TABLE 7.-SECTORAL CONSUMPTION OF PRIMARY ENERGY IN CHINA, 1950-76 1 1 1950-74: V. Smil, "China's Energy'', op. cit., p. 150; 1976: my calculations using the same derivation procedures as for 1974 and appropriate inventory and performance figures for 1976 estimated in ČIA, "China: Economic Indicators," op. cit., passim. The most striking feature of the Chinese sectoral energy use is the large share of the industrial consumption; even with power generation requirements classified separately, industry now draws about half of all China's primary energy, a sharp increase in comparison with the early 1950's. On the other hand, relative importance of residential and commercial uses has declined considerably since the late 1950's and, significantly, both the power generation and transportation shares, in spite of large absolute increases, have also diminished. Agriculture consumed about 46 times more commercial energy in 1976 than it did at the end of the First Five-Year Plan two decades ago— but in relative terms it is still no more than about 6 percent. A more detailed look at the recent consumption pattern-by sector and source (table 8 and figure 6)-reveals important weaknesses in the Chinese energy use. About one-third of raw coal is consumed for residential heating, one of the least efficient and relatively most polluting fuel conversions, while the household use of refined oil products remains negligibly low. Some four-fifths of energy consumed in transportation are solid fuels which are very inefficiently converted into motion by steam locomotives, still the principal power sources of the Chinese railways. Most importantly, a great deal of energy is wasted in virtually all industrial processes. TABLE 8.-CHINA'S CONSUMPTION OF PRIMARY ENERGY BY SECTOR AND SOURCE IN 19741 1 For derivation of the estimates see V. Smil, "China's Energy," op cit., pp. 146-149. 3 However, these industrial consumption estimates are certainly somewhat exaggerated because they were determined as residuals after accounting for all other sectoral uses and include also transportation and storage losses, fuel stocks, non-fuel uses (these are separated in figure 6) and military needs. For comparison, the 1974 industrial energy consumption in the United States was 23.3 percent of the total use, in Japan 36.8 percent and in major Western European nations between 25-30 percent (OECD, "Energy Balances of OECD Countries" (Paris, OECD, 1976) passsim). 4 In physical units it translates to about a quart of fuel oil (little less than 1 litre) per year per capita. According to the CIA estimates, 75 percent of mainline locomotives in 1975 were steam-powered, only one percent electric and the rest were diesel engines (CIA, “China: Economic Indicators," op. cit., p. 35). In steam locomotives, coal is converted into mechanical energy with less than ten percent efficiency, while the rate in diesel engines is well over 30 percent (C. M. Summers, "The Conversion of Energy", Scientific American, vol. 224, No. 3 (September 1971), p. 151). FIGURE 6.-Commercial energy flow pattern for China in 1974. Derivation of the pattern is outlined in app. E. For comparison, identically structured energy flow patterns for the United States in the years 1960, 1970, 1980, and 1985 can be found in Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, "Certain Background Information for Consideration When Evaluating the National Energy Dilemma" (Washington, D.C., USGPO, (1973)), foldouts A-D. Industrial Consumption Recent research efforts to disaggregate the energy demand into detailed components and to subject individual industrial processes to a systematic energy analysis have abundantly illustrated numerous savings to be made through production adjustments, conservation measures and material or energy substitutions even in the most advanced economies. Although the Chinese have been engaged in almost incessant campaigns to save fuels and electricity-and have also taken some desirable steps toward residual heat utilization-the potential energy savings in the country's industries are immense. 9 In absolute terms, the Chinese iron and steel industry is certainly the branch with the greatest energy waste. Conversion of poor quality coking coal results in high benefication losses even in the case of large enterprises; coke charging in modern plants was still about 700 kg per ton of pig iron in the late 1960's and was estimated at 650 kg in 1974; moreover, in small local plants, which now produce 27 percent of China's iron and 11 percent of her steel, coke requirements are as high as 900-1,000 kg per ton of pig iron. Poor ore, relatively small blast furnaces, still infrequent partial substitution of coke by an injection of fuel oil or natural gas, scarcity of scrap and the heavy dependence on energy-intensive open-hearth furnaces in steelmaking are other principal factors explaining China's inordinately high energy consumption in this essential industrial activity: 10 Iron and steelmaking require nearly one-fourth of the national raw coal consumption and this, in turn, accounts for almost 30 percent of the total industrial energy usage.11 International comparisons of energy consumption in steel industry reveal still better China's unenviable situation. In China, raw coal requirements alone translate into approximately 17,000 kcal per kg of crude steel in 1974,12 while, in the same year, total direct energy inputs (solid fuels, fuel oils, gases and electricity) to produce 1 kg of crude steel in major Western producers and in Japan ranged between 4,400– 5,500 kcal. 13 For excellent reviews see, among others, R.H. Socolow, op. cit.; Workshop on Alternative Energy Energy Strategies, op. cit., and 9th International TNO Conference, "The Energy Accounting of Materials, Products, Processes and Services" (Rotterdam, TNO, 1976). 