Inexorable China: Energetically Averting the Great Leap Backwards
January 3rd, 2008 | by This is China! |
Yuyao is a small town an hour’s drive west of Ningbo, in Zhejiang Province, south from Shanghai across the Hangzhou Bay. I had gone to investigate a Chinese automobile parts factory in the sleepy town. It was one of the hottest summers on record, in the end racking up 40 degree C temperatures for thirty days straight. Inside the factory all was quiet; there was none of the slam-bang of machines operating, nor the to-ing-and-fro-ing of industrious workers. The owner of the factory explained, “We do not have any power to operate the machines now. All the power is going to the residential areas, for their air conditioners. At night we’ll have power, and re-start production.”
Though the past two years has seen a dramatic improvement in the consistency of electrical power to factories, office buildings and residences, the summer months in many parts of China can see factories running at night when off-peak electricity costs are less, or not running at all during scheduled and un-scheduled power outages. China’s energy challenges are formidable. With the largest inflow of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in history at more that US$68billion in 2006 alone flowing into the construction and operation of manufacturing facilities and infrastructure projects, as well as the Chinese government’s infrastructure projects and the willy-nilly development of private Chinese companies in practically every part of China, energy requirements are never met. China’s residential and commercial needs will not be exceeded at least until 2030, when a combination of coal-fired, nuclear and recyclable energy will all be online.
The Central Government has for years been well-aware of the shortfall of energy production and distribution. Hence, it has seen built on average two new coal-fired energy plants each week for the past twenty years, with an additional 500 projected to be built in the next decade. Sixty-seven percent of China’s energy supply comes from coal now. To give some sense of its hunger for energy: in 2006 China added the equivalent of the capacity of all of France, more than 100 gigawatts of generating capacity. But coal is an extremely dirty source of power, contributing to acid rain levels and air qualities that make some areas of China unfit for human habitation.
Hence, Westinghouse at the beginning of 2007 was the recipient of billions of dollars in contracts for the construction of nuclear power plants in China. China plans to build 32 nuclear power plants by the year 2020. That would provide about 6 percent of its power.
The Central Government knows that it can not build enough nuclear power plants quickly enough and safely enough to meet the requirements of a burgeoning middle class and a stampede of privateers that need energy as much as they need air, food and shelter to fulfill their material dreams. So the country’s leaders are turning a great deal of attention toward alternative and renewable sources of energy. The largest hydroelectric generator of its kind in the world is the Three Gorges project, most of which is in Central China, in the Chongqing municipality. The Dam itself is merely the anchor for a chain of hydro power base stations along the middle and upper reaches of the Yangtze River. The Chinese government plans to have tripled to 300 gigawatts its utilization of hydro power by 2020. By 2030, engineers plan to have built as many as 100 hydro power stations on the upper Yangtze River basin.
It has became clear as recently as the Fall of 2007 that the Three Gorges Dam project is leading to unprecedented environmental degradation. Government planners have slated solar, wind and biomass energy-generating projects to supplement the hydro power plants.
However, all of the projects have seen the dislocation of millions of farmers and villagers to poorer parts of their respective provinces. Some farmers have had to relocate several times because of landslides caused by the strains the Three Gorges project has placed on the shoreline of the Yangtze River. According to the New York Times, a joint report by the Zhaotong township administrators and engineers cited said “Past experience has also taught that hydro power development will not necessarily improve local social and economic conditions…There is widespread concern that, although the hydro power stations are as modern as those in Europe, the residents will become as poor as people in Africa.” Zhaotong will soon see 100,000 of its residents displaced to make way for the Xiluodu Dam.
China’s increasing appetite for electricity has no end in sight as it ascends the economic development curve. The increasing costs of power and the race to safely match requirements will pose significant social problems to millions of Chinese and to Western businesses and international markets. Further severe shortages of energy will seriously affect the growth of China’s GDP, while Western businesses will look to other countries in which to invest their operations. Meanwhile, international companies and venture capitalists already vested in alternative energy technology processes and products will see their value increase. However, should a major environmental catastrophe due to China’s hurried approach to energy production – for instance, major landslides along the Yangtze River collapsing one or several of the Three Gorges Dams – the world markets will tremble with anxiety about China’s viability as an industrial powerhouse.
Energy - clean sources of sustainable energy - for factories, for offices, for residences and automobiles - are the key to the Communist Party’s maintaining legitimacy over coming decades, and China’s averting the Great Leap Backwards.
Bill Dodson
SUZHOU, China
Other articles in the Series:
1. Inexorable China
2. Inexorable China: Land Grabs
3. Inexorable China: Increasing Water Demands
4. Inexorable China: Increased Infrastructure Availability
5. Inexorable China: Go West for Cheap Sneakers
6. Inexorable China: China at Your Services
7. Inexorable China: Re-making the Military
8. Inexorable China: Hot Wired
9. Inexorable China: The Anxious Class
10. Inexorable China: City Mouse, Country Mouse and the Urbanization of China
