The coal-fired heating plants use coal-scrubbing filters which reduce soot emissions, said Tao, the renewable energy expert. Many institutions and residential complexes have private heating, but also use coal-fired boilers. Most of the north’s heating plants are turned on around mid-November. Residents in cities south of the Yangtze River such as Shanghai tend to rely on electric space heaters. At the time, China was still impoverished, which meant the government could only afford to give its colder north centralized heating. It had spread across the north by the mid-1980s. Some also supply electricity while others burn coal just to generate steam which is piped into city grids for heat.Ĭentralized heating dates back to the 1950s in Beijing. The same sort of plants are used across northern China, providing so-called centralized heating. Officials blamed thick fog on the same day for contributing to the pollution. Images of the acrid smog over Harbin on October 21 were beamed around the world after authorities literally turned on the heat by switching on a network of mostly coal-fired heating plants that warm large swaths of the city. “If there’s not enough gas, many people will just go back to burning coal, secretly,” said Ming Sung, East Asia chief representative of the Clean Air Task Force, a U.S.-based environmental advocacy group. Importers also risk losses because the government keeps the price of gas low to curb inflation and ease the impact on consumers, although recent incremental price hikes have helped. The government has said it would raise natural gas use to 230 billion cubic meters by 2015, more than double the 2010 rate, but disappointing domestic production growth coupled with insufficient pipeline and storage capacity has left it increasingly reliant on imports and prone to shortages. Nevertheless, the gas shortage may still be 10 percent higher this winter than last year because more users have switched over, official media said last week, citing an unidentified executive from PetroChina, China’s largest gas producer and importer. The government also said last week it would control the increase in new gas users, prioritizing supplies to residential users and public transport during the winter. The shortage has forced the government to ration gas supplies, even banning construction of new natural gas-fired power stations. I think that’s still quite difficult,” said Tao Guangyuan, a renewable energy expert and columnist based in Beijing. “With the current natural gas situation, maybe you can guarantee (supply to) big cities like Beijing, but if you want to expand to the cities of northern China that need it. But domestic output cannot keep up with demand. Authorities have said Beijing’s urban core should use only gas for heating. “I suspect we will have severe incidents of air pollution in Beijing again this winter,” said Alvin Lin, China Climate and Energy Policy Director for the U.S.-based Natural Resources Defense Council.Ĭhina sees natural gas as the way to cleaner air. Beijing had its own emergency in January when air pollution was 45 times the level. The frigid northeastern city of Harbin, home to 11 million people, virtually ground to a halt last week when airborne contaminants were around 50 times the level recommended by the World Health Organization. The problem is worst in northern China, where air pollution mainly caused by decades of reliance on coal has lowered life expectancy by an estimated 5.5 years compared to the south, Chinese and international researchers said in July. A labourer works at a coking plant in Changzhi, north China's Shanxi province, July 7, 2007.
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