The Beijing government has announced details of a plan to remove coal-fired power plants from the city by 2017.
The city wants to replace coal-fired power plants with 1 GW of renewable energy as well as four new large gas-fired power plants. Industrial and heating boilers using coal would also be converted to natural gas under the proposals.
The plan is designed to help the city overcome its pollution problems, which are causing premature deaths and damaging the health of the population.
To implement the plan, the Beijing government has called for the construction of new natural gas infrastructure, including an LNG import terminal at Tangshan. However analysts have highlighted the chronic shortage of natural gas that is forecast to hit China this winter as a potential barrier to Beijing’s plan to reduce pollution.
According to a new report from Greenpeace, the emissions from all of China’s coal-fired power plants were responsible for the deaths of an estimated 260 000 people in 2011. Pollution from coal is also contributing towards health problems such as asthma, as well as hospital admissions and sick leave.
In Beijing, the winter/spring of 2012/13 saw a record 800 microgrammes of fine particulate matter per cubic metre measured. For comparison – the US Environmental Protection Agency’s legal limit is 15 microgrammes/m3.
