China Bans Low-Grade Coal, Cuts Wind Power Price

 

By Shuli Ren

Choking in smog, China is trying hard to move away from dirty coal and into clean energy.

Beijing announced on Monday that, starting next year, it would ban the burning of coal with ash content of more than 16% or sulphur content of more than 1% in its populous eastern cities. This is good news for iron ore, a cleaner substitute to coal for steel making. Australian iron ore miners BHP Billiton (BHP), Rio Tinto (RIO) and Fortescue Metals (FSUMF) rose 0.3%, 0.2% and 1% respectively after spot iron ore price jumped 3.9% today. Not surprisingly, Hong Kong listed Yanzhou Coal (1171.HK/YZC) fell 1.5%.

Separately, Beijing also said it would lower the tariff for wind power. South China Morning Post reported:

The National Development and Reform Commission has proposed to cut each of the current regional benchmark per kilowatt-hour tariffs of 51 fen, 54 fen and 58 fen by four fen, and the 61-fen benchmark by two fen, China Business News reported. The average cut is 6.4 per cent.

The long-expected proposed tariff cut, the first since Beijing set regional subsidised wind power prices in 2009, is aimed to reflect lower wind turbine costs and relieve the financial pressure on the government and consumers that have to bear the costs of rising consumption of clean energy.

This is not good news for Chinese wind power companies, however. 

http://blogs.barrons.com/asiastocks/2014/09/16/china-bans-low-grade-coal-cuts-wind-power-price/

 

All this of course had to come into play, no matter what.

When I started this line of article and mentioned China, I did not know what the Chinese government was going to do, BUT I KNEW WHAT THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT HAD TO DO. One does not have to be Einstein to figure this one out. See article above.

 

The writer make a few mistakes in her analysis.

"This is good news for iron ore, a cleaner substitute to coal for steel making. " makes no sense at all.

Coal is necessary to make steel. Iron ore needs coal to make steel. Iron ore is not a substitute for steel making. Usually, thermal coal is low grade, while steel-making coal needs to be high grade.  In order  to replace low grade coal, the Chinese plan on making renewable energy more affordable — and possibly more efficient. Say Solar panels in Beijing would be a waste of cash under present condition of smog.

 

China's central bank is said to be injecting 500bn yuan ($81bn; £50bn) into the five biggest state-owned banks to counter slowing growth in the world's second-largest economy.

The People's Bank of China (PBOC) is reportedly giving each bank a $100bn low-interest loan over three months.

The move may be the first of several stimulus measures, analysts say.

It is aimed at lifting business confidence and investment following a string of weak economic data.

China's economy showed more evidence of a slowdown with industrial production and foreign direct investment hitting multi-year lows in August.

The five lenders said to be receiving the stimulus are the Industrial & Commercial Bank of China, China Construction Bank, Agricultural Bank of China, Bank of China and Bank of Communications.

The move was first reported by local Chinese news website Sina.com. Other media reports cited a government official and a senior Chinese banking executive.

Chinese banking shares traded in Hong Kong rose on the news.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-29233753

Deadly air pollution continues to be a problem in Australia because air quality standards are being misused, say experts.

The standards governing six key outdoor pollutants are being interpreted as an acceptable upper limit of pollution, says health statistician Associate Professor Adrian Barnett of the Queensland University of Technology.

But, he adds, this approach is not supported by scientific evidence.

"Study after study has shown there is simply no safe level of air pollution; health problems in the population rise in line with increases in average pollution levels," says Barnett.

He says many reports to state governments imply it is safe to pollute up to the limits provided in the National Environment Protection Measure for Ambient Air Quality (Air NEPM).

"I have lost count of the number of government-commissioned environmental reports that have used this fallacy. This practice should have ended years ago," says Barnett, who lays out his argument in today's issue of theAustralian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health.

"The governments are getting bad advice."

Air pollution causes an estimated 3.7 million deaths per year worldwide, and 3000 deaths per year in Australia.

Drawing on existing research on the health effects of air pollution, Barnett has quantified the number of extra deaths that could result from using the Air NEPM standards as an upper limit for five pollutants in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

"I've found that increasing pollution levels to just below the NEPM standards would cause the deaths of an extra 6000 people each year," says Barnett, whose analysis included carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, sulphur dioxide and particulate matter (diameter less than 2.5 micrometres and less than 10 micrometres).

read more: http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2014/10/01/4097658.htm

Parts of northern China have suffered the worst bout of smog since July, pushing pollution well past healthy levels and reducing visibility.

Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei province have issued an orange alert, the second highest.

The elderly and those with heart or lung problems have been advised to stay indoors.

China has seen harmful levels of pollution for years caused by the use of coal to generate electricity.

read more http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-29564203

This December marks the 30th anniversary of the Bhopal gas disaster, which is still the biggest chemical accident in history. It was even worse than the uncontrolled dumping of waste containing mercury in the Japanese city of Minamata, and its long-term effects are perhaps comparable only with those of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Some who feel reminded of the scope of the disaster caused by the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima call the Bhopal disaster "Bhoposhima."

