This week, the New York Times spotlighted China’s emerging leadership in building coal-fired power plants that incorporate new technology to reduce emissions, including greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (read the article “China Outpaces U.S. in Cleaner Coal-Fired Plants”).

The report was framed not so much to praise China but to point out that (shock, horror!), in the high-tech war against climate change, the U.S. has fallen behind a much poorer country widely perceived as less sophisticated and more “dirty” environmentally. Shame, shame.

Fair point, but a few comments are needed to put this fine piece of reporting from correspondent Keith Bradsher into perspective:

(1) People are building power plants in China willy-nilly …

They have no choice — the country is in a losing battle with runaway growth in electricity demand from the consumer and industrial sectors. Thus, opportunities to experiment with new techniques (like the hotter-steam, higher-efficiency plants mentioned) are abundant. Sure, any aggressiveness in this area is good to see, but a little dabbling here and there with new ideas shouldn’t be such a tremendous surprise.

(2) It’s a big leap of logic to assume all new Chinese plants constructed will be the cleaner types … at least right now.

Decisionmaking about power generation infrastructure is highly distributed and subject to local interests that aren’t necessarily so enlightened. The common American view of China as a beehive that operates in lockstep with the directives of a central bureaucracy in Beijing is a fallacy. In my opinion, this article is a bit thin on evidence that cleaner techniques will account for even a majority of new construction … The anecdotal examples cited (notably the Tianjin plant) could turn out to be highly touted exceptions, rather than the rule.

(3) The preponderance of China’s coal-fired power generation is dirty today … and that won’t change overnight.

Even if we took the most optimistic scenario (cleaner plants accounting for 100% of new coal-fired capacity built going forward), the country will still be among the biggest producers of greenhouse gases for decades to come. I am especially skeptical about one of the statements in the article: “China has begun requiring power companies to retire an older, more polluting power plant for each new one they build.” As noted above, in the face of skyrocketing demand, the country is fighting hard to install generation capacity fast enough to avoid brown-outs. Under these circumstances, you are trying to keep aggregate capacity growing as fast as possible — and retiring older plants is a luxury the country can ill afford.

One final little gripe … The Times report also singles out the experimental sequestration plant outside Beijing, but as highlighted in this blog in February, visitors noted that the plant’s design principle is practically impossible to scale — it would produce far more carbon gas than could ever be consumed by the carbonated beverage industry.

Nevertheless, a very interesting read!

(Image by Doug Kanter courtesy of the New York Times)