7 Usack and Egan estimate that about three tons of raw coal are needed to produce a ton of coke concentrate in large enterprises and that the ratio is as high as 4.5. 1 for small plants: A. H. Usack, Jr. and J. D. Egan, "China's Iron and Steel Industry," in China: A Reassessment of the Economy," op. cit., p. 272. For comparison, in the United States coke ovens 1.43 tons of coal are needed to produce a ton of coke: Federal Energy Administration, "Project Independence," Vol. 3 (Washington, D.C., USGPO, 1974), p. 6-15. Pien Hui, op. cit., p. 21. Because metallurgical coke is still the most expensive fuel used by iron and steel industry, its partial replacement by injections of fuel oil or natural gas has recently led to input values of well below 500 kg of coke per ton of pig iron in many Western European nations and in Japan: A. Decker, "Energy Accounting of Steel" in 9th International TNO Conference, op. cit., pp. 95-107; Eurostat, Quarterly Iron and Steel Statistical Bulletin (Luxembourg, Statistical Office of the European Communities, quarterly). 10 More than two-thirds of the Chinese pig iron capacity are in furnaces with volumes less than 1,000 m3 and the largest furnace has 2.005 m3; open-hearth furnaces still account for 60-70 percent of steel making capacity (A. H. Usack, Jr., and J. D. Egan op. cit., p. 280). 1 These shares are based on Usack's and Egan's calculations of about 87 mmt of raw coal needed in iron and steel making in 1974 (A. H. Usack, Jr. and J. D. Egan, op. cit., p. 271), conversion coefficient of 0.7 for large coal production and 0.5 for small coal output, and the industrial consumption (excluding power generation) of 194 mmtee in 1974. 12 Calculated by multiplying modern plant raw coal consumption of 51 mmt by 0.7 to get 35.7 mmtce, and small plant consumption of 36 mmt by 0.5 to obtain 18 mmtce, and dividing the energy equivalent of 3.76X 1014 kcal by the 1974 crude steel output of 23.8 mmt. 13 Obtained by dividing the annual crude steel production figures of the United States, Japan and Western European nations (UNO, 1976 Statistical Yearbook (New York, UNO, 1977), p. 320) into the appropriate total energy uses in iron and steel industry (OECD, op. cit.). 14 Another important sector where small plants are turning out an exceedingly energy-intensive product is the fertilizer industry, above all the enterprises synthesizing aqueous ammonia and ammonium bicarbonate. Available evidence shows that the production of one kg of nitrogen in these small units-which provided one-half of the domestic output in 1974-requires energy inputs (coal, coke, coke oven gas, electricity) between 23,000-31,000 kcal; 15 in comparison, large, modern ammonia and urea plants, which the Chinese purchased from the United States, Netherlands, Japan and France, synthesize one kg of nitrogen with no more than 11,300-17,700 kcal of total feedstock and process energy.16 Similar, though very likely not so glaring, efficiency differences could be certainly found in other industrial processes, above all in color metallurgy, cement production and crude oil refining."7 Lowering of specific fuel consumption in thermal power generation has been a constant preoccupation in the Chinese electricity production but the last reliable published average national heat rate-604 g of standard coal per kWh in 1957 18-was some 20 percent above the comparable Soviet value and nearly 50 percent greater than the average U.S. consumption.19 Although this huge gap has been certainly narrowed during the past two decades, great differences must prevail even in the case of large modern powerplants because the typical sizes of the Chinese turbogenerators-25-125 MW 20-are still too small to approach the thermal efficiencies of large Western or Soviet units." In view of these numerous conversion inefficiencies the share of useful energy-estimated to equal one-third of the total consumption in 1974 (figure 6)-may be actually even lower.22 In any case, the Chinese energetics faces a difficult, though rewarding, task to improve its conversion rates by elimination or modification of appealingly simple but energetically wasteful production processes, widespread 14 Small plants producing mainly these two fertilizers accounted for one-half of 3.2 mmt of nitrogen output in 1974 (CIA, "People's Republic of China: Chemical Fertilizer Supplies, 1949-74" (Washington, DC., CIA, 1975), p. 14). 15 These are my calculations (using rather conservative assumptions as far as the energy content of fuels is concerned; if the actual raw material and process fuel inputs are of better quality, the energy cost of fertilizers would be even higher) based on about half a dozen input budgets given in J. Sigurdson, 'Rural Industrialization in China" in "China: A Reassessment of the Economy," op. cit., pp. 420-421. 