Methane Plants: China’s Clean Energy Alternative

For their Climate Connections series, NPR reports on an engineer who created the first methane power plant to provide an alternative to coal to fill the country’s energy demands:

Coal is the dirtiest of fossil fuels. It is responsible for the vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions in China. So the country is trying to modernize its coal-fired power plants to make them cleaner and more efficient, reducing emissions.

One way is to use captured methane gas, a natural byproduct of coal mining.

Huang Shengchu, an engineer, adopted the idea a decade ago. It gave rise to the country’s biggest methane power plant — and one of its best tools in its fight against climate change.