China Building a 'Coal Base' the Size of Los Angeles
From Motherboard:
China, faced with ever-worsening pollution in its major cities—a recent report
deemed Beijing "barely suitable for living"—is doing what so many
industrializing nations have done before it: banishing its titanic smog
spewers to poor or rural areas so everyone else can breathe easier. But
China isn't just relegating its dirty coal-fired power plants to the
outskirts of society; for years, it's been building 16
unprecedentedly massive, brand new "coal bases" in rural parts of the
country. There, they won't stifle China's megacities; they'll churn out
enough pollution to help smother the entire world.
The biggest of those bases, the Ningdong Energy and Chemical Industry
Base, spans nearly 400 square miles, about the size of LA. It's already
operational, and seemingly always expanding. It's operated by Shenhua,
one of the biggest coal companies in the world. China hopes to uses
these coal bases not just to host some of the world's largest coal-fired
power plants, but to use super-energy intensive technology to convert
the coal into a fuel called syngas and use it to make plastics and other
materials....MORE
