From Zachary Davies Boren at Energy Desk Greenpeace, via davidstockmanscontracorner.com:
China has given the green light to more than 150 coal power plants so far this year despite falling coal consumption, flatlining production and existing overcapacity.
According to a new Greenpeace analysis, in the first nine months of 2015 China’s central and provincial governments issued environmental approvals to 155 coal-fired power plants — that’s four per week.
The numbers associated with this prospective new fleet of plants are suitably astronomical.
Should they all go ahead they would have a capacity of 123GW, more than twice Germany’s entire coal fleet; their carbon emissions would be around 560 million tonnes a year, roughly equal to the annual energy emissions of Brazil; they would produce more particle pollution than all the cars in Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin and Chongqing put together; and consequently would cause around 6,100 premature deaths a year.
But they’re unlikely to be used to their maximum since China has practically no need for the energy they would produce.
Coal-fired electricity hasn’t increased for four years, and this year coal plant utilisation fell below 50%.
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