China to Simply Cap Coal Use Within 3 Years

March 8th, 2012 by Susan Kraemer

Here’s a completely new approach to climate policy, from the always innovative China. Set a cap – not on carbon emissions, but – simply on lumps of coal. (Well, not on lumps of coal, exactly, but on tonnes of coal.) Once you use up your limit: that’s all there is. Stop using coal.

Now that would really focus your mind on finding an alternative!

Beijing’s policy-setters at the National Energy Administration (NEA), in attempting to grow the world’s fastest growing economy sustainably, have decided on a new way to reduce carbon emissions. Set an absolute cap for coal use for the entire nation, at about 4.1 billion tonnes of standard coal.

The first year the new rule would go into effect would be 2015. This will give managers some time to research and implement alternative sources of energy. Just the sort of news we cover at sites like this!

China is expected to announce in the first half of this year the details of the plan to cap total energy consumption for 2015, including individual targets for provinces.

Each province would have a limit set for allowable tonnes of coal, and local officials would have their performance measured.

Last year China used a total of 3.48 billion tonnes of standard coal, 7 percent higher than 2010, official figures show. Taking into account China’s growth rates, the target for 2015 of no more than 4.1 billion tonnes will be a tough goal to keep down to, and will require a very ambitious reduction in energy intensity.

Previously, China had tried to curb the energy consumption per unit of GDP, or cut its “energy intensity”. When less energy is used to produce the same amount of GDP, energy intensity is said to be reduced.

Normally, developed nations do much better with more efficient use of energy, so that China reduced it at all while growing at 8 percent, is quite an accomplishment. The U.S. when it was in its growth years in the 1940s and 50s did not, only California managed to deliberately flatline its energy use since the 1970s, while growing GDP.

Making more efficient use of electricity; everything from more efficient building codes, appliance codes and waste energy harvesting can all reduce energy intensity.

China missed its goal last year, while still moving in the right direction. It had set a target to reduce energy intensity by 3.5 percent, and failed by a little bit, only reducing it 2 percent.

China produces a large share of the world’s iron and steel, cement, chemicals and is the manufacturing shop floor of the world.

Here the use of low-carbon heating methods such as solar thermal, electric heat pumps and combined-heat-and-power (or cogeneration) and waste heat harvesting and many other efficiency technologies covered at Cleantechnica can reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

China could increasingly electrify heating, road vehicles, rail and industrial processes, while shifting from fossil-fuel based power-generation sources to a mix of renewables and nuclear, as it has done, in order to reduce energy intensity.

But Western politicians have tended to discount china’s energy intensity reductions as being not hard cuts – which is nonsense, really, as it really does take very hard cuts to cut energy use while growing an economy, and especially a manufacturing-based one.

Perhaps this cap will get more respect.

The first ever hard cap on a fossil fuel could turn out to be more effective – and easier to enforce – than all the various climate policies the world has tried so far, from the “carrots” of incentives like rebates and feed in tariffs and fast lanes on freeways, to the “sticks” of renewable energy standard mandates, carbon taxes and cap and trade programs.

Kudos to China for a bold new idea.

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Tags: caps, China, Energy intensity, Pollution

About the Author

Susan Kraemer writes at CleanTechnica, CSP-Today, PV-Insider , SmartGridUpdate, and GreenProphet. She has also been published at Ecoseed, NRDC OnEarth, MatterNetwork, Celsius, EnergyNow, and Scientific American. As a former serial entrepreneur in product design, Susan brings an innovator's perspective on inventing a carbon-constrained civilization: If necessity is the mother of invention, solving climate change is the mother of all necessities! As a lover of history and sci-fi, she enjoys chronicling the strange future we are creating in these interesting times. Follow Susan on Twitter @dotcommodity.

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Jgerardi12

The world has about 408 nuclear plants, and China is expected to build 400 alone in the next 30 years. That alone will help their GHG.
- Bob_Wallace
  
  I’ll bet that China does not build 400 new nuclear plants in the next 100 years.
  
