excalibur
Diamond Member
- Mar 19, 2015
- 21,558
- 41,660
- 2,290
And the fools in the West are destroying our power systems with windmills and solar instead of NG and nuclear.
Beijing's dirtiest secret: With 1,000 coal-fired power stations (and climbing) China's energy pollution mocks the world's bid to combat climate change - as series of Mail exposes reveals
Beijing's dirtiest secret: With 1,000 coal-fired power stations (and climbing) China's energy pollution mocks the world's bid to combat climate change - as series of Mail exposes reveals
The billowing clouds of steam and smoke are visible from miles away. As night falls and the lights turn the sky neon bright as far as the eye can see, the chimneys keep remorselessly pumping out their toxic fumes.
This is the Ningdong Energy and Chemical Industry Base, one of the biggest industrial complexes in the world.
Sprawling in semi-desert far to the west of Beijing, it covers an area so vast — 341 square miles, more than two thirds the size of Los Angeles — it is almost unimaginable.
Much of The Base, as it is known locally, is home to mines, which produce 130 million metric tonnes of coal a year — about the same as the annual total dug from all 233 deep mines still in use in Britain when coal was our biggest energy source in the 1970s.
The coal — the most polluting of all fossil fuels — is fed into an array of huge power stations at the complex, which have the capacity to generate 17.3 gigawatts. That would be enough to satisfy a third of the UK’s peak demand for electricity.
Also to be found at The Base are 32 companies that use coal to make chemicals, so generating still more carbon pollution.
And on top of all this is the showpiece: the world’s largest coal-to-liquid (CTL) plant, run by the state-owned Shenhua Ningxia Coal Industry Group.
Simply burning coal is dirty enough, producing more carbon dioxide than any other method of generating electricity — almost twice as much as burning natural gas. But making oil from coal is far worse: it can double the amount of CO2 pumped into the atmosphere from every unit of energy.
Yet China’s Shenhua group — now restructured as part of China Energy — has been investing heavily in this hugely polluting CTL plant.
China's dirtiest secret: 1,000 coal-fired power stations and climbing
Ningdong Energy and Chemical Industry Base, is one of the biggest industrial complexes in the world. Sprawling in semi-desert far to the west of Beijing, it covers an unimaginably huge area.
www.dailymail.co.uk
Last edited: