Perfect storm: China’s blizzard exposes flaws in rail, coal policies

[rangerrebew]

Perfect storm: China’s blizzard exposes flaws in rail, coal policies
04/02/2018 Reuters 492 Views 0 Comments

 

By Muyu Xu and Josephine Mason

BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s worst blizzard this winter exposed a flaw in Beijing’s drive to create remote coal mining hubs as it tries to streamline heavy industries and clear the air in populated regions: a lack of railroads to get the fuel to market.

Heavy snow storms snarled the world’s largest rail network this week, closing highways, freezing ports and cutting off critical supplies of thermal coal.

http://www.emtv.com.pg/perfect-storm-chinas-blizzard-exposes-flaws-in-rail-coal-policies/

[IsailedawayfromFR]

Coal's biggest attractiveness is its ability to be piled massively at the power generating plants so it can used when needed, unlike say natural gas which must be transported via pipeline or some type of nearby gas storage of limited extent.

The problems in article is not the usage of coal.  It is due strictly to the timing of getting the coal to the power station.  Properly managed, one can have enough coal piled near the location to run the power plants throughout the winter.  Obviously, this was not done.

[Free Vulcan]

The glaring weakness of China in it's transport infrastructure, especially for natural resources, keeps popping up over and over again. Clean coal tech has been out there for awhile, and they have been in the perfect position to take advantage of it and all the other tech advances in natural resource transportation.

I understand that they've grown rapidly, but they've had plenty of cash to invest and seem to have put it into things like housing developments that were never occupied and such. They rely way too much on raw material imports for their manufacturing base that they could be providing for themselves, but don't seem to want to make the effort to do so.

[thackney]

Coal's biggest attractiveness is its ability to be piled massively at the power generating plants so it can used when needed, unlike say natural gas which must be transported via pipeline or some type of nearby gas storage of limited extent.

The problems in article is not the usage of coal.  It is due strictly to the timing of getting the coal to the power station.  Properly managed, one can have enough coal piled near the location to run the power plants throughout the winter.  Obviously, this was not done.

In the US, Coal plants generally stockpile much more coal than they consume in a month.

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=33692

[IsailedawayfromFR]

The glaring weakness of China in it's transport infrastructure, especially for natural resources, keeps popping up over and over again. Clean coal tech has been out there for awhile, and they have been in the perfect position to take advantage of it and all the other tech advances in natural resource transportation.

I understand that they've grown rapidly, but they've had plenty of cash to invest and seem to have put it into things like housing developments that were never occupied and such. They rely way too much on raw material imports for their manufacturing base that they could be providing for themselves, but don't seem to want to make the effort to do so.

They also put it in $1.24 trillion in US Treasuries.

https://www.thoughtco.com/how-much-debt-does-china-own-3321769

[Free Vulcan]

They also put it in $1.24 trillion in US Treasuries.

https://www.thoughtco.com/how-much-debt-does-china-own-3321769

Yeah that's whole other discussion right there.