  The price of solar is falling so fast, wind is so cheap, and we’re developing affordable storage.
  
  China was talking about building a lot of reactors in a past time when renewables were less advanced.
  
  If you look at what has been happening in China during the last 12 months, they’ve slowed down on nuclear and really cranked up the wind and solar installations.
  
  The thing about the Chinese leadership, they’re engineers, they can do math….
  - Jgerardi
    
    1) Don’t count out Nuclear if we start building them then we can actually innovate in this feild. If country is going to make breakthroughs in nuclear, its going to be USA.
    2) Due to USA government lack of spending lack 20 years over nuclear the R&D is stalled, but also next 20 years alone they will have to get new nuclear reactors. The forth Generation Reactors show just much promise as renewables do. I want to stop using coal as you do but we should not give up on industries that are still promising no carbon emmiting sources.
    3)I like how far wind and solar has gone, but with all the land has put into the wind industry there are challenges with footings after 20 year lifespan of the windmill is done. How are we going to get those windmills out of the ground.
    4)If Obama wins the 2012 election, any deals he makes with Congress will have to have Nuclear, Natural Gas, and more Renewables. If its gets rid of coal im happy. Renewables can really help many states, but realisticly nuclear and Natural gas will help balence out our sources.
    - Bob_Wallace
      
      I simply don’t believe that it is possible to reduce the cost of nuclear. If anything the price will increase due to more safety requirements.
      
      If you spend a little time searching what has happened to expected nuclear builds around the country you’ll find that almost all utility companies have given up on building new reactors.
      
      The only places where reactors might get built are in regulated markets in which customers can be forced to pay for their power, no matter how expensive.
      
      In all the free market states/areas no reactors are planned.
      
      Then look at what is happening in Finland. That project is being built by the world’s most experienced nuclear construction company and it’s way over budget and years over schedule.
      
      There are no “fourth generation” reactors. Only untested ideas.
      
      —
      
      Natural gas is probably more limited than most people realize. It’s very likely that prices will soon start rising. At least that’s what the futures market thinks.
electric38

The political dollars that US coal companies have, will insure that coal (as well as oil and nuclear) will be used more than consumer owned rooftop PV for many years to come. Money does not care about pollution and the health costs to our children.
- Bob_Wallace
  
  Boy, I sure don’t see that happening. We have permitted almost no new coal plants in the last ~three years in the US and we’ve forced over 100 to close down.
  
  Coal can’t do anything about the price of PV. The price of solar panels is falling faster than lead bloomers on Saturday night. The US coal industry isn’t going to stop Europe and Asia from putting up the panels. And it’s not going to stop US utilities and homeowners from installing solar. We’ll soon be to the point at which solar needs no subsidies to be competitive.
  
  Nuclear, don’t bet your retirement dollars on that horse. We’re going to see a couple new reactors built in the US and unless some sort of a miracle happens in which they are completed ahead of schedule and well under estimated cost that will be the end of nukes. By the time these plants get on line solar is likely to be much cheaper, wind already is. Can’t build a plant that needs to sell power for $0.15 – $0.20/kWh 24 hours a day and have someone grab the market out from under you for half or more of that day. That makes you have to crank your price way too high to stay in the game. If we get reasonably priced storage then nuclear has no future at all.
  
  Oil? We don’t burn any now for electricity. (Except in Hawaii and some remote locations.)
Bob_Wallace

Great news and a nasty, nasty, nasty picture.

A cap on coal will supply will probably cause a rise in coal price. (There must be new coal plants being built now which will come on line after 2015 and that means demand > supply.)

Wind and solar continue to become cheaper and Secretary Chu is predicting solar will be cheaper than fossil fuels by 2020. (China will get there sooner since their labor/shipping costs are less.) Wind is already cheaper than coal.

Coal and renewables will hit the hi/bye price crossover point even sooner than they would have without this cap. When wind + solar + storage get cheaper than coal then coal moves from “dead man walking” to “left in the ground”.