China's Coal: A dirty business

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The persistence of many countries to attain a rapid growth in their economic developments has increase an accelerated industrial uprising in many developed and developing nations. This continues advancement has been an incentive to the international community to create awareness of the environmental pollution created by those industries. Coal has been a significant part of the industrial development, not only as the main source of energy but also an essential fuel for steel and cement production, as well as other industrial activities. Coal represents an abundant fossil fuel resource as the main producer of energy in the world. X Moreover, the industrial revolution and the use of coal since the 19th Century aimed by a non-stop economic pursuit and political ideology that have left an evolution of dangerous pollutants in the environment.
China is the biggest producer and consumer of coal and currently it supplies around 77% of the country’s energy. Pollution in Chinese cities has reached dangerous levels according to the World Health Organization2, filling the air full of dirt, blackened by coal dust. Coal has fueled economic boom in the country, and its consumption tripling in just over a decade. Presently, China is burning almost the same amount of coal that the rest of the world combined but that is leaving many cities, suffocated by dangerous smog. Thus, Coal has been an integral part of China’s economic growth. However, this source of energy has damaged the country’s environment and continues to do so. Although China has reached an agreement with other countries to reduced its pollution and develop sustainable technologies, China’s legacy of government regulations, ambitious economic goals and government politic reasons preve...

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IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) (2005), Special Report on Carbon Dioxide Capture and
Storage, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Cambridge University Press, New York, USA.
LBNL (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory ) (2011), China’s energy and carbon emissions: outlook to
2050, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, http://china/lbl.gov/publications/2050 ‐outlook © OECD/IEA 2012 Facing China’s Coal Future
Prospects and Challengesfor Carbon Capture and Storage
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Liu, Hengwei and K.S. Gallagher (2010), “Preparing to Ramp up Large‐scale CCS Demonstrations: An
Engineering‐economic Assessment of CO2 Pipeline Transportation in China”, International Journal of
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Liu Zhenyu et al. (2010), Coal liquefaction technologies: Development in China and challenges in chemical

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