NEW YORK, Nov. 13 (Xinhua) – The cooperation in advanced clean coal technologies should be of interest to China and the United States though coal industry has quite different shares in respective energy consumption mix, according to a senior industry expert.
The United States and China share the same long-term goal to utilize the large coal reserves in each country, said Rong-Jong Chang, vice president with OMDC process economics program of international business intelligence provider IHS Markit.
However, coal production is likely to be suppressed in the United States for an extended period as coal has been replaced by shale-based natural gas in large scale in power generation and chemical production, according to Chang.
Meanwhile, China doesn't have the same luxury of switching from coal to natural gas and coal will still be a very important fuel for power generation and a strategic feedstock for chemical production for the decades to come, Chang told Xinhua recently in an email.
Chang noted that China largely depends on imported pipeline natural gas and liquefied natural gas and the country needs to depend on renewable power from hydro, solar or wind to offset the carbon emission from coal power generation.
Coal production and consumption peaked at 1.172 billion short tons (about 1.063 billion tons) in 2008 and 1.128 billion short tons in 2007, respectively, according to data with Energy Information Administration of the United States. Coal production in the United States dropped by more than one third from 2008 to 2017.
Meanwhile, Chinese coal production is believed to have peaked at 2.705 billion tonnes of standard coal equivalent in 2013 but saw material growth in 2018, according to National Bureau of Statistics of China. (Contributed by Liu Yanan, edited by Yang Qi)
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