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VOICE OF
ELECTRICITY WORKERS
CHINA’S
STRUGGLE WITH POWER
Could Thomas Rawski have been right
after all? Three years ago the economist and China-hand was labelled a
party-pooper when he argued that China’s sparkling growth statistics were vastly
over-inflated and had been for three or four years. One pillar of Rawski’s
argument was that electricity consumption in China had barely risen during the
years leading upto 2001, so how could the economy have expanded so much?
Cut to 2004 and it’s easy to see why Rawsky may have been right back then, But
now it’s an entirely different story. China’s economy really has belted into the
super-fast lane and now it’s plagued by ever-growing shortages, leading to
blackouts, brownouts, and industrial shutdowns. The situation is so bad that
there are shortages in 24 provinces and even in Shanghai some of the world’s top
corporations are being forced to switch back to generator power. That sounds
familiar, doesn’t it?
What’s going on?
Quite simply, demand for power has soared by 16 per cent between January and
April over the same period last year.
What is more, the
problems won’t be solved at the flick of a switch. For a start, the Chinese are
on an extra ordinary building spree, and in addition, they are adding huge
capacities in energy-hungry industries like steel and cement. Then, there are a
host of infrastructural bottlenecks. As power demand soars there are problems
getting coal to the power stations.
According to one
calculation, about 220,000 rakes out of the Chinese railways’ total of 31,000
are being used to transport coal. The black gold simply isn’t getting to the
right places swiftly enough. The people’s Daily said in April there was a 1,000
MW shortfall in generation simply because of coal shortages.
So, what are the
Chinese doing about the new crisis afflicting their economy? They are racing
against time to install gigantic amounts of power. Currently, an astonishing 130
gigawatts of power is being built in different parts of the country. For those
who aren’t familiar with oversized units of power, 130 gigawatts is equal to
130,000 MW of power. Last year alone, the Chinese are said to have spent ₤ 13
billion on the power sector.
Inevitably, we must
draw a comparison with our own country, which has faced power shortages for over
25 years. Amazingly, there are signs of an upturn in India’s power situation.
About 41,000 MW is scheduled to be installed during the 10th Plan
Period and there are indications that the targets might almost be achieved.
But perhaps it’s
time to start worrying about the impact of runaway growth on China, India and
indeed the entire globe. Even China’s top political leaders-not famous for their
environmental consciousness-are apparently beginning to have qualms about where
all this giant growth is heading. Consider the future, keeping in mind that the
energy-guzzling Americans consume 10 times as much electricity as the Chinese.
What will happen if the Chinese become as power –hungry as the Americans is a
scary thought.
“China’s challenge
is to boost power capacity in 20 years to a degree that took America half a
century”, says Zheng Jianchao of the Academy of Engineering of China. “To do
that, we need an additional supply equivalent to four times more. Three Gorges
hydroelectric dams, 26 Yanzhou coal mines, six Daqing oilfields, eight gas
pipelines, and 20 nuclear power plants, as well as 400 thermal power generators
and the network to link them all together.
Or, to look at it
another way, it’s reck-oned that the Chinese economy may grow by 400 per cent by
2020. Can the country boost electricity supplies by that much? Some Chinese
academics say that coal would run out in 20 years if power generation was upped
to such levels.
And what will
happen if India gets its economic act together and becomes an energy consumer on
a similarly giant scale. Currently, we are far behind the Chinese but what will
happen when we catch up. You don’t have to be an environmentalist to recognise
that the atmosphere could, in the future, look very murky.
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