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China eyes new energy source

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2006-09-03 10:01

Having his car filled with compressed coal-bed methane in a bustling gas station at a coal production base of north China's Shanxi Province, a 23 year-old taxi driver says he is excited about the savings.

"I can save on half my expenses for fuel each day because my car started to have a new 'drink' early this year," says Li Gang, with a broad smile on the face.

Li does the maths -- one cubic meter of coal-bed methane is equivalent to 1.13 liters of gasoline, but retails at a less than half the price of gasoline. About 90 percent of Jincheng City's 1,300 taxis have been refit to burn compressed coal-bed methane and gasoline.

Day and night, coal-bed methane wells are operating in full gear in Qinshui Basin, the country's largest coal-bed methane exploitation base, some 50 kilometers from downtown Jincheng City. Tankers haul compressed coal-bed methane in an endless stream to gas stations, factories and local resident families across the province.

As China speeds up exploitation of coal mines to satisfy increasingly thirsty demand for energy, the country's gas emissions keep growing. In 2004, China's coal mines pumped out 14 billion cubic meters of gas and experts say that will increase to 17 billion by 2020.

Coal-bed methane, more commonly known as "coalmine gas", can be deadly. China has the highest number of coalmine accident fatalities in the world, with about 80 percent of casualties attributable to gas explosions, causing direct losses of 93 million U.S. dollars a year, said Sun Maoyuan, general manager of China United Coal-bed Methane Corp.

However, the No.1 "coalmine killer" is also a sort of clean energy. Industry experts believe coal-bed methane will become a practical and reliable substitute energy resource for natural gas as the global shortage of energy resources worsens and conventional natural gas supply falls short of market demand.

China boasts 37 trillion cubic-meter reserves of coal-bed methane, the third-largest in the world, next only to Russia and Canada, according to the latest statistics from the China Coal Information Research Institute. They are equivalent to 45 billion tons of standard coal. Sixty percent of the gas is stored in coal beds over 1,500 meters deep, easily mined and developed.

China's methane resources are distributed in 24 provinces, with Shanxi Province and Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region accounting for more than half of the country's total reserves.

"Coal-bed methane is not only an effective alternative energy source for China, the mining and use of it could also be helpful in avoiding coal mine accidents as well as reducing methane emissions, a major type of greenhouse gas," said Liu Wenge, deputy director of the coal-bed methane information center at the China Coal Information Research Institute.

Encouraging policies

China started to explore and utilize coal-bed methane in the 1990s. Although over 46 percent of China's coalmines are rich in gas, China's coal-bed methane still remains underdeveloped, due to factors such as a lack of technology and inadequate investment.

China utilized 1 billion cubic meters of coal-bed methane in 2005 and expects to make use of 1.4 billion cubic meters this year. In sharp contrast, more than 1.3 billion cubic meters of such gas is being emitted each year without getting effective use.