Pictures: A Rare Look Inside China's Energy Machine

Mining An Enormous Reserve

Photograph by Toby Smith, Reportage by Getty Images

Trucks haul coal from an open cast mine located in Ordos, in the mountains of Inner Mongolia, the top coal-producing region in China.

Smith recalls his initial "sheer disbelief" at the scale of the energy complex he set out to photograph. "The myriad infrastructure, mines, railways, highways, and construction that was being installed or enlarged dominated the landscapes I visited," he says. After he began to understand the work ethic, pride, and engineering expertise his Chinese hosts brought to the enterprise, he gained a deeper understanding.

"Rather than question the figures, or the strict and rapid construction deadlines, it became more natural for me to remind myself that I was deep within China," he says. "Direct comparisons to the Western speed or scale of implementation feel quite futile now."

Sometimes, though, China has struggled to keep up with the pace of its own energy development. In 2010, when an epic traffic jam sprawled across 75 miles (120 kilometers) of Inner Mongolia's northeastern roadways, as many as 10,000 trucks transporting coal from this sparsely populated region to power plants in the rest of China became stuck in the gridlock.

(Related: "Seeking a Pacific Northwest Gateway for U.S. Coal")

And there have been conflicts between the new energy vanguard and the nomadic herders who once dominated the region. Hundreds of ethnic Mongolians, who now make up only 21 percent of the population in their traditional homeland, joined protests last spring following the death of a herder who had attempted to block the path of a coal truck driven by a Han Chinese man. Convicted of hitting the herder and dragging him for more than 325 feet feet (100 meters) with his truck, the driver was executed in August.

Published February 14, 2012

Biomass to Refine Fossil Fuel

Photograph by Toby Smith, Reportage by Getty Images

Flues reach to the sky at an oil and gas refinery in Boxing, Shandong Province. A portion of the facility's energy needs is supplied by thermal energy from a neighboring biomass power plant (not shown).

Completed in 2010, the 15-megawatt biomass plant uses agricultural waste products—cotton stalks, mostly—to generate electricity for local paper mills, chemical plants, and the power grid. Although carbon is released by biomass feedstocks when burned, the government considers them carbon-neutral, because the fuel is renewable.

Hong Kong-based power company CLP Group, majority owner of the facility, noted in a December 2010 report to investors that the Chinese government has offered tariff subsidies and tax incentives "to lure investment in biomass power stations." Yet, according to CLP, "Ensuring the quality, quantity and fair pricing of feedstock deliveries is a daily challenge. The commercial viability of this project is thus fragile, even with tariff support."

Published February 14, 2012

A Plant to Wash Coal

Photograph by Toby Smith, Reportage by Getty Images

A facility in Inner Mongolia's Ordos processes coal for burning in supercritical power stations, which require better quality coal to maintain high temperature and pressures for an overall more efficient system than conventional subcritical coal plants.

But the coal needs to be washed first, and water consumption and pollution are problems in a nation where 300 million rural residents lack access to safe drinking water, according to the United Nations Development Program.

Energy and water are tightly intertwined. Coal-fired power plants rely on steam to turn their turbines. In general, efficiency increases as the temperature and pressure used to create steam in a boiler increases. In a supercritical boiler system, first developed in the 1950s in the United States, the water is not boiled. Rather, very high temperatures and pressures are used to decrease the density of liquid water until it becomes a vapor (steam).

But there is a constant trade-off between improving efficiency and conserving water. Some measures that cut power plant consumption, such as dry cooling, require more energy.  China's 12th Five-Year Plan, announced last year, called for water consumption per unit of value-added industrial output to be cut 30 percent, while energy consumption per unit of GDP is to be cut 16 percent.

(Related: "Amid U.S.-China Energy Tension, 'Clean Coal' Spurs Teamwork")

(Quiz: "What You Don't Know About Carbon Capture")

Published February 14, 2012

Seeking Higher Quality Coal

Photograph by Toby Smith, Reportage by Getty Images  

China's about-face, in 2009, from net exporter of coal to net importer was "one of the most dramatic realignments" the global coal market has ever seen, according to coal and carbon market researchers at Stanford University.

This photo shows workers unloading high-quality coal from Indonesia at a custom-built mineral jetty in Fangchen Gang, Guangxi. Indonesian steam coal (the type of coal used for steam power generation), shipped into southern Chinese ports, currently offers a cheaper alternative to domestic Chinese coal transported over land, Stanford researcher Bart Lucarelli wrote in his 2010 paper, "The History and Future of Indonesia's Coal Industry."

