
Beijing to Shut All Major Coal Power Plants to Cut Pollution - vincvinc
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-24/beijing-to-close-all-major-coal-power-plants-to-curb-pollution
======
kcorbitt
I really wish that articles like this would give more context for all the
numbers that inevitably get thrown around.

> China Huaneng Group Corp.’s 845-megawatt power plant

What percent of the city's electricity is that?

> Beijing plans to cut annual coal consumption by 13 million metric tons

How much less soot will actually be in the air? Will the city feel noticeably
cleaner?

> China planned to close more than 2,000 smaller coal mines from 2013 to the
> end of this year

How many coal mines does China have?

> The level of PM2.5, the small particles that pose the greatest risk to human
> health, averaged 85.9 micrograms per cubic meter last year in the capital,
> compared with the national standard of 35.

What is considered a safe level? What is considered acceptable in Europe/the
US?

I know that researching all that would take longer than just throwing up the
facts from the press release. But without that context, it's hard to know
whether this is really a big deal or just a normal retirement of older power
plants for newer, cleaner alternatives.

~~~
spenrose
"I really wish that articles like this would give more context for all the
numbers that inevitably get thrown around. > China Huaneng Group Corp.’s
845-megawatt power plant What percent of the city's electricity is that?"

Humanity uses about 17 terawatts of generated power (electricity plus
transportation plus …), about 15 from fossil fuels, of which coal generates
more GHG that all but the dirtiest oil and the leakiest NG facilities. That
plant is probably used about 80% of the time, so it represents about
675/17,000,000 of humanity's power use and something like twice that much of
our GHG generation.

We think we can generate about 500GT CO2e of GHG net before reaching 3°C
warming (but that involves a lot of guesses), which is a level that seems
civilization-destablizing to many observers (wild, but necessary guesses).
Coal creates about 1kg per kWh, so convert from 675MW … 60sec _60min_ 24h
_365d_ 675,000kW = 21,286,800,000,000 kg/yr, or ~21GT/yr, or 4% of that
budget.

~~~
elevensies
is the budget yearly?

~~~
spenrose
The 500GT budget is total. That plant is using roughly 4% of our let's-not-
wildly-destabilize-civilization GHG budget every year. We've got about 30
years to radically restructure our energy use. More here (among many places):
[http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/syr/](http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/syr/)

~~~
voodoomagicman
Are you sure this is right? There must exist more than 25 coal plants in the
world? Do we expect to hit this budget w/in a year? Is this coal plant much
bigger than most others?

~~~
spenrose
[Edit: an up-to-date piece focusing directly on the carbon budget:
[http://www.theguardian.com/environment/keep-it-in-the-
ground...](http://www.theguardian.com/environment/keep-it-in-the-ground-
blog/2015/mar/25/what-numbers-tell-about-how-much-fossil-fuel-reserves-cant-
burn) ]

There are a lot more than 25 coal plants in the world, and we must stop using
them very very soon. Here's an EPA-citing source claiming 1 Gt coal -> 1.8 Gt
CO2e, and 3.5 Gt used by China in 2011, the latter amounting to ~6.5 Gt CO2e,
and ~20% of world emissions that year. [1] If Chinese coal use is now about
the same, and if we have 650 Gt left before some particular nasty tipping
point is reached, then China's coal is currently using that budget at a rate
of 1% a year. There's a lot of uncertainty in the rate measurements, and
significant uncertainty in the tipping points, but there is no uncertainty
that world will be like nothing humanity has ever seen at 500ppm CO2, and we
have no reason to think that, say, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh can adjust
smoothly to regular high temperatures of 54° with sporadic heat waves at 57°,
or that America and the US can smoothly adjust to most of the farmland that
currently feeds them becoming unusable and most of the fisheries collapsing.

Finally, note that we're not going to get to near carbon-neutrality in 30
years by dropping radically next year, continuing at a flat 1/30th of our
budget for 30 years, and then dropping to 0. Any plausible route will
accelerate GHG reductions something like linearly.

[1]
[http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Existing_U.S._Coal_Plan...](http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Existing_U.S._Coal_Plants)