16 The average value for the United States 1973 ammonia output was 11,318 kcal/kg of N (E. T. Hayes, "Energy Implications of Materials Processing", Science, Vol. 191, No. 4228 (20 February 1976), p. 664); European values for ammonia and urea at the beginning of this decade were between 13,400-17,700 kcal/kg of N (G. Leach and M. Slesser, "Energy Requirements of Network Inputs to Food Producing Processes" (Glasgow, University of Strathclyde, 1973), pp. 21-25). 17 Chinese do not have large quantities of old metals which can be recycled at fractional energy cost compared with primary production; 60 percent of cement output is coming from small and medium enterprises at certainly greater energy cost than from the modern rotary kilns; some refining equipment is quite old and hence rather inefficient. 18 Wu, op. cit., p. 107. 19 Soviet heat rate in 1957 was 3,507 kcal/kWh (TSSU, op. cit., p. 238) and the average value for the United States fossil fueled generation was 2,864 kcal/kWh (Federal Power Commission, "National Power Survey," Part I (Washington, D.C., USGPO, 1964), p. 67). 20 So far, only several 200 MW units and two 300 MW turbogenerators have been built on a trial basis. 21 The largest Western units are now well in excess of 1,000 MW with typical new turbogenerator ratingsabove 500 MW. 22 For comparison, the useful energy in the United States amounted to 49.3 percent in 1960, 50.5 percent in 1970 and it would-without a significant conservation effort-decrease to about 45 percent in 1980 and to only 40 percent in 1985 (Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, op. cit., pp. 4-6). conservation, introduction of new technologies and larger units to benefit from considerable economies of scale and by the increased use of the total energy systems. A no less important task for China's industries will be to provide greatly increased energy subsidies for the country's agriculture. Agricultural Modernization Undoubtedly the most important near-term goal for the Chinese economy is to modernize the country's agriculture and village life by sharply reducing the reliance on renewable animate power and phytomass and to make the countryside much more dependent on fossil fuels and electricity. This is, of course, the aim of the "basic farm mechanization," a rather loosely defined program which means that more than 70 percent of all principal field, forestry, animal husbandry, fishery and side-line activities should be taken over by machines. The year 1975 was Mao's original deadline for this complex and costly accomplishment; 23 now 1980 is Hua's new target and it is quite clear that it, too, will not be met. Slogans and deadlines aside, this is, naturally, a crucial task and it is revealing to evaluate the quantities of modern energy needed to accomplish-and to sustain— this unprecedented rural transformation. To begin with, how much energy will be required to eliminate some three-quarters of all animate labor in the Chinese countryside? In mechanized farming, virtually all fieldwork (tilling, sowing, transplanting, cultivating, applying fertilizers and pesticides, and harvesting) and transportation of products and provisions would be performed by tractor-drawn implements (and also some trucks), while irrigation, drainage, crop processing (grain milling, oil pressing, sugar extraction) and fodder preparation require machinery powered either by internal combustion engines or by electric motors. Although the Chinese are building 75-horsepower tractors (and importing even bigger ones) and increasingly installing high-power water-pumping equipment, most of this machinery has been-and will continue to be rather small. Nearly 20 percent of the tractor park in 1976 were garden tractors, with drawbar horsepower of four, and among the wheel tractors the one produced in the greatest volume has been a 54-horsepower (36 horsepower at the drawbar) machine; 24 similarly, most of the more than 1 million tubewells on the North China Plain have a capacity of only 1.5-2 m3 per second.25 Average power of farm machinery in Wu-sih County, a showplace of rural mechanization in Kiangsu, typifies the situation in rice-growing areas: mean power of tractors is slightly over 12 horsepower and that of electrical and diesel motors only about 7 horsepower.2 26 Gross efficiency of this small-scale machinery is rather low. Depending on a host of circumstances (rolling resistance, soil and crop conditions, work speed, engine and its state etc.) the useful work performed by small and medium tractors (drawbar horsepower 4-40) 23 Mao Tse-tung, "Summing-up Speech at the Sixth Expanded Plenum of the Seventh Central Committee (September 1955)" in "Miscellany of Mao Tse-tung Thought," English translation in JPRS, No. 61269 (Feb. 20, 1974), p. 16. 24 CIA, Production of Machinery and Equipment in the People's Republic of China" (Washington, D.C., CIA, 1975), pp. 13-14. 25 D. D. Perkins, "A Conference on Agriculture," "The China Quarterly," No. 67 (September 1976), p. 606. 26 Chin Chi-chu. Revolutionization in Command of Mechanization," Peking Review, Vol. 20, No. 33 (Aug. 12, 1977), p. 38. |