The lower price of coal shipped by sea, not a shortfall of Chinese coal, Lucarelli wrote, caused China to look to Indonesia for fuel. And China, as an export market, "burst onto the Indonesian coal supply scene almost overnight."

The coal being unloaded in this photo will fuel a supercritical power station. Supercritical boiler systems can deliver thermodynamic efficiency around 41 percent, compared to 37 percent for subcritical systems and 48 percent for more advanced "ultra-supercritical" systems, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

Published February 14, 2012

A Cathedral for Hydropower

Photograph by Toby Smith, Reportage by Getty Images

Water runs through five miles (eight kilometers) of rock tunnels from the Jiulong River to reach this turbine hall built more than four miles into the mountainside. Lined with bedrock, this underground powerhouse in Jiang'an, Sichuan, holds a trio of 110-megawatt turbines for generating hydroelectricity.

Constructed, managed, and operated by CLP Group, the project began commercial operations in late 2011. The energy feeds into Sichuan Province's power grid.

Landlocked Sichuan, which is 1,600 kilometers from the coast and surrounded by mountains, is one of China's leading agricultural regions and also is a major center for hydroelectricity.

Today, China has the largest installed hydro capacity of any country in the world, according to the International Energy Agency, with most hydro stations found here, in the country's central and southern regions.

(Related Interactive: The Global Electricity Mix)

The image illustrates well the access Smith gained in his effort to document China's energy complex. Over two years of effort to win the trust of the developers, he interviewed directors at many of the sites and toured and photographed freely inside the facilities, even when they were under construction.

Smith has been mapping his photographic projects with the help of an Innovation in Storytelling grant from National Geographic. His work across China covered 11 provinces.

Published February 14, 2012

Redirecting a River’s Flow

Photograph by Toby Smith, Reportage by Getty Images

A new dam begins to redirect the flow of the Jiulong River into underground tunnels for power generation in central China's Sichuan Provice.

China's best known hydro project lies to the east of here, the Three Gorges Dam, on the Yangtze River in Hubei province. The largest power plant in the world at 20.5 gigawatts of capacity, Three Gorges is triple the size of the top U.S. hydropower station (Grand Coulee Dam). Its construction, completed in 2006, displaced some 1.3 million people.

And China plans to build the  equivalent of more than seven Three Gorges dams in the coming years, 140 gigawatts—enough power to run all of France, as Reuters notes. It's all a part of China's plan to reduce the carbon intensity of its economy.By 2020, China's renewable energy law calls for hydropower and other non-fossil fuel sources to supply at least 15 percent of the country's energy.  Still, electricity demand is growing so quickly that the new renewables will not halt the growth of greenhouse gas emissions, only slow it.

(Related: "Two Rivers: The Chance to Export Power Divides Southeast Asia")

Smith says he was lured to take on the project of documenting China's efforts to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels by the scale of the infrastructure, and the pace at which it was changing. He knew China's economy was built on coal, and that foundation would be difficult to alter. "It feels less like China is making decisions between different energy types, but more decisions on how can it meet demand by using all energy types," Smith says. "As the Western economic growth stabilizes we have a stereotype is that it is a 'switch' to renewable energy. China, however, is increasing coal extraction and imports while investing heavily in wind, hydro, and solar as a complement. I nicknamed this the 'and, and, and, and' philosophy."

Published February 14, 2012

Cotton Husks for Fuel

Photograph by Toby Smith, Reportage by Getty Images

A cotton-picker works an industrial scale plantation in Boxing, Shandong Province. The cotton bud must be picked and separated from the dry husk. The stalks, which would otherwise be considered waste, are dried and sold as feedstock for biofuel and electricity production.

Published February 14, 2012

A Turbine-Tip View

Photograph by Toby Smith, Reportage by Getty Images

From the top of a nacelle in Jilin Province, a landscape ripe for wind power stretches into the distance. (A nacelle contains the control electronics, gearbox, and drive train in a wind turbine.)

Thanks to development here and elsewhere, China's wind market doubled every year between 2006 and 2009, overtaking the United States as the country with the most installed wind energy capacity in 2010.

An example of how the Chinese industry has been working to expand its global footprint is Xinjiang Goldwind Science and Technology, which manufactured the turbines shown here at the Qian'an I Wind Farms. In September 2011, Goldwind signed a deal to build a wind farm in Illinois, at an estimated cost of $200 million, and this month the company has secured more than $5.5 billion in loans and guarantees for domestic and overseas expansion.

But there has been push-back. The U.S. International Trade Commission voted just last week to investigate charges from U.S. wind equipment manufacturers that they are being unfairly harmed by cheap government-subsidized imports from China and Vietnam.