~~~
spenrose
Oh, note that @voodoomagicman was right; 4% for one coal plant was off by a
factor of about 100, mostly b/c I overestimated how much coal it used.

~~~
elevensies
Ok, thanks for the info, now I have a better sense of proportion. So that
means that 25 years brings it to 1% globally. I see how breaking the cap might
not be totally inevitable but it doesn't seem very evitable either. I think we
could see a major food price increase in our lifetimes.

------
dejawu
If any country has a chance at implementing nuclear power on a widespread
scale, I think it's China. In America, the primary reason we don't use nuclear
power is driven primarily by the negative perception and fear of the word
"nuclear" (with a bit of help from the fossil fuel lobbies). One of the
advantages of the one-party state is if the party wants something done, that
thing will get done, no ifs, ands, or buts. China's rail network is an
excellent example of this (and that's another thing we've failed to implement
stateside due to political gridlock). Should China decide that nuclear is the
way to go, then it will be done.

~~~
not_that_noob
Yes, we all saw how well this worked at Chernobyl. Single party rule - no ifs,
ands, buts or coconuts.

There's no subsitute for democracy and people holding their governments
accountable.

~~~
steve-howard
We've learned a lot from and since Chernobyl. Chernobyl came about because the
people running the plant made a string of willfully stupid decisions to try
out a safety feature for the plant. This isn't to say that democracy isn't
superior to single-party rule, but that no one would invest in building a
modern nuclear reactor and play fast and loose with safety procedures.

~~~
guscost
Arguably the people who _built_ Chernobyl also made a willfully stupid
decision to leave out passive safety features:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_nuclear_safety](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_nuclear_safety)

------
Florin_Andrei
Oh, just the _city_ of Beijing. For a moment there, I thought it's the whole
country. That would have been... very consequential.

~~~
borgia
Imagine the effect that would have on Australia.

~~~
jdmichal
That comparison seems slightly disingenuous, only for the fact that
Australia's size vs population is very disparate. The majority of the area
isn't even populated at all -- as in, not even rural sustenance farmers live
there. [0] Localized air particulate pollution is very much a matter of local
energy generation density, which is going to be closely related to local
population density.

[0]
[http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Latestproducts/1270....](http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Latestproducts/1270.0.55.007Main%20Features12011?opendocument&tabname=Summary&prodno=1270.0.55.007&issue=2011)

~~~
vacri
I think borgia is referring to our coal exports to China being lucrative, and
their removal would hurt.

We have a lot of coal. Here in Victoria, we have a ridiculous amount of low-
grade coal that's not good for exporting. One power company CEO once said in a
radio interview that if you want to convince him of a new technique to use
less coal for whatever reason, don't frame your argument around fuel price -
the coal is effectively free.

------
LiweiZ
The biggest challenge China is facing is its management structure. It's a
"一刀切" (decisions and executions are basically boolean-value-like things). The
lack of effective and elastic delegate mechanism makes the organization look
like an elephant that can not dance. It's easy to find examples from the time
zone management (all regions in China are using the same time zone) to recent
campaign of youth soccer. I know what I said here is off topic, but it might
add some context for this topic.

~~~
jdmichal
For others curious like me, Google translates "一刀切" as "one size fits all".

------
lispm
The article mixes a few things. CO2 emissions are climate change relevant, but
for pollution in Beijing there are other emissions from these coal power
plants responsible. Modern coal power plant have much lower emissions in
general, but not for CO2. Probably the coal power plants are so old, that it
is not effective to modernize them with modern filtering systems, higher
efficiency, etc.

~~~
khepin
Many of those plants are decades old, and poorly managed. But they're also ran
by state owned companies which means there's no market incentive towards
efficiency and a huge amount of politics regarding what you do. I worked
almost 10 years ago for a European company doing district heating in China. In
a smaller city in the north of China, they were able to replace the 19
existing coal plants with a single one.

------
peter303
China probably has more shale-gas than the USA, but has been slow to develop
it. Cheap shale gas in the US has cut US coal pollution in half. Shale gas
development is extremely expensive. This one area where China's hybrid state-
private enterprise system is not as nimble as the United States.

------
FreakyT
Excellent news, though I wonder if the hydroelectric/wind/solar replacements
they mentioned will be sufficient to meet the demand.

