the extraction methods.

There is no free electricity. Given that different energies involve different levels of risk and environmental pollution, we should adopt a rational and scientific approach to policymaking. The cost of using electricity must take into account the economy, the costs of electricity generation, transmission and transformation, the sustainable well-being of the environment, safety, reliability, and other social and psychological factors.

Consumers could choose what combination of various sources of electricity they are willing to accept and then be charged in accordance with the declared percentage, the amount of the electricity consumed, the production cost and the cost of the risk.

We cannot afford to continue to overlook the phenomenon of global warming. The true cost of electricity should be shared by everyone.

Professor Way Kuo is president of City University of Hong Kong and a member of the US National Academy of Engineering. This article is based on a recent talk delivered by the author at Peking University

Source URL (modified on Apr 1st 2015, 4:58pm): http://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1753558/true-costs-our-electricity

Smog documentary on China’s pollution wrong to blame oil, say industry bosses

Petroleum bosses defend their record, saying documentary misleads viewers by faulting cars, not coal, for the worsening problem

Petrochemical industry insiders have disputed claims made in Under the Dome, Chai Jing’s documentary on smog in China, that lax quality standards for petroleum were a key reason for worsening air pollution.

The investigation by Chai, a former state television presenter, also claimed interference by China’s major oil companies was another factor.

Cao Xianghong, head of the China Petroleum Industrial Standardisation Committee, said on the sidelines of the the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference yesterday that the country had steadily been improving the quality of its petrol and diesel since 2000.

“It’s wrong to say China’s petroleum quality upgrading is too slow,” said Cao, who rejected the conclusion that the standards committee was dominated and heavily influenced by major oil companies, as suggested in Chai’s documentary.

A standard could only be approved if it gained support from three quarters of members from a voting group of about 50 experts, Cao said. Fifty-one per cent of the experts were from the petrochemical industry, while the remainder came from the motor industry, environmental protection department, military and other government agencies, Cao said. Cao is a former vice-president of oil giant China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation.

Meanwhile, a widely circulated online article purportedly penned by a senior engineer from the state oil giant China National Petroleum Corporation said Chai’s video had confused viewers by blaming vehicle exhausts as the main culprit for smog in northern China when in fact it was coal combustion.

The article, attributed to Wan Zhanxiang, a CNPC deputy chief engineer for natural gas quality and standards, said that national petroleum standards were set by government departments, not big oil corporations.

But Yue Xin, a researcher at the Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences who has also been involved in setting the petroleum standards, wrote in his blog that China’s environmental protection department had no power to veto the standards if it found them too lax.

“Staff from the petroleum industry have dominated key positions in the standards committee, such as the secretary general. And they take advantage in voting,” Yue wrote.

He criticised the monopoly of China’s major oil companies, who have refused to make public the cost of refining petroleum.

Only Beijing, Shanghai and a few cities in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Guangdong provinces have adopted emissions standards on a par with the Euro 5b standards. Europe started implementing Euro 6 standards in September.

Additional reporting by Teddy Ng and Mimi Lau

Source URL (modified on Mar 4th 2015, 11:44am): http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1728870/oil-executives-say-smog-documentary-confuses-facts-about-industrys-role

SCMP: Bottom line is missing in fuel debate

from Cheung Chi-fai of the SCMP:

The new energy consultation paper raises more questions than answers, disappointing many who had expected officials to explain the impacts of the two proposed options put forward for the future of the city’s power supply.

The first option involves sourcing 30 per cent of our electricity needs by 2023 from the China Southern Power Grid, while the second requires boosting the use of natural gas at the city’s power plants so that it accounts for 60 per cent of energy production by 2020.

Officials said the costs of generating power would double in both options, but what these costs are and how they will affect household bills are not known. Sources close to the government said there were simply too many unknowns to make even a rough but responsible forecast.

With the document now open to public consultation until June 18, the lack of detail makes it harder for people to reach any conclusions and easier for the debate to descend to a case of “local” versus “mainland”.

(more…)

SCMP: Hong Kong plans to get mainland electricity without counting cost in carbon emissions

by Cheung Chi-fai and Ernest Kao of the SCMP:

As the city ponders drawing a third of its electricity from the mainland power grid, it also plans to disassociate itself from the resulting carbon emissions, environmental authorities say.

Carbon emissions related to the imported electricity would be left out of the city’s emissions count, the Environmental Protection Department said yesterday. It is unclear if that is common practice when transferring energy across borders.

The shift of responsibility should help the city achieve runaway success in its carbon reduction targets, set at 50 to 60 per cent below the 2005 emissions level. Frances Yeung Hoi-shan, from Friends of the Earth, said environmental officials were “playing tricks” in seeking to meet the targets.