Toxic Ghost Town

But what happened on that December night was only the beginning of an apocalypse of a much greater magnitude. The environmental tragedy, the ongoing poisoning of the environment and people of Bhopal, has unfolded in the three decades since that night and continues to unfold today.

The reasons for the tragedy are known. The main source of the current environmental pollution is the factory site, which was never the subject of any professional cleanup operation. About 350 tons of highly toxic waste, old residues of pesticide production, are still stored on the 35-hectare (86-acre) site, packaged in ordinary plastic bags in the middle of the city. The former factory premises, now owned by the state of Madhya Pradesh, resemble a ghost town today. Broken test tubes litter the floors of laboratories, as the old tanks rust away. A plan to dispose of the waste with the help of the German Society for International Cooperation failed in 2012.

There are still no exclusion zones around the site today, and there are holes in the ordinary brick wall surrounding the factory. In the summer, when temperatures can rise above 45 degrees Celsius (112 degrees Fahrenheit), a reddish dust from the factory settles on the nearby huts. When it rains, the contaminated soil is flushed into neighboring slums. The goats of nearby residents graze on the factory grounds.

The old evaporation basins, into which Union Carbide pumped its highly toxic wastewater, are neither marked nor off-limits to the public today. No measures have been taken to stop further groundwater contamination.

'The Unlucky Ones Survived'

"The people who died that night were the lucky ones," says Rashida Bee. "The unlucky ones survived."

Read more: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/disaster-persists-30-years-after-bhopal-gas-catastrophe-a-1006101.html

After a week in Kolkata, blessed with mellow sunsets created by the yellowy haze that hung over the city, I flew back to Britain via Delhi on Friday. Our descent into Delhi was delayed because of fog, we were told, but the nicotine-coloured blanket smothering this dynamic Indian city was a malignant smog.

Delhi, a city of 25 million people and nine million vehicles, routinely experiences fine particulate pollution above 300 micrograms per cubic metre; the EU’s legal limit is 25. These figures are not abstract even for visitors. After just a few days in Kolkata and minutes in Delhi, I developed the dry hack known as “the Delhi cough”. Exert yourself outdoors and soon your eyes are streaming and your lungs aching.

Fifteen of the 20 most polluted places identified by the World Health Organisation are in India and China but winter smogs have hung over Barcelona, Milan and Naples, and this month some London streets breached annual EU limits for nitrogen dioxide in just a week. A recent study in Nature found that more people – 1.4 million people a year in China and 650,000 in India – die from air pollution than malaria and HIV combined.

Clean air should be a global priority, and it is puzzling that it is not. Unlike, say, climate change, toxic air is identifiable by the layperson, indisputably of the here-and-now, and kills rich as well as poor, which should make it a seductive subject for problem-solving by politicians.

But Britain is avoiding decisive action to scrap diesel vehicles, and India keeps the home fires burning because it is growing at 7.4%, faster than any major economy. Kolkata is plastered with government adverts urging investors to “ride the growth”. Presumably they mean in an SUV. We should be so much smarter.

Perhaps air pollution hasn’t been solved because no one makes a fuss: scarier than the smog in Delhi, Kolkata and London is the stoicism of residents for whom bad air has become part of daily life. I suppose it’s understandable why they’re not taking to the streets.

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/18/kolkata-london-air-pollution-kills-indian-cities

Two damning reports published by the WHO indicate that up to 1.7 million children around the world, or one in four, under the age of five are killed by pollution, with that number expected to rise short term due to climate change. 

"A polluted environment is a deadly one – particularly for young children," Dr. Margaret Chan, the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), said in a statement Monday. "Their developing organs and immune systems, and smaller bodies and airways, make them especially vulnerable to dirty air and water."

The first study discusses the pollution-related threats that children around the world face: respiratory infections such as pneumonia from unclean air kill an estimated 570,000 children a year; diarrhea from polluted water, lack of sanitation and poor general hygiene account for 361,000 child deaths; while malaria accounts for 200,000 child deaths a year.

READ MORE: Mass extinction: Vatican embraces science to fight biggest threats to humanity

The second study released by the WHO discusses the dramatic impact environmental factors have on child mortality, with a further 270,000 children dying during the first month of life due to environmental pollution. Many households in the developing world still rely on burning coal or even dung for heating and cooking.

For context, according to air pollution standards set by the WHO in 2014, 92 percent of the world’s population breathes unclean air.

While many families can move away from fossil fuel dependency as they prosper and their local economy improves, the children are still at lifelong risk for diseases such as cancer, asthma, strokes and heart disease.

read more:

https://www.rt.com/viral/379662-pollution-killing-children-who/

 

read from top...