Clima e Energia

This chart is a reproduction of a chart from Edison Electric Institute (EEI) that has been used to suggest that EPA's regulatory timeline is unworkable - see http://www.eei.org/meetings/Meeting%20Documents/EPA-CAAUtilityRegTimelin.... WRI has identified four categories of EPA activities on the EEI timeline that are potentially misleading:

(Blue X's) Rules that have been remanded or vacated by court decisions that do not impose compliance obligations.
(Green X's) Rules that are already in effect representing compliance obligations that already exist; there are no new requirements imposed by these rules.
(Purple X's) Public input through the rulemaking process (leads to more robust and fair rules for the electric power sector, and should not be conflated with new compliance obligations).
(Red X's) National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) rules for various pollutants that set standards for states to achieve. They do not establish new requirements for electric generation units.

Steel production accounted for nearly 17 percent of China's primary energy use in 2008. Compared to developed countries' steel producers, China's steel sector has much higher primary energy intensity. This higher intensity can be explained by heavy reliance on coal, relatively higher iron alloy production, lower waste energy recovery, smaller scale of equipment, lower conversion efficiency of steam and oxygen, and relatively poor material quality (Huang 2008; Tsinghua Study 2009).

A majority of turbines erected in China are small, with 600–850 kW turbines accounting for 80 percent of the market share. In 2006 the average size of turbines in China was 830 kW, compared to 1634 kW in Germany, 1634 kW in the United States, and 1100 kW in Spain. Today, the United States is developing 10 MW turbines, while China just tested 3 MW turbines.

Due to constant technological improvement as well as enabling policies, worldwide installed wind power capacity has risen rapidly, from about 14 GW in 1999 to 158 GW in 2009, of which the United States and Germany accounted for approximately 41 percent. The 158 GW installed capacity was estimated to generate 340 terawatthours (TWh) electricity and save 204 million tons of CO2 in 2009 (Sawyer 2010).

Coal consistently contributes to over 75 percent of electricity in China (China Bureau of Statistics 2009). To meet its ever growing demands for electricity, China has seen rapid growth of coal-fired power generation. From 2003 to 2009 the country more than doubled its coal-fired generation capacity, making its fleet the largest in the world. However, the fuel consumption per unit of electricity generated during this period has steadily decreased. The use of supercritical/ultrasupercritical technology has significantly contributed to the improvement of energy efficiency.

This chart is an adaptation based upon an original chart from Edison Electric Institute (EEI) - see http://www.eei.org/meetings/Meeting%20Documents/EPA-CAAUtilityRegTimelin.... The original EEI chart has been used to suggest that EPA's regulatory timeline is unworkable. However, as illustrated in http://www.earthtrendsdelivered.org/node/406, the original chart consists mostly of procedural events and activities that will not impose a direct compliance obligation on power plants.

This chart shows a more accurate picture of the timeline for new requirements applicable to electric power plants.

In the past two decades China has emerged from a technology importer to a major manufacturer of a number of low-carbon technologies. China's government R&D appropriations have increased dramatically, from 43.9 billion Yuan (US$6.8 billion) in 1998 to 254 billion Yuan (US$39 billion) in 2008. Accordingly, three other measures—gross R&D expenditure, R&D intensity, and government science and technology (S&T) appropriations—have also enjoyed rapid growth.