Dr Luk Bing-lam, chairman of the Nuclear Society and a member of the Environment Bureau’s energy advisory committee, added: “This is self-defeating. The whole thing is about reducing emissions, but it turns out that the emissions will be ‘shifted’ to the mainland.”

All the electricity the city now gets from across the border is nuclear energy.

Under fuel-mix proposals for 2023, mainland company China Southern Power Grid may export up to 15 billion kilowatt-hours a year to Hong Kong – an option that Secretary for the Environment Wong Kam-sing has claimed can help the city outperform its targets.

That same amount of energy can be generated locally by coal- or gas-fired plants, but Wong said the city would then be able to meet only basic benchmarks.

The fuel mix of China Southern is one-third hydro power, 6 per cent nuclear energy and more than 60 per cent coal and natural gas.

Clean Air Network chief executive Kwong Sum-yin said sourcing more energy from the firm’s Guangdong plant was not necessarily a greener way, as more than half of its supply came from coal. Kwong feared greater energy demands imposed on the province would in turn spawn more coal-fired plants.

Luk urged the government to clarify why it believed nuclear energy was a costly option.

World Green Organisation chief executive Dr William Yu Yuen-ping said that if the city decided to obtain electricity substantially from the mainland, it should pay attention to storing enough back-up power in case the supply was disrupted.

20 Mar 2014

SCMP: CLP Power and China Southern Power buy Exxon Mobil’s power plant stakes

from Anita Lam and Denise Tsang of the SCMP:

City supplier teams up with mainland giant to grab Exxon Mobil’s stake in three electricity plants Hong Kong’s biggest electricity provider, CLP Power, and state-owned China Southern Power Grid (CSG), will each pay HK$12 billion to acquire Exxon Mobil’s 60 per cent stake in Castle Peak Power Company (Capco).

The deal strengthens CLP’s presence in Hong Kong and brings a mainland player into the city’s closed electricity market for the first time. It is not expected to affect tariffs as it involves only shares, without adding fixed assets. But analysts said a strengthened partnership between the largest power suppliers in Hong Kong and southern China could help CLP meet a new 2020 emissions target that may require more clean energy to be imported from the mainland.

After the transaction, CLP’s stake in Capco – which owns three power plants in Hong Kong – will jump from 40 per cent to 70 per cent. CSG will hold the remaining 30 per cent.

CLP vice-chairwoman Betty Yuen So Siu-mai said it was a natural commercial decision to bring CSG into talks that started more than a year ago when Exxon Mobil, the world’s biggest independent oil company, expressed a desire to exit the market.”All electricity imported into Hong Kong must pass through the CSG network,” Yuen said. “Our partnership with CSG will make any transmission of cleaner energy from the mainland easier.” Pierre Lau, managing director and head of Asian utilities research at Citigroup, said the closer ties might also cushion CLP from competition if regulators open up the city’s electricity market.

“Any power supplier who wants to enter Hong Kong must first get past CSG. Of course, it would give CLP an edge if it has a good relationship with CSG,” he said. CLP will also buy out Exxon Mobil’s 51 per cent stake in Hong Kong Pumped Storage Development for HK$2 billion in cash. The whole deal will remove Exxon Mobil from the city’s commercial power generation market – its only such investment worldwide. An Exxon Mobil spokeswoman said it planned to explore other opportunities. Citigroup expects the deals will raise CLP’s net profit by up to 3 per cent next year and 5 per cent in 2015 if the deals are finalised by the middle of next year. CLP said it had secured a HK$10 billion loan facility from HSBC to fund the deal, but in the long run it may have to refinance the loans through corporate bonds or perpetual securities.

Credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s said it had placed it’s A- long-term and A-2 short-term corporate credit ratings on parent company CLP Holdings on credit watch with negative implications. “We placed the ratings on credit watch because we believe the leverage of CLP Holdings could increase substantially if it mainly uses debt to fund its proposed significant acquisition,” S&P credit analyst Gloria Lu said.

20 Nov 2013

China a green energy leader? Don’t make me laugh

Wednesday, 01 May, 2013, 12:00am

Business

MONITOR tom_hollands_charts.jpg

Tom Holland

Read the praise heaped on Beijing by two recent reports, and you could believe the mainland is leading the world in environmental best practice

Did you know that China is the greenest country in the world?

I confess, it was news to me. And I am pretty sure it will come as news to the inhabitants of Beijing, where memories of January’s two-week toxic coal smog linger like a foul smell.

But if you were to judge by the breathy praise heaped on Beijing by a couple of recent reports, you could easily get the impression that China is leading the rest of the world into the clean, sunlit uplands of environmental best practice.

According to a paper co-authored by the environment movement aristocrat Tim Flannery and published this week by Australia’s Climate Commission, “China’s efforts demonstrate accelerating global leadership in tackling climate change”.

