Guest Author: Edward Steinfield, Richard Lester and Edward Cunningham, Industrial Performance Center, MIT

To a significant degree, our planet’s energy and environmental future is now being written in China.  Consequential energy decisions are currently being made throughout this rapidly transforming nation.  In no domain, however, are these decisions more crucial and the linkages to the global environment more direct than in electric power.

Despite much current attention to alternative energy technologies such as wind and solar power, fuel cells, biomass, and nuclear power, the likelihood is that coal will remain the world’s largest source of electricity for decades to come. Thus the most important questions for the earth’s environmental future, at least over the coming decades, concern how coal will be utilized.  Will it be used cleanly or destructively?  Will it be used efficiently or inefficiently?  And will its pollutant byproducts be dealt with effectively or effectively ignored?  These questions matter wherever coal is being used, but they matter most where coal is being used most extensively; China.  And within China, coal is being used most extensively in the power sector. Read more…