{"id":192536,"date":"2016-03-22T15:26:59","date_gmt":"2016-03-22T22:26:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/?p=192536"},"modified":"2016-03-22T15:29:02","modified_gmt":"2016-03-22T22:29:02","slug":"report-ties-coal-plants-water-shortage-northern-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2016\/03\/report-ties-coal-plants-water-shortage-northern-china\/","title":{"rendered":"Report Ties Coal Plants to China’s Water Shortage"},"content":{"rendered":"
A new report from Greenpeace<\/a> on the coal industry’s impact on global water resources has found that China’s appetite for coal power is exacerbating a long-running drought in northern China<\/strong><\/a>. The New York Times’ Edward Wong reports:<\/p>\n China<\/a>\u2019s coal-fired power plants consume more water where water is scarce than plants in any other country, according to the report, which assessed global water depletion from coal use.<\/p>\n […]\u00a0Greenpeace said the continuing burning of coal for power plants and factories in northern China, along with the growth of the coal-to-chemicals industry, is exacerbating the water crisis. In much of northern China, people are using water faster than it can be regenerated, Greenpeace said, \u201cposing a serious threat to local ecology.\u201d<\/p>\n At the end of 2013, China had 45 percent of the world\u2019s coal-fired power plants, with a total installed capacity of 358 gigawatts, according to a summary of findings in the 60-page report, \u201cThe Great Water Grab.\u201d Nearly half of the plants were in water-scarce areas, and those had a total annual water consumption of 3.4 billion cubic meters, enough to meet the basic needs of about 186 million people, the researchers found.<\/p>\n […]\u00a0Across all of China, coal-fired power plants consume 7.4 billion cubic meters of water each year, enough to meet the needs of 406 million people, or about 30 percent of the nation\u2019s population, according to the report.<\/p>\n Plants proposed for construction would worsen the problem, the report found. Half of those plants, which would have a total installed capacity of 237 gigawatts, would be built in water-scarce areas. They would consume 1.8 billion cubic meters of water, equal to the annual needs of 100 million people, the report said.<\/p>\n \u201cIn China, an overlapping of rich coal reserves, water scarcity and fragile ecosystems makes the problem especially pronounced,\u201d Harri Lammi, a Greenpeace senior global campaigner on coal, said in a written statement. \u201cYet China continues to expand coal power plants in these regions. This must be halted.\u201d [Source<\/a><\/strong>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Northern China has long suffered serious drought<\/a>, and the massive and ongoing South-to-North Water\u00a0Diversion project has raised environmental concerns<\/a> of its own, not to mention social concerns surrounding population displacement<\/a> in the wake of construction. While coal consumption has fallen slightly in recent years (2.9 percent in 2014<\/a>; 3.7 percent last year<\/a>, though the validity of China’s coal use\u00a0statistics have been questioned<\/a>) amid both a stalled economy and\u00a0central government pledges<\/a> to curb greenhouse gas emissions, the country is still the world’s largest producer\u00a0and consumer of coal<\/a>.<\/p>\n Last year the central government gave a\u00a0green light to\u00a0210 new coal-fired power plants, which\u00a0Greenpeace had previously\u00a0warned\u00a0would significantly up emissions and water stress<\/a>. At Quartz, Zheping Huang focuses in on the new Greenpeace report’s findings on China in global context<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n […A]\u00a0quarter of [globally] existing or proposed coal plants are or will be located in regions where water is being used faster than it is being replenished naturally\u2014what Greenpeace calls \u201cred-list\u201d areas. This means there is not enough water left for the area\u2019s ecological needs, including sustaining ground vegetation and flushing out pollutants in rivers in those regions, the report said.<\/p>\n The water\/coal conflict is worst in China. Nearly half of China\u2019s existing and proposed coal plants are in red-list areas, the report found. \u201cChina is facing a resource dilemma\u2014wherever it has coal, there is often limited water,\u201d the report wrote. India ranks the second on both lists, with 24% of existing coal plants and 13% of proposed ones in \u201cred-list\u201d areas.<\/p>\n The Kuye River, a tributary of the iconic Yellow River in China\u2019s eastern region, for example, faces a water crisis thanks to its rich coal resources, the report found. In fact, there is a large gap between the amount of water available and the amount necessary for current industrial planning. By 2030, the water demand in the Kuye River basin is expected to increase to 416 million cubic meters, a significant proportion of that related to coal, but the water supply is only at 202 million cubic meters, the report said. China is already diverting more than 44.8 billion cubic meters of water across the country every year,\u00a0more than there is in the River Thames<\/a>, to deal with water scarcity.<\/p>\n Canceling the planned coal plants in the red-list areas and replacing them with renewable energy such as solar cells and wind power is necessary to avoid a crisis, Greenpeace says. In China, for example, this could mean saving a water consumption of 1.8 billion cubic meters per year. [Source<\/strong><\/a>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n As China struggles with its own water crisis, it recently released a surge of emergency water to downstream Mekong countries<\/a> who are currently struggling with serious drought. This act of “water diplomacy” was seen by some<\/a> as an effort to build goodwill with nations opposed to Chinese infrastructure projects<\/a> ahead of the\u00a0Lancang-Mekong Cooperation summit in Hainan this week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A new report from Greenpeace on the coal industry’s impact on global water resources has found that China’s appetite for coal power is exacerbating a long-running drought in northern China. The New York Times’ Edward Wong reports: China\u2019s coal-fired power plants consume more water where water is scarce than plants in any other country, according […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":985,"featured_media":163022,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2,132,14744,14745,14746,100,5],"tags":[348,463,546,5784,580,2598,969],"class_list":["post-192536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-environmental-crisis","category-level-2-article","category-level-3-article","category-level-4-article","category-politics","category-society","tag-air-pollution","tag-coal","tag-drought","tag-greenhouse-gas-emissions","tag-greenpeace","tag-water-crisis","tag-water-pollution","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"\n\n