Our guest blogger is Julian L. Wong, Senior Policy Analyst with
the Energy Opportunity team. China’s energy sector gets a bad
reputation because of its heavy reliance on coal, which accounts
for 80 percent of its electricity supply, and its continued
appetite to expand coal power capacity at a rate of two coal
power plants a week. While all of this is true, it’s not the
full story. The plants that China is currently building are some
of the most efficient in the industry. And as the Wall Street
Journal reported today, China has a concurrent program of
shutting down small, inefficient coal plants: The National
Energy Administration said Thursday that since 2007 it had
closed 54 gigawatts of coal- and oil-fired power plants as part
of the cleanup plan. That would amount to about 7% of China’s
current electricity-generating capacity. According to the
Associated Press, this capacity translates to a closure of
“7,467 generating units, meeting a previously announced goal 18
months ahead of schedule.” These reports