With similar charges also launched by some U.S. solar manufacturers, renewable energy eventually could spur a trade war between the United States and its largest source of imported goods, China.

Published February 14, 2012

Paper Bound for Recycling

Photograph by Toby Smith, Reportage by Getty Images

Outside a paper mill in Boxing, Shandong Province, stacks of bailed waste paper are stockpiled for recycling. A nearby biomass cogeneration plant supplies energy for the facility.

Also known as combined heat and power or CHP, cogeneration involves producing electricity and heat from a single fuel source—in this case, mostly agricultural waste from cotton fields.

China has international support for this type of project. In June 2011, the World Bank approved a $150 million loan to China to improve energy efficiency in Shandong. In particular, the loan is meant to go toward greater use of biomass for power and heat generation and energy-efficiency leasing arrangements.

(Related: "KPMG Captures Heat for Data Center Cooling")

Published February 14, 2012

Capturing the Gobi’s Solar Power

Photograph by Toby Smith, Reportage by Getty Images

In Gansu Province, two people walk amid an array of solar panels designed to soak up the Gobi Desert's abundant sunshine.

China is only sixth or seventh among nations in solar capacity, but its installations are growing at breakneck pace, especially after a new feed-in tariff to encourage development. Installations doubled last year, and this year the country plans to add three gigawatts—double its current solar capacity.

By 2015, China aims to have installed solar generating capacity of at least 15 gigawatts. That goal, announced in December, ratcheted up the nation's previous solar target by 50 percent.

China already is the world leader in the manufacture of solar panels, with 51 percent of the market. The nation that developed solar technology in the 1950s, the United States, has about 6 percent of the market. And U.S. photovoltaic manufacturers are under pressure as their Chinese competitors drive down the price of the product.

President Barack Obama's administration is to weigh in next month on whether to take up the cause of a coalition of seven U.S. solar manufacturers that charge the Chinese producers of dumping large volumes of unfairly subsidized photovoltaic cells at undercut prices in an attempt to dominate the American market.

(Related Blog Posts: Solar Energy Tipping Point: Will U.S. Seize Opportunity, or Pursue Trade War With China? and The Blame China Game)

Published February 14, 2012

Opening the Shale Gas Valve

Photograph from Reuters

A worker checks valves on a natural gas appraisal well at a China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation facility in Langzhong, Sichuan Province. The province holds some of China's largest stores of natural gas.

Also known as Sinopec, China Petroleum is one of the largest state-owned energy companies in China, and its gas pipelines span more than 2,825 miles (4,545 kilometers) across the country.

Last year, Sinopec reportedly produced nearly 17 percent more natural gas, and discovered more than 80 percent more natural gas reserves, than it did in 2010. But it's looking for growth beyond China. Sinopec bought a one-third stake in five exploratory shale gas fields in the United States last month as part of a $2.2 billion deal with Oklahoma City-based Devon Energy. Devon pioneered the horizontal drilling technology, combined with hydraulic fracturing, that has unlocked vast unanticipated stores of natural gas from shale formations across the United States. Such a deal gives Sinopec the opportunity to import the made-in-the-USA shale gas technology.

Published February 14, 2012

An Energy Drive That’s Hard to Contain

Photograph by Zhou Huadong, Imaginechina/AP

A crane hoists the dome of a containment structure at the Taishan Nuclear Power Plant in south China's Guangdong

Province last October. Completion of two reactors at the site is expected to make Taishan one of the world's largest nuclear power projects.

Smith was not able to gain access to photograph nuclear facilities; AP Images provided this photograph of the facility slated to open in 2013.

Construction began in December 2009 on the Taishan project, which uses an advanced third-generation pressurized-water reactor design licensed from the French company Areva Group. Known in the industry as a  Generation III-plus design, it would rely entirely on passive safety systems, operated by gravity, natural convection, and conduction, in case of an accident. This is viewed as more robust than the diesel-fueled or battery systems used for back-up cooling at the majority of nuclear plants in operation today, a system that failed catastrophically last year at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi plant after being inundated by the March 11 tsunami.

All four of the Generation III-plus power plants now under construction in the world are being built in China. After the Fukushima Daiichi disaster, China took steps such as boosting its goals for solar power. But China also held fast to its goal of boosting nuclear capacity from 10.8 gigawatts at the end of 2010 to 50 gigawatts by 2015. And as a portion of the total energy mix, nuclear is projected to increase to 5 percent in 2020, from just 1 percent in 2000.

Published February 14, 2012