A Tragedy, and New Coal Plants in China

Deck: 
In China, several tens of thousands of megawatts of new coal-fired capacity swamp trends in U.S.
Today in Fortnightly

Nov. 28, 2016: On Thanksgiving Day, the Wall Street Journal reported on the power plant construction accident in China that day. At least sixty-seven workers tragically died.

Per the WSJ article by Chun Han Wong, cooling tower scaffolding collapsed at the two-thousand megawatt expansion of the Ganneng Fengcheng coal power plant.

The article goes on to discuss, more generally, coal plant construction in China:

“China has been building coal-fired power plants at a rapid clip amid an availability of low-cost financing and cheap coal prices, despite concerns that such investments are compounding an oversupply of power.

Tens of billions of dollars will be spent on coal plants over the next two years, while investment in thermal power projects jumped 20% last year, even as Beijing is promising to reduce overcapacity in the coal industry and slash carbon emissions by around 2030.”

Suppose coal plants are being built in China at five-hundred fifty-five dollars per kilowatt. That’s the cost of the Ganneng Fengcheng expansion, cited in the article. 

Then, tens of billions of dollars over the next two years translates into several tens of thousands of megawatts of new coal-fired capacity. 

This rapid rate of coal capacity additions in China significantly affects global carbon dioxide emissions. 

In the U.S., what’s the rate of coal capacity additions over the next two years? Just six-hundred megawatts. 

We’re only bringing on the Kemper County project. And it’s been supported by the Obama administration for its state-of-the-art low-carbon technology.

Tens of thousands of megawatts of coal capacity are also being retired in the U.S. This is reducing our carbon dioxide emissions. 

But these trends are being swamped by those in China.

 

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