China bans small power projects to curb waste...

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Mar 6: China, the world’s second-largest greenhouse gas emitter, has banned electricity companies from building coal-fired power plants with capacity of less than 300 megawatts in a bid to increase efficiency and reduce pollution.

``The small size of power units is the major reason for the high energy consumption and pollution in the nation’s power industry,’’ Chen Deming, vice president of the National Development and Reform Commission, the nation’s top economic planner, said in a statement posted on its Web site.

China will shut 10,000 megawatts of power capacity at small, coal-fired plants, Ma Kai, the commission’s head said in his annual work report to the National People’s Congress on Monday. Chinese plants used 366 grams of coal equivalent to generate each kilowatt of electricity in 2006, compared with 299 grams for units in Japan, 300 grams in South Korea and 303 grams in Italy, Chen said.

``The policy will be good for domestic power generators,’’ Yao Wei, a Shanghai-based utilities analyst with Guotai Junan Securities Co., said by telephone today. ``It will help them to adjust the structure of power units by having more high-efficiency capacity to substitute for high-energy-consuming ones.’’

The prohibition applies to coal-fired plants built solely to produce power, not projects that generate electricity together with heat, Chen said in the statement posted on Monday.

Missed Target

China will phase out 30 million metric tons of less-efficient iron ore processing capacity and 35 million tons of steel capacity, Ma said in his report yesterday. The country plans to shut 50,000 megawatts of small power-producing capacity in total by 2010.

Chinese authorities want to avoid a repeat of 2006 when the country missed a target set by Premier Wen Jiabao to cut the amount of energy used to produce each unit of gross domestic product by 4 percent. The nation met less than one third of the goal, reducing the amount of energy consumed to generate each unit of GDP by 1.23 percent, the National Bureau of Statistics said Feb. 28.

China closed 8,300 megawatts of small thermal units between 2001 and 2005, compared with its target of 15,000, because power shortages hobbled efforts to enforce the policy, Zhao Xiaoping, director of the commission’s energy bureau, said Jan. 31.

China, the world’s largest coal producer and consumer, suspended the granting of coal exploration rights, to stabilize coal production and curb pollution, the Ministry of Land Resources said Feb. 27.