Energy futureChina's heavy use of coal degrades global environment

Published 6 November 2007

Worldwide demand for coal will rise by about 60 percent through 2030 — to 6.9 billion tons a year; China’s voracious appetite is the main culprit; environmental, health costs in China — and around the world — mount

China is the most polluted — and polluting — country on Earth, but the Chinese people are not the only ones paying the price for it. It takes five to ten days for the pollution from China’s coal-fired plants to make its way to the United States, with the cloud of pollution crossing the Pacific as a slow-moving storm would do. The pollution shows up as mercury in the bass and trout caught in Oregon’s Willamette River. It increases cloud cover and raises ozone levels. Along the way, it contributes to acid rain in Japan and South Korea and health problems everywhere from Taiyuan to the United States. This is the price China — and countries an ocean away from China — pay for that country’s growing use of coal. AP’s Michael Casey writes that coal is cheap and abundant, and it has become the fuel of choice in much of the world, powering economic booms in China and India that have lifted millions of people out of poverty. Worldwide demand is projected to rise by about 60 percent through 2030 — to 6.9 billion tons a year, most of it going to electrical power plants. The growth of coal-burning is also contributing to global warming, and is linked to environmental and health issues including acid rain and asthma. The World Health Organization (WHO) says that air pollution kills more than two million people prematurely every year. “Hands down, coal is by far the dirtiest pollutant,” said Dan Jaffe, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Washington who has detected pollutants from Asia at monitoring sites on Mount Bachelor in Oregon and Cheeka Peak in Washington state. “It is a pretty bad fuel on all scores.”

The coal-induced environmental pollution in China has reached dire proportions. China is home to twenty of the world’s thirty most polluted cities, according to a World Bank report. Health costs related to air pollution total $68 billion a year, nearly 4 percent of the country’s economic output, the report said. Acid rain has contaminated a third of the country. Pollution is said to destroy some $4 billion worth of crops every year. “What we are facing in China is enormous economic growth, and … China is paying a price for it,” said Henk Bekedam, the country representative for the World Health Organization. “Their growth is not sustainable from an environmental perspective.