2010-09-19 13:48

Additionally, the growing demand for coal stands at odds with the government's plans to reduce carbon emissions over the next decade.

Last year the government vowed to cut the intensity of carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP in 2020 by 40 to 45 percent, compared with the 2005 level.

China also announced earlier, in its 11th Five-year Plan (2006-2010), that it would reduce energy consumption relative to GDP by 20 percent in the five years to 2010.

Premier Wen Jiabao said in Tianjin this month that China's energy consumption per GDP was down 15.6 percent during the first four years of the country's 11th Five-year Plan.

To seek an energy-efficient and environmentally-friendly path for economic growth was a "pressing" task for the country, and also imposed a tougher requirement for the energy sector, Gao said.

These targets have prompted the country to accelerate its steps in exploring cleaner technology in coal consumption and boosting use of renewable and new energies as future energy alternatives.

Cleaner technology

"In the long term, large scale use of coal will depend on how quickly techniques can be deployed to extract and use coal in ways that are competitive with current and emerging competing energy sources in terms of both cost and environmental performance," said Dr Jonathan Sinton, China Program Manager at the International Energy Agency's Directorate of Global Energy Dialogue.

Clean and efficient utilization of coal, instead of direct coal combustion, is crucial and urgent for China to pursue a low-carbon economy, Ni Weidou said.

"Especially coal gasification and its derived multi-production energy system are a comprehensive solution to the energy challenges that China is facing," he said, urging more efforts be made on the transition to this technology to avoid air pollution and energy security problems in China.

Coal gasification technology uses high temperatures and pressure to break the molecular bonds in coal to produce gases that can be recombined into a variety of fuels and chemicals.

Projects employing such technology have been on the government's agenda for its development push as China has plenty of coal, while gas and oil are in short supply. In addition, carbon dioxide will be easier to capture and store during the process than during direct burning, Ni said.

To turn coal to gas is also a cleaner way to utilize coal and also increase gas supplies with lower emissions in consumption, which the country is conducting on a trial basis.

Du Minghua, deputy director of China Shenhua CTL & CTC Research Institute, said at present China had started construction of four pilot coal-to-gas projects in Inner Mongolia, Liaoning, and Xinjiang, with output of 15.1 cubic meters per year. The four projects are due to become operational from 2011 to 2013.

China National Offshore Oil Co (CNOOC) intends to invest up to 100 billion yuan ($14.9 billion) on a coal-to-gas project in Shanxi with annual output of 10 billion cubic meters in the coming five years, according to the company's general manager, Fu Yucheng.