Quoting Premier Li Keqiang’s March declaration that “we shouldn’t pursue economic growth at the expense of the environment”, the report applauds Beijing’s emphasis on investing in clean energy.

It says that China has increased its wind power capacity 50 times over since 2005, while solar generating capacity shot up 75 per cent last year alone.

Meanwhile, in another report published two weeks ago, the Pew Charitable Trusts announced that “China is the world’s leader” in green technology, having invested US$65 billion in clean energy last year.

Thanks to all this investment, Pew says that China now boasts 152 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity, ahead of the United States with 133 gigawatts and the European Union with 128 gigawatts.

As a result, the Australian Climate Commission proclaims that today “China is reducing its emissions growth”.

Right, time for a reality check.

First, you will note that the Climate Commission does not say China is reducing its emissions, only that it is reducing its emissions growth.

In other words, China’s greenhouse gas emissions are still rising, just not quite as fast as before.

And as the first chart from the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency shows, up until 2011, they were climbing at a truly spectacular rate.

In 2011, China’s carbon-dioxide emissions from fossil fuels and cement rose by 820 million tonnes.

To put that into perspective, the mainland’s increase was as much as Germany’s total greenhouse gas emissions for the year, with Romania’s total thrown in for good measure.

Mainland energy demand did grow at a slower rate last year. But that is explained by Beijing’s attempts to cool investment, which moderated demand growth for energy intensive materials like aluminium and steel. With investment in property and infrastructure now picking up again, energy demand growth – and emissions growth – could well pick up again this year.

As for all Beijing’s investment in installing wind and solar power capacity, while it sounds exciting on paper, it is a lot less impressive in reality.

That is partly because installed capacity does not have much to do with actual power output. For example, according to figures from the China Electricity Council, last year there was only enough of a breeze to turn the country’s tens of thousands of wind turbines for 22 per cent of the time.

As a result, while Beijing has poured money into renewable capacity, as the second chart shows, over the first three months of this year, the country still generated more than 80 per cent of its electricity in coal-fired power stations.

Wind energy provided just 2 per cent of power output, while the contribution from solar power was negligible.

So although it may be encouraging that Beijing is investing in wind and solar power, the chance that those investments will contribute to any slowing of the mainland’s greenhouse emissions at any point in the foreseeable future is precisely zero.

tom.holland@scmp.com [1]

Topics:

Environment of China

Pollution

Green Power

Investment



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Air Products to build air separation units for China coal gasification facility

http://www.hydrocarbonprocessing.com/Article/3158324/Latest-News/Air-Products-to-build-air-separation-units-for-China-coal-gasification-facility.html

At Lu’An’s Changzhi City facility, the coal-to-liquids project will produce mainly diesel fuel and derivatives. Air Products’ ASU trains will include design enhancements to minimize operating costs through energy efficiency. It is the second-largest ASU onsite order ever awarded to the company for a single project.

Keywords:

Air Products on Wednesday announced the signing of a long-term agreement with Shanxi Lu’An Mining Co. for Air Products to build, own and operate four air separation units producing oxygen, nitrogen, compressed instrument air and steam.

The units will supply Lu’An’s multiple process trains at its coal gasification facility to be built in Changzhi City, Shanxi Province, China.

It is the second-largest ASU onsite order ever awarded to the company for a single project, according to Air Products officials.

Air Products’ four ASUs will combine to supply over 10,000 tpd of oxygen, more than 6,000 tpd of nitrogen, and over 700 tpd of instrument air.

The first of the four ASUs is targeted for onstream in July 2015. The remaining three are to be operational at one month intervals with the final ASU scheduled for commercial operation in October 2015.

“It’s been our strategy to pursue large ASU projects in the high growth China coal gasification market,” said Steve Jones, Air Products’ China president.

“This is another key win and important project for Air Products as we continue to grow our relationship with the major coal groups in China,” he added.

China has significant coal reserves to produce syngas from the coal and then convert the syngas into fuel, chemicals, and fertilizers, according to company officials.

At Lu’An’s Changzhi City facility, the coal-to-liquids project will produce mainly diesel fuel and derivatives. Air Products’ ASU trains will include design enhancements to minimize operating costs through energy efficiency.

Technology advancements and other productivity improvements support Air Products’ overall sustainability goals of reducing energy consumption and emissions.

“At Lu’An, we strive to cooperate and grow with industry leaders like Air Products. We look forward to further cooperation between our companies,” said Mr. Jinping Li, chairman of Lu’An.

The Lu’An win is Air Products’ eighth major investment supporting the gasification segment and the second supporting the coal to liquid sub-segment in China.

Once all the projects under construction are completed, Air Products will have 18 ASUs supplying large tonnage quantities of industrial gases to Chinese gasification facilities.