[Winter has arrived early, however, and it has been especially cold this year, triggering unexpectedly high demand for heating. At the same time, natural gas has been in short supply, and in some cases construction has not been completed on the pipelines needed to deliver it.]
By
Keith Bradsher
 |
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A
natural gas processing plant in Sulige, Inner Mongolia, in 2013. China’s shift
to
natural gas from coal has not gone according to plan.
Credit
Chen Aizhu/Reuters
|
BEIJING
— Homes, businesses and even
hospitals across northern China are running short of natural gas. Some schoolchildren
are shivering. And in the chemical industry — well, the spandex supply is
getting tight.
More than a decade ago, China began moving
gradually to rely more on natural gas and less on coal, a dirtier form of
energy. This autumn, faced with public pressure to clean smoggy skies, the
government decided to pick up the pace.
In some places, that shift has gone awry.
The Chinese government on Tuesday shut down
big chemical factories in western China for as long as four months to free up
natural gas to heat homes and schools. And in Beijing, the city authorities
have very publicly reversed a heavily promoted policy of ending municipal coal
use. The city has turned a big coal-fired power plant in its southeastern
suburbs back on — in the chilly air, it releases a towering, gray cloud of
steam and pollution visible from tall buildings across much of the city.
“It is the most severe shortfall of natural
gas since the commitment to build up gas demand,” said Daniel Yergin, the
energy consultant and author, who is visiting Beijing this week.
The disruptions so far appear temporary. But
they show how painful and expensive it will be for China to clean up its air
and wean itself from dirty-burning coal. The fossil fuel helped propel the
country’s economy to become the world’s second-largest, and efforts to break
its coal addiction could have global, as well as national, consequences.
The Chinese government is trying to reduce
air pollution by 15 percent this winter in much of northern China, where
pollution tends to be the country’s worst, particularly during colder months
when coal is widely burned for heat.
Through the autumn, government inspectors did
not just order schools, businesses and homes to shut down coal-fired stoves and
boilers and switch to natural gas. They made sure that their orders would not
be defied, dismantling and removing large numbers of coal-fired devices,
according to state-controlled media.
Winter has arrived early, however, and it has
been especially cold this year, triggering unexpectedly high demand for
heating. At the same time, natural gas has been in short supply, and in some
cases construction has not been completed on the pipelines needed to deliver
it.
The result has been a national outcry,
particularly after the official newspaper People’s Daily published photos last
week of elementary school students having classes outdoors in subfreezing
weather because it was even colder indoors.
“In the past, the heating problems had
occurred, but this year the issue is particularly severe because the supply
side has not caught up,” said Lin Boqiang, an energy analyst at Xiamen
University. “In planning the emissions goals, the government has not really
coordinated well with gas producers.”
China already consumes considerably more
natural gas than it produces, importing the difference. The country also
regulates the price at which state-controlled energy giants are allowed to sell
natural gas, to encourage its domestic use as a cleaner-burning substitute for
coal.
Keeping prices low, though, has meant that
energy companies have had little incentive to produce or import more natural
gas. PetroChina, the main oil and gas company in northern China, reported that
its losses from natural gas climbed steeply in the first three quarters of this
year compared with the same period in 2016.
Yet there is one big exception in consumer
prices for natural gas in China: the compressed natural gas burned by many
taxis in big Chinese cities, and by a growing number of trucks as well.
Compressed natural gas prices have surged 65 percent since early November,
prompting government officials to warn last week against price gouging.
The timing of China’s revival of coal
consumption this week is awkward: Officials have been promoting their country’s
efforts to control global warming in international talks this month in Europe.
China’s planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions have risen sharply over the
past decade, but it has also shown much more of a willingness than the Trump
administration to talk about ways to curb that growth in the future.
The natural gas shortage has particularly hit
the chemicals industry in China, with consequences for the wider world.
BASF, the German chemicals giant, announced
on Tuesday that a gas shortage had prompted it to invoke force majeure to break
delivery contracts from its huge complex in Chongqing, in western China. That
factory alone manufactures more than 5 percent of the world’s supply of a
chemical, known as MDI, that is used to make spandex as well as insulation for
refrigerators, cars and houses.
While MDI factories outside China mainly
produce the chemical for insulation, China dominates global production of
garments made from spandex, the stretchy material best known in the United
States under the Lycra brand name. The BASF shutdown may drive MDI prices even
higher. That will make spandex garments more expensive, but should not result
in their disappearance from store shelves, chemicals analysts said.
And while Chinese environmentalists have led
the push for using more natural gas and less coal, even they now say the
government may have moved too fast.
“The problem is not about what they are
doing, but whether you can achieve the goal in a short period of time,” said Ma
Jun, the director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, a
nonprofit group in Beijing that monitors pollution. “The officials are ill
prepared, and there has been a lack of discussion on execution.”
Ailin Tang and Owen Guo contributed research.
Follow Keith Bradsher on Twitter:
@KeithBradsher.