How can China win its ‘war on pollution’ and meet its growing energy needs? Carbon capture technology may be key

Wenyuan Wu says coal consumption is surging in China, despite official plans for clean energy. To reduce emissions, the country should develop carbon capture technology on a mass scale

Reading Time:4 minutes

The temperature reached record highs on four continents in 2018. Carbon capture is a way to curb carbon emissions and possibly get global warming under control. Photo: AP

Published: 3:00pm, 24 Aug 2018Updated: 5:56pm, 24 Aug 2018

China’s domestic energy consumption, considered one of the most reliable indicators of the country’s economic performance, rose by 9.4 per cent in the first half of 2018. Amid a heatwave, China also imported over 29 million tonnes of coal in July – the most in any month since January 2014.

Energy analysts already knew a coal resurgence was under way. In the first five months of 2018, 870 million tonnes of thermal coal was burned for electricity, up 12 per cent from 2017. Coal imports were up – 8.2 per cent, to 121 million tonnes – over the same period, as was domestic output (3.9 per cent) in the first half of the year.

China, the world’s largest energy consumer and producer, once again faces a dilemma its officials have yet to resolve: how to balance energy sufficiency and clean energy? Coal, as always, is at the heart of the matter.

On the one hand, soaring costs of imported petroleum and China’s proposed tariffs on liquefied natural gas will slow government plans to vary the country’s energy mix and reduce the still-dominant reliance on coal. Already, shock therapy – ordering households and industrial plants to switch from coal to gas – resulted in a heating crisis last winter, when natural gas was in short supply. Attempts to forcibly break the coal habit without providing dependable capacity have caused power shortages.

A switch from coal to electricity left schoolchildren in China without heating in winter. Photo: The Paper

On the other hand, the government announced its much-anticipated three-year environmental action plan last month, expanding the scope of the “war on pollution”. It increases the number of pollution control regions to 82 cities, prescribes national emission reduction goals, and sets specific coal consumption targets for different regions.