Abstract
Rapid developments in coal-fired power generation in China have led to questions of environmental sustainability. Apart from CO2 emissions, an assessment needs to be made of global sustainability of the supply side chain of resources as well as the ecosystem. Sustainability has two different dimensions, upstream and downstream, in that the environment must be regarded as a source and as a sink too. The upstream side is related to the environmental quality of input resources, and is of paramount importance and can be examined using emergy accounting methods to generate environmental footprint indicators. We study a 2 × 600 MW supercritical power generation plant in China equipped with dedusting and desulfurization systems in both upstream and downstream aspects applying both energy and emergy methods. A set of efficiency and sustainability indicators is calculated and discussed.
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Acknowledgement
The authors gratefully acknowledge the support received from Projects of the Basic Application Research of Guangzhou, China (7421154389972) and Green Energy Technology Key Laboratory of Guangdong Province (2008A060301002) and Key Laboratory of Efficient and Clean Energy Utilization of Guangdong Higher Education Institutes (KLB10004).
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Lou, B., Sun, C., Ulgiati, S. (2015). Environmental Performance of Coal Power Generation in China. In: Reddy, B., Ulgiati, S. (eds) Energy Security and Development. Springer, New Delhi. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-2065-7_20
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-2065-7_20
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