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China's Energy and Resource Uses: Continuity and Change

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Vaclav Smil
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Extract

Recent writings on China's achievements during the last quarter of the 20th century stress, almost without exception, the enormity of change. But, for both universal and particular reasons, this survey of the country's energy resources and uses will stress continuity as much as change. Taking the inertia of complex energy systems as the key universal given, the most important particular explanation lies in peculiarities of China's resource endowment.

Type
China's Environment
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 156 , December 1998 , pp. 935 - 951
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1998

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References

1. A good example of this widespread genre is the latest World Bank review of the Chinese economy: The World Bank, China 2020: The Development Challenges in the New Century (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 1997).Google Scholar

2. For details on this inertia and on gradual transitions see: Cesare, Marchetti and Nebojsa, Nakicenovic, The Dynamics of Energy Systems and the Logistic Substitution Model (Laxenburg: International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, 1979)Google Scholar; Vaclav, Smil, General Energetics (New York: John Wiley, 1991).Google Scholar

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4. A resource category comprises the total mass of a particular commodity present in the earth's crust, regardless of technical means to recover it or the economic viability doing so. While total resources can only be estimated, reserves are the accurately known fraction of resources which can be recovered at a known cost using commercial techniques. A combination of technical innovation and higher prices constantly creates reserves out of resources.Google Scholar

5. The best hard (black, bituminous) coals have a heating content of between 27–29 megajoules (MJ) per kilogram (MJ/kg), typical steam coals used in electricity generation produce around 22 MJ/kg, with the poorest lignites (brown coals) being below 15 MJ/kg. Most of China's coal resources have an energy density of between 22 and 29 MJ/kg. For more details see: Vaclav, Smil, Energy in China's Modernization (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1988), pp. 31–35.Google Scholar

6. Mistakenly, this reserve/production (R/P) ratio is often taken as an indicator of the time when a country, or the world, will run out of a particular mineral. This would be the case only for the resource/production ratio, a quotient we cannot reliably calculate because of the uncertain nature of the numerator. Higher prices and better techniques can raise R/P ratios quite rapidly: for example, the global R/P ratio for crude oil was well below 30 during the time of low oil prices in the early 1970s – but recently it has risen above 40, higher than at any time since 1945. For the latest estimates of coal reserves, and coal R/P ratios see: British Petroleum, BP Statistical Review, p. 30.

7. Ibid.. p. 4.

8. Ibid.. p. 20.

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23. The capital's mean annual total suspended particulate levels are between 400–500 μg/m3 – while the WHO's daily maximum of 150–230μg/m3 can be exceeded on only seven days (2%) each year.Google Scholar

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27. Desulphurization increases both capital and operating costs by at least 20%. Japanese aid offers a perfect opportunity to channel a sizeable amount of money through the country's large chemical companies which produce and install modern flue gas desulphurization plants.Google Scholar

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34. The Kazakh deal would involve not only a 3,000-kilometre pipeline to move some 8 Mt of crude a year to Xinjiang, but perhaps also transhipment through Iran. Detailed discussion of large-scale international oil and gas projects involving Russia, China, Korea and Japan can be found in Keun-Wook, Paik, Gas and Oil in Northeast Asia (London: The Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1995).Google Scholar

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37. Ibid..

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42. China News Digest, 16 10 1996 (http://www.cnd.org).Google Scholar

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54. The effects of ozone on China's food production capacity may be the most worrisome long-term problem: Vaclav, Smil, Energy and the Environment: Challenges for the Pacific Rim (Vancouver: Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, 1996).Google Scholar

55. This unwise goal would eventually mean between 300–400 million vehicles – compared to about 500 million cars registered world-wide in 1995: American Automobile Manufacturers Association, Motor Vehicle 1996 Facts and Figures (Detroit: AAMA, 1996), p. 44. Even if the average fuel consumption of Chinese cars could be just half the current U.S. mean, China would need about 300 Mt of petrol a year, roughly twice as much as its current annual crude oil consumption.Google Scholar

56. For basic numbers see Smil, , China's Environmental Crisis, pp. 101–110.Google Scholar

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58. For details on these programmes see: Smil, , Energy in China's Modernization, pp. 54–69.Google Scholar