Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 11/22/2010 1:55:42 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
n July of this year I wrote a story called The Chinese Coal Monster drawing attention to the fact that China would soon account for 50% of global coal production and consumption. 10% per annum growth in Chinese coal is clearly unsustainable and I posed the question "How long can this go on?"
An article published in the Wall Street Journal earlier this week called China's Coal Crisis suggests the answer to this question is not much longer.
Policy makers [in Beijing] are mulling an annual cap of between 3.6 billion tons and 3.8 billion tons in the next five-year plan, running from 2011 to 2015, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported earlier.
A Nature publication called The End of Cheap Coal by Heinberg and Fridley was also published this week. This refers to earlier work such as Blackout (Heinberg), Hubbert's peak - the coal question (Rutledge) and A global coal production forecast with multi-Hubbert cycle analysis (Patzek and Croft). The most notable thing about Heinberg and Fridley's (on The Oil Drum known as Sparaxis) comment is that it is published in Nature. More commentary and full reproduction of The Chinese Coal Monster below the fold.
Let's begin with a few excerpts from the WSJ article:
State-run media reported that Beijing is considering capping domestic coal output in the 2011-2015 period, partly because officials worry miners are running down reserves too quickly to meet the needs of a rapidly expanding economy.
Imposing a cap would be significant as China's mining sector is already finding it hard to keep up with domestic coal demand, which has grown around 10% annually over the past decade.
So the cap has been set because the mining industry is finding it increasingly difficult to maintain and grow production.
In the three years to September 2010, Chinese companies spent $20.96 billion on overseas coal-sector acquisitions, according to Dealogic.
Even if no official limits are introduced, China can't keep growing coal output much beyond another decade, analysts say. The mining sector is constrained by chronic infrastructure bottlenecks, especially road and rail, and those coal deposits that are easiest to mine have already been tapped.
Experts are starting to predict when China's coal reserves will run out—a nightmare scenario in a country where 70% of its energy is derived from coal.
This is a key issue. China may well have vast reserves remaining, but these may be further away, deeper down, thinner seams and lower energy content, and at some point it just becomes impossible to achieve what you achieved the previous year when so many variables work against you.
Let's put the 3.6 to 3.8 Gt cap in perspective. In 2009, China produced 3050 million tonnes (3.05 Gt) coal (2010 BP statistical review of world energy). If that increases by 10% this year that will bring production to 3355 million tonnes already suggesting that the lower limit of the proposed cap may be reached in 2011 (next year). At this point it's worth noting that Patzec and Croft (2010) forecast peak coal production in 2011, which I and many other commentators thought was unduly pessimistic.
What I imagine we will see happening is that Chinese production growth in 2010 will be significantly less than 10% and we will see a plateau develop within the 3.6 to 3.8 Gt range in the period to 2015. Growth in Chinese coal production has underpinned their industrial revolution and an end to growth in their primary energy source poses risks to their and global economic growth. But the Chinese are enterprising people and I imagine they will manage their transition away from domestic coal by a combination of increasing dependence upon coal imports, improving energy efficiency of coal fired power stations, and rapid expansion of nuclear capacity.
The Chinese Coal Monster
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See this thread:
The Chinese Coal Monster ( Some facts no carbon tax in China either)
fyi
Now that they own the US government, they can always take ours—especially since our watermelon environmentalists won’t let us use it anymore.</sarc>
Don’t know much about coal, but have heard peak oil since the 70s. Of course there are a lot less people in the world today and no one drives anymore...
My guess is, if they get constrained on coal, they'll just change that date, make it a little later, and let some people freeze until they can build up their infrastructure.
It's not like China cares much about people protesting. =/
Chinese coal seam fires produce more CO2 annually than all the US cars and light duty trucks.
Interesting, do you have a reference...would love to share with a few of my green "friends".
When the day is done, China will not be able to limit its consumption of coal...they are industrializing too fast to try something like that. You’ve got to remember that many of the current coal fired power plants were built without the government’s approval (regional provinces authorized them). The same thing will happen if the government tries to limit coal consumption. China will simply import more coal from Australia and Indonesia.
“In China alone, the figures given by various scientific groups vary in this regard. According to reports of the Beijing Remote Sensing Corporation (BRSC), Aerophotogrammetry and Remote Sensing Bureau of China Coal (ARSC) and works of Professor Guan Haiyan from China, the annual loss of coal due to coal fires in China is between 10 to 20 million tons. However, figures given by Rozema et al. in 1993 are 10 times higher which means that 100 to 200 million tons of coal are lost due to coal fires in China. Assuming these latter figures to be a realistic measure of the coal being burnt, the CO2 emitted, solely due to these fires, would amount to 2 to 3 percent of the world’s total CO2 emission due to fossil fuels. “
http://www.post-gazette.com/healthscience/20030215coalenviro4p4.asp
The Chinese fires also make a big, hidden contribution to global warming through the greenhouse effect, scientists said. Each year they release 360 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, as much as all the cars and light trucks in the United States.
A double whammy of reality preceding the Cancun COP16 climate summit
I see no problem with the Chinese running out of coal or energy sources.
All they need to do is to consult with the American proponents of alternate (but green) energy sources and they’ll be set for life.
The other fact is that their coal usage will peak and then decline, just as it happened in the west. Also, their peak coal consumption is coming around pretty soon. 20 years, and their population will be dropping, not increasing.
Twenty five percent of the solids (particles) in the air in the Los Angeles Basin presently comes from China.
The air is filthy here,...messes up all my fans on my computers.
"In one severe dust storm in 1998, particle pollution levels in Oregon, Washington and British Columbia soared. In Seattle, air-quality officials could not identify a local source of the pollution, but measurements showed that 75 per cent of it came from China.
"A larger fraction of the haze we see is Asian, far more than we ever dreamed," said Tom Cahill, professor of atmospheric science and physics at the University of California, Davis."
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