~~~
ukdm
from the article "The facilities will be replaced by four gas-fired stations
with capacity to supply 2.6 times more electricity than the coal plants."

------
brc
Catching up to London in the 1930s...or was it 1950s?

Burning lots of coal in dated power stations next to a city is a bad idea for
the residents health.

~~~
pjc50
Until 1983:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battersea_Power_Station](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battersea_Power_Station)

Edit: I don't understand the downvotes; my point is that the last coal-fired
powerstation in London was closed a lot more recently than people might think.

~~~
arethuza
That was a pretty interesting link - I had no idea of the explanation as to
why Battersea power station was that shape!

There was a quite large coal fired power station operating close to Edinburgh
until very recently (2013):

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockenzie_power_station](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockenzie_power_station)

~~~
pjc50
Yup, although that's not nearly as "in" the city as Battersea.

Every time someone mentions wind turbines "spoiling the view", I show them a
photo taken looking along Portobello beach. In the far distance a few white
single-pixel turbines are visible. In the medium distance is Cockenzie, which
is _on the seaside_ and visible from miles around.

------
auganov
Is it in response to that viral video [1] on air pollution that got banned a
couple of weeks ago? Nice move.

[1][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6X2uwlQGQM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6X2uwlQGQM)

------
nayuki
There was an interesting data synthesis piece of music this week:

[https://vimeo.com/122603843](https://vimeo.com/122603843) "Air Play - Smog
Music Created With Beijing Air Quality Data"

------
nakedrobot2
While China's pollution is among the worst you can get, the country does have
the advantage of being run like a corporation, and when they decide to clean
it up, they will do it very quickly. I guess, I hope, that within 30 years,
many parts of China that are currently "horribly polluted" will be as clean,
or cleaner, than cities in "the already developed places" such as Europe or N.
America which themselves had horrible pollution at one time.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
The government isn't really that efficient or centralized. The top bosses in
Beijing say X, and that gets filtered down and translated through 10-20
Confucian layers of beaurcracy, at the bottom, the emperor is far away, as
they say. And corruption...if everyone breaks the law, you are at a
disadvantage if you don't also, and will simply go out business. China will
have to improve their governance significantly if eg have any chance of
cleanup the air. Xi jinping is treating corruption and pollution as two sides
of the same coin at least.

LA in the 70s is nowhere near as bad as hebei/Beijing is today. Maybe London
in the early 50s....it's hard to say.

~~~
BurningFrog
The fact that the top bosses do breathe the Beijing air is the biggest reason
to be confident it will be cleaned up.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
They send their families to Europe and the US, becoming "naked officials." I
doubt many of them spend much time in Beijing these days; they all have
retreats where the air is clean, as well as very good air filters when they
are Beijing (official use was used as an advertising point until the CCP shut
that down).

------
roccaturi
Someone has been learning something from playing Cites: Skylines.

------
tootie
+1 for cutting coal burning, -1 for DDoS attack on GitHub. China is at par
today.

~~~
dmd
Right. Those are totally equivalent.

~~~
illumen
At least they didn't fly in heavily armed police to shut it down like the USA
did to Mega.

~~~
ceejayoz
The raid on Kim Dotcom was performed by NZ police, not American police.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaupload#Arrests_in_New_Zeala...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaupload#Arrests_in_New_Zealand)

~~~
bduerst
It's hyperbole to say the U.S. flew in people for the arrest, but it's also
splitting hairs to say it was just the NZ who arrested Mega.

------
PublicEnemy111
This seems very uncharacteristic of China. The residents of Beijing have been
told by the government for years that if you don't absolutely need to be
outside, then don't go outside. This is the first I've heard of China putting
anything before growth.

Unrelated, but this gives me hope that they might crack down on counterfeiting
soon.

~~~
ceejayoz
Growth requires citizens not dying of air pollution. I don't really see this
as putting something before growth.

~~~
teach-me
Weak citizens dying of air pollution quickly and being replaced by healthy
strong new recruits from the hundreds of millions living in the China
villages.

Very similar the recipe for big cities in Europe before the industrial
revolution. There was no canalization, food had to be brought on horse cars
without refrigerators from vast areas, making it decay. A dozen people per
room, resulting in fast spreading of viruses and bacteria.

